Working paper. Last update: 2024.11.10

Abstract: Impeachment is an important and extreme measure to discipline bureaucrats in historical and contemporary regimes. I scrutinize and compare the first parliamentary impeachment attempts in Imperial China – the impeachment of the Hunan Governor Yang Wending, and the impeachment of the Grand Council by the national assembly, the Advisory Yuan in 1910. I ask how the exercise of impeachment and the norms of impeachment interact with each other. I argue that the exercise of impeachment was an attempt to clarify the constitutional boundaries among institutions, with the aim of establishing the legislative independence. In more theoretical terms, impeachment can be used for creating a new, de facto constitution by confirming legislature’s institutional legal status. As a consequence, the exercise of impeachment itself can clarify the definition ‘impeachable offenses’ and the forms of necessary due processes, and eventually provide political opportunities to update and codify these legal elements.

Ongoing draft.

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