Under authoritarian regimes, public pollution ratings boost local compliance
Based on S.E. Anderson, M.T. Buntaine, M. Liu and B. Zhang. “Non-Governmental Monitoring of Local Governments Increases Compliance with Central Mandates: A National-Scale Field Experiment in China,” AJPS (2019).
Across China, city governments significantly improved transparency and compliance with central pollution standards when NGOs monitored and publicized their performance.
The Policy Problem
In China, the central government depends on local governments to implement all kinds of environmental policies, from regulating industrial emissions to cleaning up surface water bodies. However, local governments often have competing incentives to promote economic growth and fail to implement environmental policies well. It is illegal for nonstate actors in China to openly pressure the government to change policy, but non-governmental organizations have started to monitor and disclose the performance of local environmental policy implementation. We do not know whether this kind of citizen participation actually prompts local governments to improve implementation, and thus whether it should be encouraged and expanded.
Key Findings and Proposed Solutions
Public disclosure of cities’ performance led to significant improvement in transparency and compliance with central standards
Improving transparency is a potentially important step toward regulating pollution and industrial emissions, so NGOs should explore ways to pressure local governments for greater transparency
NGOs should actively publicize the performance of local governments, especially if it helps higher levels of government oversee local governments more effectively
The central government of China can utilize the efforts of NGOs to close the implementation gap when regulating pollution and enhance the impact of directives