Local Government’s Blame Avoidance Behavior In Environmental Protection

In recent years,as social public pay more and more attention to the problem of environmental protection,the government has also made great efforts in environmental protection.We can see that some problems have been solved and we have won a phased victory,but in general,the problem of environmental pollution in China remains serious.As the voice of the social public calling for environmental governance getting higher and higher,the pressure on government administration is also increasing,the superior government’s accountability to the junior government and the supervision from social public are far more powerful than before.As a result,local governments may prefer to choose blame-avoidance rather than take the initiative to deal with external risks in the field of environmental protection.The spread of local governments’ blame-avoidance in the field of environmental protection will directly weaken the effect of environmental governance.And formal accountability makes the government staff lack of initiative so that they response to external needs and superior requirements passively,thus damaging the long-term interests of local environmental development and the authority of local governments.In order to change this negative situation,this paper,based on the responsible government theory,the principal-agent theory and the encouragement theory,using the interview method,participatory observation method,case study and other research methods to analyze the government’s blame-avoidance behavior in L county’s environmental protection field.This paper holds that there are many problems in L county,such as multi-dimensional responsibility transfer," One size fits all"environmental governance,fuzzy boundary of responsibility in multi-subject participation environmental governance problems,and emergency blame-avoidance after accidents.And then make a profound study on the cause of these problems,thought there are several reasons that have contributed to the local government’s blame-avoidance,such as the realistic contradiction between industry responsibility and territorial obligation,asymmetry of power and responsibility in law enforcement of local environmental protection department,unclear government responsibility in the process of trans regional environmental governance,the pressure of public opinion surges in the new media era,and the choice to clean up the history of environmental protection under the visual view of political achievements.Finally,the author puts forward the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions in improving the administrative constraints based on the legal system,enhancing the government officials’sense of responsibility and governance ability,and exploring the social supervision mode based on multiple subjects,so as to improve the governance capacity of local environmental law enforcement teams,improve the local government’ s environmental protection work attitude,and reduce the blame-avoidance behavior in environmental protection work.