Bureaucracies count: environmental governance through goal-setting and mandate-making in contemporary China

ABSTRACT

In scholarly and popular literatures alike, there is increasing frustration with democracies’ ineffectual response to environmental challenges. Thus, authoritarian environmentalism has been speculated as a viable alternative. This article empirically studies the case of China, because it is hypothesized to be a likely candidate for an authoritarian environmentalist success. Using ethnographic evidence drawn from three purposefully-selected most-likely cases of environmental governance success in China, this article argues that Chinese state bureaucracies practice a distinct kind of environmentalism; an environmental challenge has to be translated into quantifiable targets and, at the same time, be fitted squarely into the fragmented organization of the government before state intervention is possible. The current analysis provides an evidence-based rebuttal to the authoritarian environmentalism hypothesis, and challenges environmental sociologists to closely examine enabling conditions for effective governance in the Anthropocene.

KEYWORDS:

• Governance
• authoritarian environmentalism
• goal-setting
• mandate-making
• China

Acknowledgments

This article benefited from discussions with Gary Green, Gay Seidman, Sida Liu, Judith Shapiro, David Sonnenfeld, Alicia Ahn, Yuen Yuen Ang, Todd Meyers, and Sam Cohn. Yueming Zhang provided research assistance. Samia Meziane provided editorial assistance. The editor and anonymous reviewers of this journal provided helpful comments. Earlier drafts were presented at the International Studies Association’s 2017 conference in Baltimore and the Chinese Sociological Association’s 2014 conference in Wuhan. All errors are the author’s.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This purposeful selection of cases has obvious limitations. It is not the ambition of this article to provide a full analysis of Chinese environmental governance, let alone generalizability beyond China. The research design is mainly concerned with maximizing the theory-building potential of the cases; grounded evidence from the three cases helps build an empirically-informed account of authoritarian environmentalism.

2. In the press release, a specific percentage rate was given. But the figure is not included here for sake of anonymity.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the United States National Science Foundation under Dissertation Improvement Grant [SES-1334870] and the China Times Cultural Foundation under the Yu Chi-Chung Dissertation Research Grant.

Notes on contributors

Yifei Li

Yifei Li is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at New York University Shanghai, and Global Network Assistant Professor at New York University. His research examines environmental governance in China, focusing on questions of bureaucracy, urban sustainability, and disaster resilience. His recent work has appeared in Current Sociology, Journal of Environmental Management, and other scholarly outlets. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.