dispute

Social Science Research 49 (2015) 42–52

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Chinese people’s intended and actual use of the court to resolve grievance/dispute Shanhe Jiang a,1, Yuning Wu b,⇑,1 a b

Department of Criminal Justice, Social Work and Legal Specialties, Central China Normal University, University of Toledo, United States Department of Criminal Justice, Wayne State University, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 22 September 2013 Revised 20 June 2014 Accepted 17 July 2014 Available online 4 August 2014 Keywords: Dispute resolution China Courts Grievance/dispute

a b s t r a c t China’s legal reforms have promoted the use of law and legal system to solve disputes. Based on data from a nationwide sample, this study examined among people who have recently encountered grievance/dispute, what is the relationship between their intention to use the court and their actual use of the court to solve the grievance/dispute, and what are the correlates that affect their intentions and actions of using legal versus other modes of remedies. The results highlight the primacy of administrative petitioning and nongovernmental remedies in handing disputes. There is only a low degree of conjunction between people’s reported willingness to use the law and their actual use of the law in addressing grievance/dispute. Education and urbanization play a significant role in legal mobilization. Further, type of grievance/dispute is among the most significant predictors for both intended and actual appeals to the court. Implications for future research are provided. Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Every society has its preferred ways to handle grievance, resolve disputes, and maintain social order. In China, informal methods of dispute resolution, such as mediation, have been favored historically as well as today (Clarke, 1991; Huang, 2010). The traditional Chinese legal culture highlights a feature of anti-litigiousness, where people relied heavily on informal norms, rather than formal laws, to regulate social behaviors and interactions (Jiang et al., 2007; Rojek, 1996). After the Chinese Community Party (CCP) took over the power in 1949, the CCP gained control over the dispute resolution system. Informal methods of dispute resolution continued to be emphasized by the government as an important tool to smooth away social conflicts and a forum to promote political propaganda. Since the open door and reform policies adopted in late 1970s, China has experienced rapid social changes in economic and legal arenas, among others. With the accelerated flow of capital, material, and human resources, many areas of China have transformed from an acquaintance society to a stranger society in Fei’s terms (Fei, 1992) or from a community to a society in Weberian terms. In an acquaintance society, social ties and trust are mainly formed through personal social interactions, and the roles, values, and beliefs based on such interactions. In contrast, in a stranger society, social ties and trust are mainly formed through indirect interactions, and impersonal roles, formal values, and beliefs based on such interactions. ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: 3261 Faculty Administration Building, Department of Criminal Justice, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202, United States. Fax: +1 313 577 9977. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Jiang), [email protected] (Y. Wu). 1 Yuning Wu and Shanhe Jiang contributed equally to this work and are co-first authors. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2014.07.009 0049-089X/Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Thus, formal rules and proceedings are increasingly used by people to regulate relationships and resolve disputes in a society that transits from an acquaintance society to a stranger society. In China, a large number of laws and administrative regulations have been passed, and formal dispute resolutions, including the court, are more accessible and affordable (Liang, 2008; Ross, 1990). Chinese people are increasingly encouraged by the government to learn about the law, abide by the law, and use the law to assert their rights and interests (Gallagher, 2006; Jiang et al., 2013). People’s legal awareness and consciousness, accordingly, have improved to a certain degree. Chinese people today are more willing to engage the law, in various ways, to address grievances and disputes (Diamant, 2005; Gallagher, 2005, 2006; O’Brien and Li, 2005; Thireau and Hua, 2005). In 1978, the people’s courts in China handled slightly over 300,000 civil lawsuits. This number jumped to 1.8 million in 1990, 3.4 million in 2000, and 6.1 million in 2010, a more than 20-fold increase within 32 years (China Statistical Yearbook, 2011). Even in rural areas where informal social networks may remain strong, formal institutions have shown a growing promise in settling conflicts (Ross, 1990). Some scholars believed that ‘‘in today’s China law matters more than it ever has’’ (Diamant et al., 2005: 3). In light of these significant changes, we conducted the current study examining Chinese people’s attitudes toward, and experiences with, different methods of solving grievance/dispute, with a focus on the comparisons between the legal/judicial approach and other approaches including administrative remedy. Administrative remedy refers to resolving disputes by administrative agencies rather than judicial review, such as through China’s letters and visits petitioning system. Based on data from a nationwide sample of over 10,000 respondents, we attempted to answer three questions: (1) What is the degree of congruence between Chinese people’s willingness to use the court and their actually use of the court to address grievance/dispute? (2) What are the correlates of Chinese people’s intention to use the court? And (3) What are the correlates of Chinese people’ actions of using the court? This study comes in a time when China faces a surge of popular grievances and collective complaints. Rapid social changes, coupled with widened economic inequality and weakened informal social control, have significantly increased social conflicts, in both quantity and complexity. Intensified conflicts have led to various forms of negative incidents, such as suicides, criminal acts, protests, demonstrations, and riots (Halegua, 2005). A failure to address public grievances through institutionalized methods can undermine social stability and even threaten state legitimacy. Understanding people’s experiences with grievance and dispute and their preferred ways of remedy is vital for promoting peaceful, legitimate, and effective conflicts-solving methods. Employing a multilevel modeling strategy, this study simultaneously assesses the effects of individual- and county-level factors on Chinese people’s intended and actual use of the court to solve grievance/disputes. While previous works, such as Michelson’s (2007) seminal study on appeals to official justice system in rural China, have discussed the influence of macrolevel regional conditions on appeals to justice system, they tend to use regions (e.g., counties) as dummy variables and fail to measure the independent effects of multiple regional characteristics adjusting all individual predictors. Also, because they used county contextual variables in individual-level analysis, they could have violated the assumption of independence for regression analysis because respondents who were naturally nested in a same county were often correlated with one another in certain ways. To address these concerns, this study simultaneously examines the effects of a variety of theoreticallyrelevant variables in two levels, individual and county level, on Chinese people’s use of the court. Individual-level variables include incident variables (i.e., the type of disputes) and individual variables (i.e., socio-demographic characteristics and prior experience). County-level variables include urbanization and density of law firms, which partially indicates legal access. Furthermore, the nationwide random sample that we rely upon includes both rural and urban residents, adding valuable information to the current literature that has heavily concentrated on rural grievance/disputes (Cai, 2008; Michelson, 2007, 2008; O’Brien and Li, 2006). Particularly, by including the county-level urbanization variable, we are able to test the influence of urbanization, an important indicator of economic development and growing capabilities of a region, on people’s use of the court, after controlling for all other individual- and county-level variables.

