Thomas Heberer and Anja Senz: Environmental Governance, Local State Agents and Institutional Constraints

This paper is concerned with the implementation of environmental policies at the local level in China. It argues that the Chinese central government in recent years puts more emphasis on environmental protection, but due to the fact that the party state in many ways lacks effective institutions to implement policies and laws, central policies ostensibly do not have the expected effects at the local level. The paper thus analyses the behaviour of local agents, and examines the reasons why local agents do or do not implement central policies might modify them according to local interests. The central hypothesis is that three factors with regard to weak institutions - the political priorities of the Centre, the specific interests of local actors and structural administrative constraints - explain the behaviour of local actors in the environmental field.