Campaign‐Style Enforcement and Regulatory Compliance

This article examines the recoupling mechanism of campaign‐style enforcement and its effects on environmental regulatory compliance. Drawing on the policy implementation literature and institutional theory, the authors develop a conceptual model of campaign‐style enforcement in which both resource mobilization and power redistribution are theorized to address decoupling problems in regulatory compliance. The two‐pathway recoupling mechanism is evidenced by an empirical investigation of the implementation of China's energy conservation and emission reduction policy as part of that country's 11th Five‐Year Plan. Findings suggest that campaign‐style enforcement can effectively improve regulatory compliance when it addresses the efficiency/legitimacy conflict by providing policy incentives and reorganizing a clear hierarchy of political authority. The article concludes with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of campaign‐style enforcement.     

Tracing and periodizing China's food safety regulation: A study on China's food safety regime change

How has China's food safety administrative system changed since it was founded in 1949? How can we periodize the process of this historical transformation in terms of regulators, regulatees, and regulatory tools? This review article offers an analytical framework that distinguishes three regimes in the history of China's food safety governance: an old regime of command and control (1949–1977), an intermediate regime of mixed instruments (1978–1992), and a new regime of regulatory governance (1993–ongoing). In the article the regimes' features, advantages, disadvantages, and development tracks are discussed, and the groundwork is laid for an analysis of China's emerging regulatory state. Finally, a new notion of “transitional regulatory state” is used to define the current Chinese regulatory state based on its food safety regulation.     

Command without control: The case of China's environmental target system

In the existing literature there is general agreement that the effectiveness and efficiency of command and control instruments versus market‐based instruments is highly context specific. A country's particular regulatory environment and state capacity, as well as the features of given environmental problems, play an important role in ascertaining what the “right” set of policy instruments for environmental management might be. This article examines how command and control instruments are used as an environmental enforcement mechanism in China's authoritarian state. Based on extensive fieldwork, this paper shows that the reliance on binding environmental targets as the main domestic policy instrument in China has generated numerous undesirable consequences. While China's target‐based approach to implementation has incentivized local officials to strictly enforce environmental mandates, there are numerous shortcomings in the system. In particular, target rigidity, cyclical behaviour, poor data quality, and the absence of an independent monitoring agency have generated adverse effects and contribute to a yawning gap between regulatory goals and outcomes. The paper concludes that binding environmental targets as the main command–control instrument in China can be more accurately described as “command without control” as the target‐setting central government does not exercise a high degree of control over implementation and monitoring processes. But command and control instruments can be suited for managing “first‐generation” environmental problems and addressing environmental issues that have easily identifiable pollution sources and which are easy to verify.     

“Carrying the black pot”: Food safety and risk in China's reactive regulatory state

This paper explores the struggles of China's party-state to address chronic food safety problems by adopting international best practices of risk-based regulation. Despite formally adopting risk-based approaches for targeting inspections and enforcement in 2002, implementation has been halting and uneven, as we show in the first analysis of risk-based regulation beyond its OECD heartlands. Drawing on policy document analysis and 36 key informant interviews with food business operators and government officials working on food safety regulation at every level of the state, we identify contradictions between official commitments to risk-based inspection and top-down demands for zero tolerance and strict accountability, which leave local inspectors preoccupied with avoiding blame more than reducing safety risks. Our analysis advances recent scholarship on regulatory states of the global South by highlighting how risk-based ideas, instruments, and practices are refracted through the distinctive norms and style of China's reactive regulatory state.     

Money Talks: The Environmental Impact of China's Green Credit Policy

This study examines the impact of China's green credit policy on the environment. In particular, we consider an initiative that requires all banks to base their loan decisions on corporate environmental performance. This is an important issue since it is globally gaining popularity to leverage bank loans as an avenue to enforce corporate environmental responsibility. Moreover, there are only a handful of empirical investigations in relation to the impacts of credit constraint on corporate environmental behaviors and strategies. This research also provides useful insights on how to enhance environmental regulation enforcement, using the Environmental Protection Bureau in partnership with local banks to exert a creditable threat of financial constraint on unfavorable environmental outcomes. Using the synthetic control method and difference‐in‐differences analysis, we find that this policy has significantly motivated firms, particularly those firms with a higher dependence on external financing, to reduce water pollution. We further discover that the policy compels firms to favor pollution prevention at the source instead of end‐of‐pipe treatments, since the policy imposes a long‐term credit constraint on pollution.     