2. Responses to grievance/dispute in China When encountering grievance/dispute, the aggrieved can choose to solve the problem through informal or formal mechanisms, or simply do nothing. Diamant et al. (2005) proposed that the classic ‘‘dispute pyramid’’ model in the Western countries (Miller and Sarat, 1980–1981) also applies to China. The majority of people who believe that they have experienced grievance/dispute do not make a claim. They simply tolerate it (also see Black, 1989). Among those who do name and blame someone as responsible for their unjust experience, some seek legal assistance while others use non-judicial remedies. Michelson (2007, p. 460) further described a ‘‘dispute pagoda’’ model in China, arguing that different from the classic dispute pyramid, the dispute pagoda model does not assume a linear path where aggrieved villagers take a fixed, linear sequence that eventually leads them to court. Scholars, however, share a common understanding that dispute avoidance or tolerance, where the aggrieved parties choose to do nothing, is popular and widespread in many societies including China (Diamant et al., 2005; Michelson, 2007, 2008). When the disputants do seek to solve the dispute, informal mechanisms are usually preferred. For example, Chinese people have a tendency to turn to the leaders of their work units for dispute resolution, especially during the planned economy period when people’s personal lives were closely intertwined with their professional lives. Shi (1997) found that between 1983 and 1988 (a time period of early market transition), 51% of the 757 respondents in his study contacted leaders of their

