This panel explores relationships between sovereign prerogative, legality and rights in different Asian contexts. Eva Pils and Rawin Leelapatana apply long-standing theorisation about exceptional state power to contemporary politics in China and Thailand respectively. Pils draws on Frankel‘s conception of the “dual state“ to analyse the reversion to arbitrary displays of state power in China....
China‘s contemporary dual state and its global implications
After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the Chinese Party-State initiated a legal revival that raised many hopes of an eventual transition to rule of law, conceived in terms of a global constitutional model. In recent years, however, the leadership has increasingly rejected the values underpinning rule of law and relied on controlling society...
Impunity and public law in India: Lessons for challenging constitutional retrogression in liberal democracies
Focusing on India, I analyse long-running friction between the national and state governments over their constitutional powers to investigate abuses by the military. The national government argues that states cannot inquire into unlawful violence by soldiers. The Manipur government demurs, citing its duty to manage public protest against the military‘s misdeeds. I also look at...
The Kelsenian and Schmitian views on the nature and use of emergency powers revisited: the lesson from Thailand‘s colour-coded politics
This paper will examine the collision between Kelsenian and Schmittian ideas in relation to Thailand‘s contemporary colour-coded crises. The application of the Kelsen-Schmitt debate in the Thai context exemplifies the declining dominance of the Schmittian idea. Though the “Yellow-shirt“ faction in Thai politics is still capable of engineering a military coup—the exercise of sovereign decisionism...
Three Approaches to Political Protest: A Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China Comparison
Different types of regimes face distinct political challenges, perceive and define political protest differently and develop unique measures to manage their political crises. This paper first identifies three distinct approaches to political protest: a security-based approach, a rule-based approach, and a rights-based approach, and then uses Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China as case studies...