Pressure-type Environmental Governance System Analysis:Take Linfen City As An Example

Environment is closely related to human survival and development.China’s society and economy have been achieved rapid development,however,the problems of environmental pollution become worse at the same time,threatening the health of mankind.The central and local governments have been questioned because of varieties of environmental crisis events,causing the government credibility to be constantly eroded.In view of the existing problems of environmental governance,China has formulated a more complete laws and regulations,and the government’s environmental policy has aslo become more mature.But the deterioration of China’s environment has not been fundamentally curbed.To explore the reasons,it needs analyzing the local government from the perspective of environmental governance.At present,China’s environmental politics and environmental policy research are still in their infancy.The recent rise of environmental politics focuses more on the analysis in the central government level,ignoring the local government’s pressure and motivation in environmental decision-making and implementation processes.Linfen City in Shanxi Province,which is the case analyzed by the author,has experienced many twists and turns about its environmental pollution control:transformed from "pollution capital" in 2006 into "green model city" in 2012,and then returned to "pollution capital" in 2017.The author will make a case study based on Linfen City,whose analyzing object is the environmental policy of the same area in different stages.It observes the interaction between the various actors through perspective of policy change when the local government makes and impletes its environmental policy,focusing on the pressure factors that contribute to this stressful environmental governance.According to the framework of advocacy coalition theory in the policy change and the communication model in policy implementation,and combining with political and ecological factors in today’s China,the author analyzed the case from five variables:socio-economic conditions,local government leaders,different stakeholders,other policy subsystems and the political system.The factors that cause this feature are diverse and complex.Firstly,the impact of the socio-economic to the local conditions;secondly,the side effects of the political system to the local government’s environmental governance,it also limits the local government’s environmental governance behavior;thirdly,the objective deviation between other policy and the environmental management affects the local government’s emphasis on environmental governance;Finally,industrial enterprises,network politics,non-governmental organizations,public participation and other external factors on the local government’s environmental governance pressure.