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work units for grievance/dispute, compared to only 4% that reported the grievance/dispute to complaint bureaus (i.e., letters and visits bureaus). Similarly, seeking help and judgment from community leaders, such as heads of villages in rural areas, is also popular. In a survey of 745 rural residents in Shaanxi Province in 2000, 51% reported that they would approach village leaders for dispute resolution, compared to 21% who would use mediation, and fewer than 10% who would use the law (Shi and Chen, 2002). In another survey of about 3000 rural households in six provincial-level divisions, Michelson (2008) found that local solutions, often with the involvement of village leaders, are considered as far more desirable and effective than higher-level solutions that involve government agencies and courts. Despite the dominant role that informal dispute resolutions play in China, formal dispute resolutions have been used more often during the past two decades. There is a noticeable increase in people’s willingness to resort to the government and the court to solve problems. In the 1980s, the ratio of disputes handled by courts and by mediation committees was about 1:11. This ratio had increased to 3.4:6.1 (3.4 million court-handled cases over 6.1million mediation cases) in 1994 and further to 6.1:8.4 in 2010 (China Statistical Yearbook, 2011; Yearbook of Chinese Law, 1980–2001). For state-citizen disputes especially, Chinese people are increasingly willing to use the law. For instance, there were only 527 administrative law suits (i.e., lawsuits against a government act) in 1983, but this number jumped to 129,133 in 2010 (China Statistical Yearbook, 2011). Cai (2004) found that when encountering disputes with state authorities, 67% of the 1460 surveyed urban residents in four cities expressed their intention to appeal to upper-level state authorities, 44% intended to approach the media, and 30% intended to use the law. Besides lawsuits, administrative petitioning is an increasingly popular dispute resolution mechanism in China. The number of petitions increased at an annual rate of 8% between 1996 and 2002, with more than 30 million petitioners reported in 2002 (Paik, 2011). The letters and visits system (xinfang), a major channel of administrative petitioning allowing the public to appeal to the letters and visits bureaus, takes in almost all kinds of public grievances. Among them, appeals of judicial and administrative grievances have been most popular during recent years (Luehrmann, 2003; Palmer, 2006). Beyond the xinfang system, appeals to any higher authority system (shangfang) work in a way that almost any governmental office can be a site for citizens’ complaints, appeals and petitions (Michelson, 2008). Many Chinese believe that the likelihood of a satisfactory response from the central and provincial government is greater than that from local officials (O’Brien and Li, 1995; Li and O’Brien, 1996). This administrative petitioning system, in practice, often replaces formal legal channels as the forum for citizen dispute resolution, and serves as a multi-purpose governance tool for Chinese leaders, with objectives ranging from solving individual grievance/disputes to collecting information regarding local government performance, and to carrying out propaganda functions to promote social order and control (Minzner, 2006). With the above general context of dispute resolution in China in mind, we now proceed to propose a series of hypotheses on more specific issues regarding Chinese people’s intentions and actions of using the court to address grievance and solve dispute. These hypotheses pertain to the three research questions that examine the relationship between legal intention and action, the correlates of legal intentions, and the correlates of legal actions. 2.1. The relationship between legal intention and action Behavioral intention (or ideation) and action (or attempt) are related in some human behaviors such as suicide (Winfree and Jiang, 2010), but a disjunction between people’s intention and actual use of the law has been found in a recent study. Cai (2008), based on data from the 2005 General Social Survey, found that 50% of the surveyed urban residents and 23% of the surveyed rural residents reported that they have the intention to use the law. However, among the respondents who had recent civil disputes, only 16% had actually used the courts to solve the disputes, and among the respondents who had recent state-citizen disputes, only 27% had actually used the courts to solve their conflicts. In face of this disjunction between intentions and actions, this study will statistically gauge the magnitude of the correlation between people’s intention and action of using the law. It expects that behavioral intention has only a weak relationship to action in making a formal appeal to court when encountering grievance/dispute. 2.2. Grievance/dispute type and use of court The likelihood of utilizing the court to solve a problem may depend on the nature and kind of the problem to be solved (Silbey, 2005). For example, compared to labor disputes, other disputes including divorce, property-related disputes and personal injury are more likely to invoke the law and legal system as a solution in rural China (Michelson, 2007). Conversely, house land property rights disputes are more likely to lead to an appeal to the government than legal system in rural China (Michelson, 2007). Further, relative to disputes with neighbors, business-related disputes, family-related disputes and personal injury are more likely to lead to an appeal to formal institutions than ‘‘lumping it’’ (i.e., ignore the dispute) among rural Chinese (Michelson, 2007). Cai (2008), through bivariate analysis, found that for civil disputes, urban and rural residents were different in their preferences of dispute resolution. While urban residents used the court more than upper-level administrative authorities, rural residents relied on upper-level administrative authorities more than the court. For state-citizen disputes, however, there were no such area differences. To extend the prior research, this study empirically assessed the effects of multiple grievance/dispute types on Chinese people’s intention and actual use of judicial methods as opposed to administrative and informal methods of dispute resolution, after controlling for individual demographic and experiential variables and county-level urbanization and density

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of law firms variables. Eight types of grievance/dispute were examined, including conflicts from house property, land expropriation, housing demolition, enterprise reform, unemployment benefits, housing land, local election and debt disputes. It is hypothesized that for disputes with the state (i.e., administrative dispute), including land expropriation, housing demolition, enterprise reform, unemployment benefits, housing land, and local election, Chinese people are less likely to choose judicial over non-judicial methods for a resolution; meanwhile, for civil disputes, including house ownership disputes and debt disputes, Chinese people are more likely to choose judicial over non-judicial methods for a resolution. 2.3. Political status and use of court Political status, such as being a communist party member, can influence one’s social networks and resources in China. Being a party member may give a person the right guanxi (the sentiment-based interpersonal relation) to navigate through the vast bureaucracy of administrative and judicial system and process when appealing grievance/dispute. Previous research showed that among rural Chinese, those who have family or outside-family political connections have appealed more times to the government and the legal system than their less well connected counterparts (Michelson, 2007). It is unclear, however, the effects of political status on people’s willingness to choose one formal mechanism over another, that is, the government over the legal system, or the legal system over the government. This study hypothesizes that people who have a political status (i.e., party member) are more likely to use formal channels to address grievance/dispute than those without. Considering the usually higher costs of lawsuits compared to administrative remedies, we also propose a preliminary hypothesis that people who have a political status are more willing to use administrative rather than legal remedy for grievance/dispute than those without a political status, possibly due to their political connections and capital. 2.4. Experience of collective action and use of court Collective actions (qun ti xing huodong) such as group litigation, petitioning, strike, and protest and demonstration are indicators of rights consciousness (Chen, 2004; Gallagher, 2006). When citizens participate in these actions, they may have already exhausted other ways of addressing grievance and thus prefer formal dispute resolutions than informal. Meanwhile, through participating in these collective actions, individuals gain some real experiences in legal or extralegal mobilization. Gallagher (2006) argued that experience with the legal system can increase people’s feeling of self-efficacy and this feeling, in turn, encourages them to further use the legal system. In addition, people who have participated in collective actions are likely to have more serious or escalated conflicts, making judicial remedies preferable, compared to non-judicial methods, in order to solve the problem in an ultimate and public way. Thus, it is hypothesized that compared to people who do not have prior collective action experience, people who have it are more likely to have higher levels of intention and actions to make an appeal to the court than to other types of authorities to address their grievance/dispute. 2.5. Social class and use of court The ‘‘haves’’ tend to come out ahead of the ‘‘have-nots’’ in legal system and process (Galanter, 1974; Silbey, 2005). Litigants who have more resources of knowledge, wealth, and influence are more capable of using the courts than the ‘‘have-nots.’’ Michelson (2007) found that in rural China, socioeconomic resources, a proxy of social class, promoted the use of law. What remains unknown is whether Chinese people who have a better socioeconomic status prefer judicial over administrative remedies, or verse versa. Considering that social class is often positively related to legal knowledge and social connection to legal professionals including judges, it is hypothesized that compared to people from lower class, people from higher class have a greater intention and action to choose the court over other institutions to address grievance. 2.6. Urbanization and use of court Recent studies have illustrated the importance of contextual factors in predicting people’s attitudes toward the law and legal authorities. Variations have been found across different neighborhoods/areas regarding residents’ attitudes toward legal authorities such as the police (Sampson and Jeglum-Bartusch, 1998; Wu et al., 2009), courts (Landry, 2011) and law (Jiang et al., 2013). The effects of urbanization on people’s choice of dispute resolution have not been quantitatively investigated yet, although such a connection is expected. Early Classical theorists, such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, had argued for a positive association between economic development, including urbanization, and the utilization of the legal system. Recent works (Michelson, 2007; Michelson and Read, 2011) had found that given all conditions equal, regions with higher levels of economic development have higher levels of law utilization rates. Accordingly, this study proposes that urbanization is positively related to both intended and actual appeals to courts over other institutions for solving grievance/dispute. 2.7. Density of law firms and use of court China has made impressive progress in legalization in the post-reform era, yet ‘‘access to justice in China is likely to vary widely, often depending on people’s willingness to take risks, generate solidarity, raise money, and create alliances with the

