Pollution Lowers Support for China’s Regime: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Beijing

Alkon, Meir; Wang, Erik

doi:10.1086/694577

Cited by 49 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…We expect that governments that allocate more resources to social insurance and welfare will also pledge more political and economic resources for ameliorating environmental pollution, since deteriorating environmental quality engenders not only additional social spending but also public outrage over governments’ mismanagement of the environment (Hook ; Albert and Xu ; Alkon and Wang ). To control for the possibly confounding influence of social spending, we include the annual share (percentage) of provincial spending on social security and welfare, and the annual share (percentage) spent on education and health.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This study examines environmental policy management, where the construction of pollution abatement plants is not only intended to ameliorate environmental degradation. Improving environmental quality, especially from very poor levels, may also boost the local economy by reducing costly disease from pollutants in people, plants and animals, and the cost and probability of ill health in children and adults, and public unrest over poor environmental quality (Hook 2013; Albert and Xu ; Alkon and Wang ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using this specific setting is both theoretically and practically significant. Increasingly, China's central government has recognized a wide array of adverse effects of air, water, and other forms of pollution on the nation's public health, economic productivity, social stability and, ultimately, regime survival (World Bank ; Alkon and Wang ). Analysing panel data for 30 province‐level jurisdictions from 2005 through 2010, we find that performance rewards improve the quality of pollution abatement facilities, which is the output more closely attached to the incentive structure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Linking anticorruption threats, performance pay, administrative outputs, and policy outcomes in China

Liang

Langbein

2018

Public Administration

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Little is known about the effects of two prominent public sector reforms-anticorruption efforts and high-powered incentive systems-on the accomplishment of policy goals in the absence of the rule of law and in the presence of an extrinsic incentive to take advantage of corruption to achieve performance targets. This study explores how performance rewards and anticorruption efforts jointly affect administrative outputs and policy outcomes. We examine China's air pollution control policy with province-level panel data. The analysis shows that performance rewards prompt administrative outputs that are linked to the incentive structure.Anticorruption activities have small significant, positive effects on those outputs only prior to the inception of high-powered rewards, but have no significant effect on policy outcomes, regardless of the measure. The introduction of performance incentives contributes to the achievement of policy outcomes only when their measurement is subject to government manipulation.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Linking anticorruption threats, performance pay, administrative outputs, and policy outcomes in China

Liang

Langbein

2018

Public Administration

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“…In this mode, enterprises need to adjust their industrial structure and upgrade their facilities; the public’s awareness of rights and compensation should be strengthened; and the costs of regulation are decreased by means of taxation. The overall aim of the mode is that a market trading mechanism with government as the core is formed to lighten the burden of government [ 65 , 66 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Evaluation of Environmental Governance in Urban China Based on a Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Analytic Network Process

Gao

Cheng

Zhai

2018

IJERPH

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The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of urban environmental governance by developing hesitant fuzzy linguistic analytic network process (HFL-ANP). The study bridges the gaps in current knowledge in the following ways: the study methodically develops the HFL-ANP method to evaluate and pick the optimal environmental governance strategy from alternatives; theoretically, network structure of evaluation indicators system on environmental governance is constructed, and the objective and subjective information in the evaluation process of environmental governance is combined. In detail, based on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and the pollution haven hypothesis, the paper constructs the evaluation indexes system of environmental governance and takes observation time length into consideration. Then, we choose three urban cases of environmental governance by exploring the existing literature. Furthermore, we develop the HFL-ANP method and apply it to the cases. The study calculates the initial weights of all indexes by using multiplicative consistency of the HFL preference relation, and derives the decision matrix through combining objective information with subjective information of environmental governance. Finally, we come to the following conclusions: ANP network stricture is close to real-world practical problems and provides the basis for HFL-ANP method; HFL-ANP is a very suitable method of assessing environmental governance; and based on the urban cases of environmental governance, Shanghai is the optimal alternative. In addition, this indicator system can only be applied to cities in China, and the administrative hierarchy of policies has not been considered by this method. Thus, future studies should expand this method and indicator network to contain different countries and different administrative hierarchy.

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“…Such effects might then incentivize elected officials to pursue these policies. On the other hand, air pollution has well‐documented health effects and might undermine public support for a government (Alkon & Wang, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Institutions and Pollution: Evidence from Coal‐Fired Power Generation

Clark

Zucker

Urpelainen³

2019

Review of Policy Research

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What is the relationship between political institutions and air pollution generated by the power sector? Here we focus on the association between democracy and power generated from coal, the most polluting of all fossil fuels. Using a new dataset on coal‐fired power plants commissioned between 1980 and 2016 in 71 countries, we find that the relationship between democracy and coal varies according to the environmental Kuznets curve logic. Democratic political institutions at lower levels of economic development are correlated with increased commissioning of coal power plants, as governments seek to appeal to an electorate prioritizing economic growth and affordable energy access. As a country becomes richer, democracy comes to have a negative association with coal power, as clean air becomes a more salient issue for the public.

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Pollution Lowers Support for China’s Regime: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Beijing

Cited by 49 publications

References 8 publications

Linking anticorruption threats, performance pay, administrative outputs, and policy outcomes in China

Linking anticorruption threats, performance pay, administrative outputs, and policy outcomes in China

An Evaluation of Environmental Governance in Urban China Based on a Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Analytic Network Process

Political Institutions and Pollution: Evidence from Coal‐Fired Power Generation

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