ABSTRACT
Democracy and the market economy are two basic goals of political and economic transitions in developing and post-communist countries. Do legislative institutions and local powers facilitate or dampen democratization and marketization for countries in transition? Or, in other words, are they really relevant to the achievement of these two goals? If some legislative institutions have succeeded in assisting modernization and promoting democratization, we should be curious about the answer to this important question: What kind of strategy accounts for such a success? China’s provincial legislatures – the 31 Provincial People’s Congresses (the PPCs or provincial-level people’s congresses, a usage preferred by some authors) – are excellent institutions to study for the purpose of answering these questions. The PPCs include legislatures in 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four municipalities under the direct control of the central government. Even though Taiwan is claimed by China as a province, Hong Kong and Macao after 1997 and 1999, respectively, became special administrative regions, which are given a status roughly comparable (in many aspects higher than) to other 31 provincial units; they are not covered in this study.
