Has The Centralization Of Environmental Protection Power Improved Local Environmental Governance

Nowadays,the speed of China’s economic growth is gradually converging to the level of mature economies,and the late-mover advantage is no longer obvious.At the same time,the hidden dangers accumulated under the halo of rapid development in the early stage have gradually emerged,and environmental problems are a very prominent problem.As a pure public good,the environment is expected to complete the bottomup transformation of local governments,and it is difficult to actively solve environmental problems.In September 2016,the central government issued the "Opinions on the pilot work of monitoring,supervision,law enforcement and vertical management reform of environmental protection agencies below the provincial level",which issued new instructions for environmental governance from the perspective of national overall planning.The vertical management reform of environmental protection institutions breaks the inertia of the “GDP Only” development model from the outside,starts with the reform of the basic system of environmental governance,transfers the environmental monitoring and supervision functions of local governments,and solves environmental protection problems from the new system and mechanism.Therefore,on the basis of theoretical analysis,this paper uses empirical methods to study the impact of environmental protection vertical reform policies on environmental governance,further clarifying the problems in the process of vertical management in the environmental protection field,and makes a comparative analysis with environmental protection inspectors to provide theoretical and theoretical basis for improving environmental governance.Evidence support.This paper takes environmental protection vertical reform from Hebei and Chongqing to the national promotion as a quasi-natural experiment,using the daily air quality data from 2014 to 2021 of the national environmental monitoring station and the national control point,using Multi-point DID Model to implement the environmental protection vertical reform policy The effect was empirically analyzed.In particular,when discussing the effect of the environmental protection vertical reform policy,this paper contrasts the environmental protection inspector’s sports supervision method similar to the central inspection with the environmental protection vertical reform institutional supervision,discusses the relationship between environmental protection inspection and environmental protection vertical reform and the two impact on environmental governance.This article consists of five chapters.The first chapter mainly introduces the research background of the research on the environmental protection vertical reform,the purpose and significance of the research on the environmental protection vertical reform policy,the literature review of the related research,the structure of the whole article and so on.The second chapter mainly starts from the historical context of environmental protection agency reform and vertical management,discusses the current situation and status quo of the vertical management reform of environmental protection agencies,and compares the environmental protection administrative agencies and the structure of administrative levels before and after the environmental protection vertical reform.The third chapter mainly introduces the research ideas and research methods of this paper.Build a theoretical framework and put forward basic assumptions and conjectures.According to the theoretical framework and research assumptions,use the data of 1,436 national air quality control points in the country from2014 to 2021,and use the Multi-point DID Model---a policy evaluation method to analyze the impact of environmental protection on the environment.governance impact.The main content of the fourth chapter is to construct a basic model for empirical analysis to specifically explain the impact of environmental protection vertical reform on environmental governance,conduct parallel trend test and robustness test,and conduct heterogeneity analysis according to geographical location and distance from the administrative center.The key comparative variable of environmental protection inspector is included in the model to observe the relationship between environmental protection inspector and environmental protection vertical reform and the impact on environmental governance.The fifth chapter summarizes the research conclusions of this paper,expounds the influence of environmental protection vertical reform and environmental protection inspection on environmental governance,and puts forward some policy suggestions and inspirations from the research conclusions of this paper.The major conclusions are as follows :(i)environmental protection vertical reform has a significant positive effect on local environmental governance in the way of "institutional supervision".Through further analysis,it is found that the policy effect of environmental protection vertical reform in the first year is not good.However,with the completion of the vertical management of environmental protection institutions,environmental governance gradually operates according to the mature system.After the second year of implementation,the vertical reform policy gradually plays a role and the level of environmental governance is gradually improved.(ii)Environmental inspectors also influence local environmental governance in the way of "sports supervision".Environmental protection inspectors play a significant positive role in environmental governance,and the short-term effect is better than the vertical reform of environmental protection.The effect of environmental protection inspectors in different stages is different,and the policy effect of environmental protection inspectors in the later stage is weaker than that in the earlier stage.The effect of the first round of environmental protection inspectors is the most obvious,but looking back,the effect is not as good as that of the first round of environmental protection inspectors,and the effect of the second round of environmental protection inspectors is weaker.And in the short term after the first round of environmental protection inspectors,the residual power of environmental protection inspectors is still there,and the air quality rebounded one month after the "look back".(iii)From the perspective of the distance from the administrative center,the farther away from the administrative center,the more serious the air pollution.The distance between the municipal administrative center and the provincial administrative center is different.The air quality near the municipal administrative center within 40 km is poor,and there is an alternating phenomenon of positive and negative correlation between the distance from the provincial administrative center and the air quality.(iv)By analyzing the interaction between environmental protection vertical reform and environmental protection inspectors,it is found that compared with the provinces that have not yet implemented the environmental protection vertical reform policy,the effect of environmental protection inspectors on the policies of the provinces that have implemented the environmental protection vertical reform is less obvious,which further shows that the environmental protection vertical reform has played important role as an institutional supervision.