Performance Ranking and Environmental Governance: An Empirical Study of the Mandatory Target System

Abstract

With the deterioration of the environment across the globe, environmental problems have attracted much attention from the public, academia, and governments. This study contributes to the understanding of environmental policy implementation by empirically testing the policy feedback theory and official ranking tournament theory in the Chinese context. In particular, it focuses on how prior environmental performance ranking transitions into future policy performance through the mandatory target system (MTS) in China. The results from this study show that provincial environmental performance ranking serves as an effective incentive for strengthening environmental governance. Low‐ranking provinces will improve their environmental policy performances in future years because of competition in the official tournament. Policy implications are drawn to improve the administrative design of environmental management.

China's climate change policy: Central–local governmental interaction

“…However, as pointed out by the literature on authoritarian environmentalism, of which China is a prime example, it is highly uncertain whether such a centrally steered policy can be sustainable in the long run (Gilley, ; Li, Yang, Wei, & Zhang, ). As opposed to democratic environmentalism, it tends to stimulate risk aversive behavior and hinder high‐quality implementation of environmental policies at local levels (Tang, Liu, & Yi, ). Moreover, limited participation of citizens and NGOs could in the long run undermine legitimacy, credibility, and trust in China's environmental policies and institutions (Burgess, ).…”

Can campaign‐style enforcement work: When and how? Evidence from straw burning control in China

“…When the concern involves “a lack of clear standards or necessary mandates” (UNEP, 2019, viii), mandatory goals and standards are often set up to ensure that local governments' performance can be evaluated. For instance, the Chinese central government established the mandatory target system which proved to be an effective incentive for improving environmental policy enforcement at local levels (X. Tang et al, 2018). When the enforcement failure is associated with network issue—in other words, when a local government has no incentive to enforce an environmental policy because cross‐boundary pollution can render its efforts futile (Cai et al, 2016), then formally or informally networked environmental governance across different local governments is desirable (Huang et al, 2020; Yi et al, 2018).…”

Making Authoritarian Environmentalism Accountable? Understanding China’s New Reforms on Environmental Governance

“…Therefore, the challenge is not actually a classic principal–agent problem as we see it (Edin, 2003), but there are often multiple principals giving orders to the same agent. As a result, environmental performance is often understandably compromised among these agents as there is a perverse incentive structure within CCP’s promotion system that fails to reward those who faithfully execute the environmental regulation (Li et al., 2019; Ran, 2013; Tang et al., 2018).…”