Suchergebnisse

This study applies a governance perspective to examine how China's national ecological civilization framework is implemented at the city level. With Hangzhou, one of China's leading green cities, as a case, the study focuses on how the city's party-state authorities respond to various pressures from the central leadership and from society to improve environmental governance. Hangzhou's government applies a new public management approach with public sector performance contracts, performance reviews, and associated results management procedures that are integrated with a battery of social participation instruments. The city government aims to mitigate contradictory goals relating to the need for continued economic growth and for simultaneous environmental improvements based on plans for ecological civilization development and protection of 'red' ecological bottom lines. It is argued that Hangzhou's authorities are testing a novel approach that could contribute to narrowing the 'implementation gap' in China's local green politics by enhancing the local party-state's ability to handle new instruments of governance in environmental politics. Available, but rather fragmented data suggest that environmental improvements are occurring, but the link between the new governance framework and these improvements is difficult to establish.

AbstractThe article considers the dynamics in the nexus between the Chinese party-state and private entrepreneurs. It develops in response to both globalization and market reforms which promote accelerated individualisation and disembedding of citizens anchored in the new capitalist economy, such as private business people. It is argued that informal political agency is part of the political dynamics of the nexus and that it develops through critical tension between private business people and the autocratic party-state. This is illustrated through the case of Sun Dawu, a Hebei businessman turned political activist. Referring to both Bech and Bech-Gersheim's and Baumann's discussions about the effects of the twin processes of globalisation and individualisation, one of the main conclusions is that Sun Dawu has engaged in 'self-politics' through creating a sub-political or 'peg' community where he and others can exert informal political agency. The construction of such a community is an example of how assertive private business people may exploit the dynamics of the state-private business nexus through critical tension.