A Study On Democratic Deliberation Mechanism In China's Local Environmental Governance

The deliberative governance on environmental issues means that the process of environmental governance is changing from relying on government authority to reaching consensus among subjects.By maintaining sufficient information,public deliberation guides rational dialogue among stakeholders,thus enhances the legitimacy and effectiveness of environmental decision-making,so it can be regarded as an important direction for improving China's environmental governance systems.Through a literature review and empirical analysis,this dissertation tries to solve two key issues: how local governments influence and shape the practice of environmental deliberative governance,and how the mechanisms of local environmental deliberative governance operate.First,the dissertation examines the contents of environmental governance paradigms at home and abroad,and focuses on discussing the connection and difference between deliberative governance and other governance paradigms,such as multi-center governance,collaborative governance,holistic governance,and network governance.And it can be concluded that deliberative governance is a basic paradigm for social participation in environmental governance.Then,according to the nature of environmental issues and the standards of inter-subject relationship,the practices of environmental deliberation governance are divided into four types: response type,autonomy type,consultation type,and supervision type.The dissertation also elaborates their topic attributes,negotiation functions,social participations,and institutionalized platforms.According to the interest motive of local government to carry out environmental deliberation,the dissertation analyzes its practical orientation from five perspectives: topic boundaries,function orientations,participants,procedures and modes.The conclusion shows that environmental deliberation has both public and instrumental governance motives,but the latter based on governance effectiveness and social control is more obvious.To a certain extent,the value of deliberative democracy on public rationality has been replaced by instrumental motivations,such as solving specific environmental problems,regulating the order of public participation,maintaining social stability,strengthening the functions of specific organizations,providing environmental policy advice and promoting the implementation of environmental policies,and so on.It is believed that domestic deliberative governance focuses on social and livelihood issues including environmental issues,and emphasizes the inclusiveness and absorption of opinions and demands of all social groups.Through the integration of deliberative democracy and local or grassroots governance,the mobilization,integration and cooperation of the society can be promoted,thereby achieving the goal of governance effectiveness,which is also one of the basic characteristics of the localization of deliberative democracy.Then,the dissertation selects J City of Z Province as a research object,and analyses the behavioral logic of participants,inter-subject relationship and the mechanisms,which elaborate and outline the picture of environmental deliberation governance in J City.Through a multi-case comparative research,it also analyses the operational mechanism and influencing factors from the three dimensions of topics,strategies and effectiveness.The dissertation found that the establishment of environmental negotiation platforms and the selection of participants primarily show the principles of party committee leadership,stakeholders,and convenient for governance;the key to setting environmental issues lies in the effectiveness and enthusiasm of responders' responses;based on specific situations,public environmental governance subjects will use appropriate negotiation strategies,which are applied in combination to match the characteristics of issues;through the case study above,the mechanisms of China's local environmental negotiation governance show good governance performance,and the effectiveness of environmental deliberative governance mainly depends on several factors,such as the characteristics of environmental issues,the use of negotiation strategies,and the matching degree between them.