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media or intrepid lawyers’’ (Diamant et al., 2005: 11). In addition, macro-level contextual factors, such as access to the law and legal resources, can influence individuals’ choice of dispute resolution. Cai (2008) suggested that one of the reasons for the higher levels of appeal to the legal system by urban residents, relative to rural residents, is access to legal resources, such as lawyer’s assistance and legal consultation. As no research has empirically tested the effects of legal access before, we examine the effects of county-level density of law firms on people’s choice of modes of action to solve disputes. We propose that areas with more legal assistance services have higher average levels of both intentions and actions to use the court as a forum to address grievance/dispute. 3. Methodology 3.1. Data and sample This study uses data from two sources. Individual data come from the China General Social Survey 2006 (CGSS). The CGSS was sponsored by the China Social Science Foundation and carried out by researchers from the Department of Sociology, Renmin University of China.2 The county-level data come from the China Census 2000 and the China Economic Census 2004.3 The CGSS is the first continuous national social survey project in mainland China. Renmin University of China and Hong Kong Science and Technology University jointly initiated the CGSS in 2003. The 2006 survey used a four-stage cluster sampling strategy to select a sample of 10,151 rural and urban residents aging from 18 to 69 from 125 counties and county-level districts in 28 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in mainland China (excluding Ningxia, Qinghai and Tibet). The first stage of sampling was to randomly select counties and districts. The next stage was to randomly select townships and streets from the sampled counties and districts. The third stage was to randomly select rural villages from the sampled townships and urban communities from the sampled streets. The final stage was to randomly select households from the sampled villages and communities and then select one person from each household. In the entire sample of over 10,000 respondents, 1184 respondents had experienced grievance/dispute over the past five years prior to the interview time. These respondents were further asked to which authorities or organizations they wanted to appeal and to which authorities or organizations they actually made an appeal. For intended appeals, the respondents were requested to make one single choice while for actual appeals the respondents were allowed to make multiple choices. In order to compare the correlates of intended and actual appeals and examine the relationship between them, the small number of respondents who chose more than one answer in the actual appeal question was excluded from the regression analysis. As a result of this exclusion and other missing information, a total of 1045 respondents nested in 118 counties/districts were included in this study’s regression analyses. All of these respondents had recent grievance/dispute experiences. 3.2. Measurement 3.2.1. Dependent variables To study the relationship between intended and actual use of the court and the correlates of intended and actual use of the court, both intended and actual use of the court are dependent variables. Intended appeal to court was formed from this question ‘‘When you encounter grievance/dispute, to which agency or organization you would like to appeal?’’ There were six answer categories: 1. work units, 2. local government, 3. courts, 4. youth league, women’s federation, employees’ unions, etc., 5. non-governmental organizations, and 6. others. We recoded the variable into three categories. Categories 2 and 4 were combined into one category called administrative leaders or government.4 Courts remained a separate category. Categories 1, 5 and 6 were combined into one category named others (non-governmental approach).5 Actual appeal to court was developed from a question asking ‘‘When you encounter grievance/dispute, which agency or organization you actually appealed to?’’ There are five original responses: 1. local government, 2. courts, 3. youth league, women’s federation, employees’ unions, etc., 4. non-governmental organizations, and 5. others. Categories 1 and 3 were combined into one category indicating seeking government response. Courts remain a separate category. Categories 4 and 5 were combined into one category indicating others. Since both dependent variables are nominal variables, multinomial logistic regression models were used in this study. In addition, as both individual- and county-level variables were included in the models, hierarchical generalized linear models were used. Independent and control variables. 2

