Authoritarian Environmentalism Undermined? Local Leaders’ Time Horizons and Environmental Policy Implementation in China

Abstract

China's national leaders see restructuring and diversification away from resource-based, energy intensive industries as central goals in the coming years. On the basis of extensive fieldwork in China between 2010 and 2012, we suggest that the high turnover of leading cadres at the local level may hinder state-led greening growth initiatives. Frequent cadre turnover is intended primarily to keep local Party secretaries and mayors on the move in order to promote the implementation of central directives. While rotation does seem to aid implementation by reducing coordination problems, there are also significant downsides to local leaders changing office every three to four years. Officials with short time horizons are likely to choose the path of least resistance in selecting quick, low-quality approaches to the implementation of environmental policies. We conclude that the perverse effects of local officials' short time horizons give reason to doubt the more optimistic claims about the advantages of China's model of environmental authoritarianism.

Explaining and understanding environmental actions in Chinese agriculture: the case of Yuqiao watershed of Tianjin municipality

“…It is generally considered that the Chinese 'party state' allows the government to take unpopular, yet correct in the long term, decisions without the prospect of losing its dominance in the next election, as is the case in representative democracies of the West. Nuancing this picture, Eaton and Kostka (2014) describes how the institutionalised rotation system of party cadres of the CCP facilitates 'short-termism', with the tendency to disregard environmental problems because these generally demand long-term efforts and cannot easily be used instrumentally for promotional aims. However, a recent strengthening of top-down policies favouring the environment may yet prove key in helping counterbalance this shorttermism.…”

How authoritarian is the environmental governance of China?

“…In practice, a mixture of different environmental governance models can be found in every country (Gilley, 2012). Nevertheless, existing studies typically treat the environmental governance of China as a case exemplar of authoritarian environmentalism (Beeson, 2010;Eaton and Kostka, 2014;Gilley, 2012;Schreurs, 2011;Zhang et al, 2013;Zhu et al, 2015). As pointed out by many scholars, China's environmental governance can be characterised by a powerful party-state that dominates a mono-centric and non-participatory policy process, a weak and shackled environmental civil society, and a regulatory regime based mainly on command-and-control instruments (Deng, 2010;Liu et al, 2012;Kostka and Mol, 2013;Schwartz, 2004).…”

Policy Analysis of Community Empowerment Program in Terms of Good Governance Demand

“…The notion of policy is an explicit and implicit arrangement or group arrangement to set a useful direction in order to fulfill or initiate future arrangement, maintain or suspend the action/demand of prearranged policy implementation [6]. The policies made are not permanent and may be cancelled, or else reinforce the existing policy.…”