Embedded courts under campaign-style enforcement: How top-down reforms reshape conditional justice in China

Drawing on over 360,000 Chinese court records, we employ a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design to examine a top-down reform intended to prevent local governments from pressuring courts to decline administrative litigation cases upon submission. We find that while the total number of cases spiked briefly following the reform, increases in the volume of sensitive land-related disputes have remained stable. Meanwhile, although cases are increasingly dismissed without a formal judgment, plaintiffs who reach trial are significantly more likely to win. Combining quantitative results with qualitative evidence, we argue that Chinese local courts strategically utilize top-down mandates to pursue a subnational separation of powers. Such campaign-style reforms can produce lasting change by allowing the judiciary to gain leverage over the executive branch. While citizens' access to justice remains subject to selective gatekeeping, the continued practice of conditional justice suggests a reduced political embeddedness of local courts. • We show campaign-style reforms produce lasting changes when extending beyond intra-executive branch dynamics. • We reveal how local courts strategically use top-down reforms to gain institutional leverage. • We uncover paradoxical effects where reforms both expand and restrict citizens' access to justice. • We demonstrate that courts maintain conditional justice but redirect it toward challenging local governments. • We provide causal evidence using more than 360,000 court records with a unique regression-discontinuity-in-time (RDiT) design.