The original collector of the data and the funding agency bear no responsibility for the findings, interpretations and conclusions of this study. Thank Dr. Shuming Bao and the China Data Center at the University of Michigan for the access to the Census data. 4 In China, organizations such as the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the Communist Youth League of China and the All-China Women’s Federation are officially called mass/social organizations instead of government agencies. However, these organizations exercise, to a fairly large extent, some governmental functions. Indeed, the tasks, organizational setup and posts of leaders of these organizations are decided by the government. These organizations also receive appropriations from the state treasury. Many Chinese citizens may not understand or realize the differences between these social organizations and government agencies in nature, and may consider the former as part of the government. Thus, it is reasonable to code them as part of the government. 5 Besides work units, this third category may include residents’ committees, village committees, people’s mediation committees and other grassroots organizations (Huang, 2008; Shaw, 1996; Shi, 1997; Xiong, 1999). None of these grassroots organizations are formally autonomous as governmental agencies or have any formal coercive power. They cannot unilaterally tax, fine, or impose any other sanctions on their constituent. 3

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3.2.1.1. Individual-level variables. Individual-level independent variables include incident-specific variables (i.e., the type of dispute) and individual variables (i.e., socio-demographic characteristics and prior experience). Among socio-demographic variables, political status and social class are independent variables and age, gender and education are control variables. Political status was measured by asking the respondents ‘‘Your political status is: 1. the Chinese Communist Party member, 2. other party member, 3. the Chinese Communist Youth League member, 4. mass.’’ It was recoded into a dummy variable with 0 representing non-CCP member and 1 representing CCP member. Social class was measured by a question asking ‘‘What is your family socioeconomic status: 1. upper class, 2. middle upper class, 3. middle class, 4. middle lower class, 5. lower class?’’ The responses were reverse recoded so that a larger value represents a higher level of social class. Age and education were measured in years. Gender was a dummy variable with 1 indicating female and 0 indicating male. Collective action experience was measured by a question asking respondents ‘‘Over the last five years, have you participated in collective actions such as group lawsuits, petitions, protests, demonstrations, labor strikes, and others? 1. Yes, I was an organizer; 2. Yes, I was a participant; 3. Yes, I was a supporter; 4. Yes, I participated in other forms; 5. No; 6. Yes, I played other roles.’’ Item 5 was coded as 0, indicating no prior collective action experience, and all the others were coded as 1, signaling some kind of prior collective action experience. Grievance/dispute type was formed from a question with multiple choices: ‘‘Over the last five years, have you experienced grievance/dispute in the following eight issues: house ownership dispute, land expropriation, housing demolition, enterprise reform, unemployment benefits, housing land, local election, debt disputes?’’ Eight dummy variables were constructed for the regression analyses, each representing one type of dispute.

3.2.1.2. County-level variables. There are two county-level variables: urbanization and density of law firms. Urbanization was indicated by the proportion of non-agricultural population over the entire population in a county, based on information derived from the China Census 2000 data. Density of law firms was measured by the number of law firms per 100,000 people in the county, based on information developed from the China Economic Census 2004 data. Table 1 provides the descriptive statistics for all the variables included in the HLM analyses. Multicollinearity was not an issue among the independent variables.

4. Findings 4.1. Intended and actual use of court Table 2 presents the respondents’ intended and actual appeals to the court for dispute resolution. Regarding intended use of the court (a single choice question), among the 1184 respondents who had encountered grievance/dispute in the past five years, 16% reported that they wanted to make an appeal to court when encountering grievance/dispute, 49.2% reported they wanted to turn to the government and 34.8% reported they wanted to use other remedies. For actual appeals (a multiple choices question), about 16% reported that they had actually appealed to the court (including 8.7% courts only, 6.8% courts and government, .3% courts and others, .6% courts, government, and others), slightly more than 47% had appealed to the government (including 37.8% government only, 6.8% courts and government, 2.0% government and others, .6% courts, government, and others), and 46.7% had used other modes of action (including 43.8% others only, .3% courts and others, 2.0%

Table 1 Descriptive statistics for variables in HLM analyses (n = 1045). Mean

SD

Min

Max

Level-1 individual Sex Age Education Social class Politics Collective action experience House ownership Land expropriation Housing demolition Enterprise reform Unemployment benefits Housing land Local election Debt disputes

.51 43.56 8.07 1.87 .85 .12 .15 .25 .11 .22 .27 .10 .09 .13

.50 11.70 3.87 .90 .36 .32 .35 .43 .32 .41 .45 .30 .29 .33

0 18 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1 69 17 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Level-2 county Urbanization Density of law firms

