Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 6 - What Are the Alternatives?

  • Denise Sienli van der Kamp, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Clean Air at What Cost?
    Published online:
    28 January 2023
    Print publication:
    19 January 2023, pp 106-130

  • Summary

    This chapter argues that the Chinese leadership is trying to transition out of blunt force regulation by increasing investments in 1) conventional regulatory institutions, which offer more efficient, sustainable pollution control, and 2) bottom-up enforcement, where citizens are used as “fire alarms” to strengthen the threat of conventional enforcement institutions.Using a case study of antipollution protests in a wealthy Chinese city – a case that, at the outset, appeared likely to succeed at improving government enforcement – this chapter examines how the state’s ambivalence to civil society activism closes off channels for effective bottom-up enforcement. Further interview evidence reveals that as an authoritarian state, Chinese officials fear the accountability mechanisms (such as a free press, independent judiciary, and community activism) that make bottom-up enforcement so effective in other countries. These limitations have pushed the leadership to repeatedly return to blunt force solutions, suggesting that it is not just a transition phase.