William Hurst’s
Ruling Before the Law is an empirically rich and conceptually ambitious comparative study of the judicial politics of the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Indonesia. The structured comparison of the Chinese and Indonesian cases illuminates important aspects of the “relationship between law and politics as expressed through the work of basic-level courts” (p. 5) from 1949 to (nearly) the present day. The author has achieved a rare feat in bringing into conversation two bodies of detailed knowledge on important, non-western polities in terms that students of comparative politics, comparative law, and of the individual countries themselves will find stimulating and informative. …
William Hurst, Ruling Before the Law: The Politics of Legal Regimes in China and Indonesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 316p. $110 hardcover; $35.99 paperback, $29 eBook