New paper co-authored by Maria Bondes on citizen action in Chinese environmental governance
A new paper co-authored by Maria Bondes with Danqi Guo, Genia Kostka, and Wiebke Rabe in the Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning explores citizen action in Chinese environmental governance between institutional and extrainstitutional channels of participation. Based on an original online survey in China (n=3010), the paper “In or outside the box? Citizen action between institutional and extra-institutional channels in Chinese environmental governance” analyses environmental citizen participation between institutional and extra-institutional venues and finds that Chinese citizens use a mix of both channel types, but are overall more drawn to extra-institutional channels despite the risks. Moreover, our findings point to different motivations for the use of venues: personal grievances are more linked with the use of institutional channels, broader environmental concerns with extra-institutional ones. This shows, first, that channeling attempts have not yet been successful in crowding out noninstitutional channels. And second, that citizens seem to attach different meanings to the different channel types. This will make it hard for the Chinese and other authoritarian regimes to phase out extra-institutional action without severe losses for the effectiveness of environmental governance.
The paper can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2024.2423804