How Much Room is there for Negotiations between Upper and Lower Governments in an Authoritarian System? A Case Study from the Reform of China's Environmental Protection Agencies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52152/23.1.91-114(2025)Keywords:
government negotiations, negotiation space, authoritarian system, vertical management, environmental protectionAbstract
China restructured its environmental protection agencies in 2019 to address environmental governance challenges. The restructuring aimed to reorganize the bureaucracy by transferring local environmental monitoring responsibilities to provincial departments, thereby breaking the traditional governance structure in which local governments are both "athletes" and "referees". Since the reform involved functional reorganization, realignment of interests, and redistribution of institutional authority, local governmental departments and reassigned personnel actively participated in the negotiation process, to safeguard their own interests. A case study in G City, southern China, this paper explored limited negotiation between the municipal Environmental Protection Bureau and the Provincial Department of Ecology and Environmental Protection. Within China's authoritarian system, constrained negotiation showed distinct operational logic and characteristics. Key negotiation strategies included "weapons of the weak," "threat withdrawal," and "collusion" to advance reform. However, in order to maintain the authority of their superiors and respect the legal relationship of the bureaucratic structure, the subordinates ultimately use the ambiguity of the central documents as the dividing line for the limited negotiation space between the two parties.
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