37.55 .76

31.06 .94

6.42 0

96.67 6.95

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S. Jiang, Y. Wu / Social Science Research 49 (2015) 42–52 Table 2 Intended and actual use of court for grievance/dispute in China. Appeals to

Intended appealsa Frequency

Courts only Government only Others onlyc Courts and government Courts and others Government and others Courts, government and others Total

190 582 412

Actual appealsb %

Frequency

%

16.0 49.2 34.8

103 446 517 80 4 24 7 1181d

8.7 37.8 43.8 6.8 .3 2.0 .6

1184

a

One choice was allowed. Multiple choices were allowed. c For intended appeals, government includes local government and youth league, women’s federation, employees’ unions, etc.; others include work unit, non-governmental organization and other. For actual appeals, government includes local government and youth league, women’s federation, employees’ unions, etc.; others include non-governmental organization and other. d There were 3 missing cases in this column. b

government and others, .6% courts, government, and others) to solve grievance/dispute. These findings revealed that the Chinese disputants are much more likely to make appeals to the government than to court. It is interesting that among the disputants, 16% reported that they had the intention to appeal to court and 16% reported that they had actually appealed to court for grievance/dispute resolution. This, however, does not mean that those who had the intention were also those who had the action. Indeed, bivariate analysis indicated that there was only a weak association between intended appeals and actual appeals to court among the respondents who reported such intention (n = 190) (k = .153, a < .001). Among these 190 individuals, half (n = 93) had a legal action and the other half (n = 97) did not use the court for dispute resolution. To further explore the potentially different profiles between the respondents who had a conjunction of intention and action and the respondents who had a disjunction of intention and action, mean comparisons were conducted and the results were presented in Table 3. The two subsamples were significantly different in two aspects: education and urbanization. Those who had made an actual appeal to courts had higher educational level compared to those who did not have the action. Meanwhile, people who had made an actual appeal to courts to address grievance/dispute were more likely to come from a more urbanized area than those who did not appeal to court. 4.2. Correlates of intended use of court Multilevel multinomial logistic regression models are used to examine the correlates of people’s intention and actions of using the court as opposed to other institutions. Table 4 Panel 1 presents the correlates of intended appeals to courts over others (i.e., informal, non-governmental methods) and Table 4 Panel 2 presents the correlates of intended appeals to courts over the government. The results showed that people who had home ownership and debt disputes were more willing to use Table 3 Comparisons between people who have both intention and action and people who have intention but no action of use of court (n = 190). Variables

Intention and action (n = 93) Mean

Intention no action (n = 97) Mean

Sig (t)

Sex (female = 1) Age Education Social class Politics Collective action experience House ownership Land expropriation Housing demolition Enterprise reform Unemployment benefits Housing land Local election Debt disputes Urbanization Density of law firms

.46 42.44 9.37 2.08 .86 .10 .20 .25 .16 .17 .25 .16 .09 .26 44.59 .79

.41 41.33 7.86 2.04 .86 .13 .30 .25 .09 .09 .21 .13 .11 .27 30.40 .68

.490 .534 .009 .817 .929 .424 .504 .134 .159 .109 .501 .598 .531 .877 .000 .388

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S. Jiang, Y. Wu / Social Science Research 49 (2015) 42–52 Table 4 HLM results on intended appeals to courts versus other actions (n = 1045). Independent variables

Court versus other model b

Court versus government model

S.E.

Exp(b)

S.E.

Exp(b)

1.675*

.719

.187

.760 .983 1.019 1.094 1.434 1.904 2.212 1.728 1.200 .431 .732 1.168 .986 2.551

.343* .005 .021 .321** .116 .019 .603** .132 .218 .171 .124 .392 .409 1.153***

.169 .009 .031 .101 .343 .272 .227 .273 .271 .306 .271 .294 .287 .268

.709 .995 1.022 1.378 1.122 .981 1.828 .877 1.243 .843 .883 1.479 .664 3.168

1.001 .996

.006 .159

.005 .124

1.006 .853

Intercept

.662

.840

.516

Level-1 individual Sex Age Education Social class Politics Collective action experience House ownership Land expropriation Housing demolition Enterprise reform Unemployment benefits Housing land Local election Debt disputes

.275 .017 .019 .090 .360 .644* .794** .547 .182 .842** .312 .155 .014 .936**

.209 .009 .032 .108 .312 .303 .295 .314 .335 .286 .276 .309 .338 .337

Level-2 county Urbanization Density of law firms

.001 .004

.005 .132

Random effects (variance)

Intercept (s) = .645

b

Intercept (s) = .465

Note: HLM 7 was used for the data analysis. S.E. stands for standard errors. * p < .05. ** p < . 01. *** p < .001.

