The Development and Improvement of Administrative Review System

Abstract

Administrative review and administrative litigation are two legal ways in which a citizen, a legal person or an organization can sue a government official. Compared with administrative litigation, the pace of development of administrative review is not slow. The Regulations on Administrative Review was issued by the State Council in 1990 and the Administrative Review Law in 1999. Administrative review is free-of-charge and efficient by comparison with administrative litigation. Yet in China, cases of administrative review are fewer than administrative litigation; whereas in other countries, the ratio can be 10:1, or even 24:1. Also at present, 70% of administrative disputes will go to administrative litigation without administrative review, which shows a lack of public confidence in administrative review. In fact, administrative review is an important way for settling administrative disputes, safeguarding people’s lawful rights and interests, promoting administration according to law, and achieving social justice. However, its role has been underplayed, as people tend to worry that officials may naturally protect each other. Another factor would be system defects. Estimates show that under the horizontal (region-based) and vertical (profession/industry-based) administrative management system in China, there are about 18,000 agencies handling administrative review, but there are only 1532 professional review officers at three levels of local governments, averaging 0.2 staffing person per agency at the county level who handle 50% of all review cases. Such scattered review power and personnel has become a bottleneck for effective role of administrative review in settling disputes. In practice, some officers don’t have any case to handle while in other places some cases cannot be handled for lack of review officers.