Existing scholarship of China’s legal institutions has primarily focused
on individual institutions, such as the court, the police, or the legal
profession. This article proposes a relational approach to the study of
political-legal institutions in China. To understand the order and exercise of
power by various political-legal institutions, the relational approach
emphasizes the spatial positions of actors or institutions (the police, courts,
lawyers, etc.) within the broader political-legal system and their mutual
interactions. We suggest that the changing ideas of the Chinese leadership about
the role of law as an instrument of governance have shaped the relations between
various legal and political institutions. The interactions of these
political-legal institutions (e.g. the “iron triangle” of the
police, the court and the procuracy) further reveal the dynamics of power
relations at work.