the court than non-governmental remedies. In contrast, people who had enterprise reform disputes were less willing to use the court than non-governmental remedies. Results also indicated that people who had participated in collective actions during the past five years had greater intentions to use the court, rather than non-governmental methods, for dispute solution, compared to those without such experience. With respect to the intention of appealing to the court as opposed to the government, four correlates were statistically significant. People who had experienced grievance/dispute in house ownership or debt issues were more likely to prefer the court than the government for resolution. In addition, males and people of higher class statuses were more likely to prefer to make an appeal to the court than to the government. 4.3. Correlates of actual use of court Table 5 reports the regression results on people’s actual appeals to courts. The court versus others model (Table 5, Panel 1) investigates the correlates of the log odds of using the court as opposed to non-governmental methods while the court versus government model (Table 5, Panel 2) examines the correlates of the log odds of using the court as opposed to the government for addressing grievance/dispute. Four types of grievance/dispute were statistically significant correlates of actual appeals to the court versus other methods. People who had experienced grievance/dispute in house ownership, land expropriation, housing land and debt disputes were more likely to make an actual appeal to the court than to non-governmental authorities. In addition, people who had participated in collective actions during the past five years were more likely to appeal to courts than people who did not have such experience. Two variables, debt disputes and education, were statistically significant in affecting people’s actual use of the court versus the government. Those who had debt disputes were more likely to make an appeal to the court than to the government, and those who had higher levels of education were also more likely to use the court than the government to address grievance/dispute. These results showed some similarities in the correlates of Chinese people’s intended and actual appeals to the court for dispute resolution. Three variables, homeownership dispute, debt dispute, and collective actions, exerted similarly significant effects on both the intention and action of the use of the court over non-governmental remedies. One variable, debt disputes, had a significant impact for both intention and action of the use of the court over the government, after controlling for all other independent variables. 5. Discussion This study is one of the few that have quantitatively examined Chinese people’s use of the court to address grievance/disputes. Relying on a nationwide random sample, we investigated among people who have recently encountered grievance/

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S. Jiang, Y. Wu / Social Science Research 49 (2015) 42–52

Table 5 HLM results on actual appeals to courts versus other actions (n = 1045). Independent variables

Court versus other model b

Intercept Level-1 individual Sex Age Education Social class Politics Collective action experience House ownership Land expropriation Housing demolition Enterprise reform Unemployment benefits Housing land Local election Debt disputes Level-2 county Urbanization Density of law firms Random effects (variance)

S.E.

Court versus government model Exp(b)

b

S.E.

Exp(b)

3.581**

1.073

.028

3.160**

1.032

.042

.098 004 .067 .045 .437 .839* .873** .743** .521 .213 .187 .728* .361 .835**

.199 .012 .037 .141 .428 .389 .318 .256 .346 .319 .288 .303 .385 .304

.907 1.004 1.069 1.046 1.548 2.314 2.394 2.103 1.685 .808 .829 2.070 .697 2.305

.039 .009 .077* .111 .108 .190 .347 .265 .517 .281 .260 .292 .238 .991**

.210 .011 .037 .141 .406 .374 .323 .286 .355 .348 .298 .348 .405 .329

1.039 1.009 1.080 1.117 1.115 .827 1.414 1.303 1.680 .755 .771 1.339 .788 2.695

.006 .161

1.006 1.150

.005 .214

.004 .161

1.004 .807

.006 .140 Intercept (s) = .852

Intercept (s) = .583

Note: HLM 7 was used for the data analysis. S.E. stands for standard errors. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

dispute, what is the relationship between their intention and actual use of the court to solve the grievance/dispute, and what are the correlates that affect their intention and action of using the court versus other remedies. Studying these issues is important in a society that is struggling with an ever-increasing growth in social conflict. It is also of value for expanding the literature on dispute resolution and legal consciousness in China. Several main findings emerge from the study. First, results highlight the primacy of administrative petitioning and nongovernmental remedies in handing disputes. Among people who have experienced grievance/dispute, their preferred way of addressing such grievance/dispute is administrative remedy (i.e., through local government and semi-government agencies such as the youth leagues, women’s federation, and workers’ union), followed by non-governmental remedy (i.e., through work units, non-government organizations, and others), and finally by the court. These findings are not surprising. On one hand, successful lawsuits remain very challenging for ordinary Chinese people, partially due to high costs, weak legal knowledge, and the problems associated with the legal system and practices, such as lack of judicial independence, official incompetence and corruption, and incomplete, sometimes inconsistent, laws. On the other hand, administrative petitioning is widely considered as more effective and less costly than litigation. Particularly, for the eight types of grievance/disputes that constituted the dependent variable of this study, the majority (such as land expropriation, housing demolition, enterprise reform, unemployment benefits, housing land, local election) involve most likely state-citizen disputes or disputes that result from a certain government act. Thus, governmental remedies are preferred in these situations. Should the disputes include other types, such as commercial disputes and family disputes, the results may depict a different picture. It is worthwhile to mention that our results are different from what Cai (2008) has found in his study of the modes of action to solve social conflicts in China, using the 2005 China’s General Social Survey Data. In that study, Cai revealed much higher percentages of respondents who had the behavioral intention to use the law in dispute resolution (31% for civil disputes and 41% for state disputes). We think that this discrepancy results from different ways of calculation. Cai (2008) used data from the entire sample of over 10,000 respondents to study people’s intention to use the law, and then used a subsample of disputants to study their actions of using the law. The present study, however, is based on a subsample of 1184 people who had encountered grievance/dispute to study both the intention and action of the use of law. We discovered that among this group of people, the court ranked low as a method of addressing grievance/dispute. Second, there is a low degree of congruence between Chinese people’s reported intention to use the law and their actual use of the law for resolving grievance/dispute. The proportions of people who wanted to resort to courts when encountering grievance/dispute and people who did turn to courts for solution were similar (around 16%); however, half of the respondents who had the intention to use the court did not actually appeal to the court for dispute resolution. In addition, the correlation between intended and actual use of the court was weak. Therefore, behavioral intention is only loosely related to action in the use of court; legal intention is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition to legal action. This study found that two variables, education and urbanization, could promote a link between legal intention and action. People who had used the court to address grievance/dispute tended to have higher levels of education and live in more

