Democratization and the environment: Understanding the determinants of state environmental policy outputs in communist and post-communist societies (Hungary, China)

This dissertation endeavors to answer the question: what are the primary determinants of positive national environmental policy outputs in communist and post-communist societies? There are three prevailing views in the literature that have been used to explain why states have better environmental policy outputs. The first approach focuses on the positive impact of democratic regime transition on environmental policy. The second approach discusses the relationship between environmental social movements and state policy. The third approach analyzes the impact of global eco-politics on domestic environmental policy. One democratizing post-communist state (Hungary) and one communist state (China) are used to empirically examine these theories.; Each of the above approaches has been used with varying effectiveness to explain why states adopt positive environmental policies. However, many questions remain unanswered. One question of particular importance that is raised by the case studies is: how do internal state actors influence variation in environmental policies? In response to this question, this study offers an additional alternative theory called state environmentalism, which examines how the presence of strong intra-state advocates of environmental improvement can impact state policy outputs.; This analysis finds that, in the case of Hungary, social movement actors, democratic regime transition and internal state environmental advocates had relatively little effect on the promulgation of positive state environmental policies. Rather, policy changes were largely driven by pressure and support from the E.U. to improve environmental policies as part of a larger process of Hungarian accession to full E.U. membership status. Regarding the case of China, this study finds that the active advocacy of environmentally conscious intra-state actors played a crucial role in pushing forward environmentally friendly policy outputs. Long-term engagement with global eco-political Actors also had an important effect on changes in Chinese domestic environmental policies.