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urbanized areas than those who intended to use the court yet did not do so. Black (1976) used education as an indicator of the culture of individuals and argued that ‘‘literate and educated people are more likely to bring lawsuits against others’’. It is possible that well-educated people own more legal knowledge as well as social relations and capital, and perhaps this combination of know-how and know-who makes it easier for them to turn legal intention into action. Meanwhile, the positive connection between urbanization and legal mobilization is a nice addition to existing research evidence on area differences in legal mobilization. It should be mentioned that to further understand the regional difference, we conducted additional analysis that compared intended and actual use of courts between separate subsamples of rural and urban respondents. It was found that compared to urban residents, rural residents were more likely to turn to the government for a solution. The two groups did not vary significantly in their use of court for solving grievances. These results are different from what Cai (2008) found that compared to rural residents, urban residents have higher levels of both intended and actual appeals to courts for both civil and state-citizen disputes. Notably, our finding indicates that the level of urbanization in an area, indicated by a larger proportion of non-agricultural population over the entire population, has a positive influence on the connection between people’s intended and actual use of the law. This area characteristic, rather than individual characteristic (a rural versus urban residence), may also be explained by Donald Black’s theory of law, which is equally applicable to variations in law across individuals and aggregates. That is, intention to use the law is more likely to turn into action in areas that have a larger proportion of the population that is wealthy (stratification), a greater population density (morphology), and a higher average level of education (culture) (Black, 1976), all of which are characteristics associated with urbanized areas in China. Third, type of grievance/dispute is among the most significant predictors of both intended and actual appeals to the court. Disputes surrounding home ownership and debts exerted significant effects on both the intention and action of people choosing the court over non-governmental remedies, after controlling for all other independent variables. Debt disputes, in particular, also had a significant impact for both the intention and action of choosing the court over the government as dispute resolution, holding all other independent variables constant. These results make sense because as a major type of civil disputes, debt dispute involves two equal parties and relatively clear legal rights and obligations, and thus can be best solved by a court which legally reaffirms the debt collectors’ rights and holds the debtors’ responsibility for the legal cost. These results indicate the rational decisionmaking by the parties. They may also reflect the reality that some disputes are often encouraged or even required by the state to be solved in court. This study has several limitations. Foremost, it probably leaves more questions than it has answered. Lack of in-depth data, we can only offer speculated rather than empirical explanations on several of our findings. For instance, we cannot really explain why some types of grievance/dispute, such as enterprise reform, are correlates of intended appeals but not actual appeals, or why other type of grievance/dispute, such as housing demolition, unemployment benefit, housing land, and local election, are predictive of neither legal intention nor action. Qualitative data, perhaps with in-depth interviews, can hopefully shed light on these issues in future. Second, due to use of secondary data, we could not examine a few predictors that may have a significant impact on Chinese people’s use of the court to solve dispute. For example, prior knowledge about law and legal system, existing experience with lawsuit, and media exposure to lawsuits and courts may influence Chinese people’s intentions and actions to use the court for dispute resolution. Similarly, aggregated-level variables, such as area residential mobility, expenditure on legal system, and the number of judges per population, may also influence individuals’ chosen institutions for dispute resolution. In addition, some measures of this study can be improved. For instance, political status can be better captured by multiple indicators rather than a single item indicating the party affiliation of the respondents. Future studies should include more valid measures of social status, social capital and political power and test their influence on the use of the court. For another example, the measure of intended use of law included only one question, which cannot capture the potential effects of the certainty and intensity of intention on actual use of law. Despite these limitations, this study contributes to empirical understanding of Chinese people’s use of the law to address grievance/dispute. Results indicate the importance of dispute type and a limited number of individual-level (e.g., education, class) and county-level (e.g., urbanization) factors in studying appeals to courts for grievance/dispute. Preliminary, and exploratory, in nature, this study encourages more studies on the subject matter, especially those theoretically guided and empirically tested. Broader information regarding the characteristics of court-goers, their experiences with the legal system, and their evaluation of the process and results of the lawsuit is needed. In-depth data regarding the underlying process and causes of people’s decision-making for dispute resolution are also warranted. References Black, D., 1976. The behavior of law. Academic Press, New York. Black, D., 1989. Sociological Justice. Oxford University Press, New York. Cai, Y., 2004. Managed participation in China. Polit. Sci. Q. 119, 425–451. Cai, Y., 2008. Social conflicts and modes of action in China. China J. 59, 89–109. 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