The Politics of Regulation: A Comparative-Historical Study of Occupational Health and Safety Regulation in Australia and the United States

Australia and the United States adopt radically different approaches to occupational health and safety regulation, even though their ultimate objectives in this policy area are effectively the same. The US regulatory style is more centralised, legalistic and adversarial, in contrast to Australia's state-based and more consensual approach. This difference in regulatory approach dates from the 1970s: for the 100 years prior to that, workplace health and safety regulation in both countries took a similar legal, institutional and administrative form. The reasons for the contemporary regulatory divergence lie in the distinct national configurations of state and societal institutions in the two countries and the different constellation of political actors involved in regulatory design and reform.     

Transparency without Democracy: The Unexpected Effects of China's Environmental Disclosure Policy

This article examines the impact of transparency regulations enacted under authoritarian conditions, through a study of China's environmental transparency measures. Given China's decentralized administrative structure, environmental disclosure ends up being weakest in the most polluted cities. However, the measures have allowed nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to affect environmental governance through unusual pathways. Multinational companies (MNCs) have used NGO pollution databases to monitor Chinese suppliers, whereas local governments have responded to a transparency index with greater NGO engagement. That said, these civil society initiatives have had limited impact on key stakeholder behavior. For the environment ministry, enforcement costs remain high. Local government behavior depends on their economic priorities and the nature of their relations with enterprises. Chinese enterprise behavior depends on the character of their relations with government and MNCs. Given China's authoritarian structure, improved governance does not translate into stronger accountability, challenging common assumptions about the relationship between transparency and accountability.     

Co‐enforcing Labor standards: the unique contributions of state and worker organizations in Argentina and the United States

Labor inspection is a central response to the tremendous gap between formal regulations and outcomes for workers throughout the world. Scholarly and policy debates on labor regulation have focused on improving the targeting of enforcement, changing strategies of street‐level agents, and creating private alternatives to state regulation. This paper argues that these proposals, while important, fail to systematically incorporate the potential contributions of worker organizations and, as a result, overlook opportunities for co‐enforcing labor standards, a key element of labor inspection. By contrast, we develop a framework to analyze the relationships between worker organizations and state regulators that underpin co‐enforcement. We ground this framework empirically in comparative cases, set in Argentina and the United States, presenting two cases of co‐enforcement in highly different institutional contexts. In so doing, we seek to illuminate key attributes of labor inspection and guide attempts to enhance enforcement by forging partnerships between regulators and worker organizations.     

Gorillas in the closet? Public and private actors in the enforcement of transnational private regulation

This paper examines to what extent the background presence of state regulatory capacity – at times referred to as the “regulatory gorilla in the closet” – is a necessary precondition for the effective enforcement of transnational private regulation. By drawing on regulatory regimes in the areas of advertising and food safety, it identifies conditions under which (the potential of) public regulatory intervention can bolster the capacity of private actors to enforce transnational private regulation. These involve the overlap between norms, objectives, and interests of public and private regulation; the institutional design of regulatory enforcement; compliance with due process standards; and information management and data sharing. The paper argues that while public intervention remains important for the effective enforcement of transnational private regulation, governmental actors – both national and international – should create the necessary preconditions to strengthen private regulatory enforcement, as it can also enhance their own regulatory capacity, in particular, in transnational contexts.     

Legitimacy through targeted transparency? Regulatory effectiveness and sustainability of lobbying regulation in the European Union

Regulating interest groups’ access to decision makers constitutes a key dimension of legitimate and accountable systems of government. The European Union explicitly links lobbying regulation with the democratic credentials of its supranational system of governance and proposes transparency as a solution to increase legitimacy and regulate private actors’ participation in policy making. This lobbying regulation regime consists of a Transparency Register that conditions access to decision makers upon joining it and complying with its information disclosure requirements. The extent to which transparency‐based regulatory regimes are successful in ensuring effective regulation of targeted actors and in being recognised as a legitimate instrument of governance constitutes a key empirical question. Therefore, the study asks: Do stakeholders perceive the transparency‐based EU lobbying regulation regime to be a legitimate form of regulatory governance? The study answers by building on a classic model of targeted transparency and proposes perceived regulatory effectiveness and sustainability as two key dimensions on which to evaluate the legitimacy of the Register. The arguments are tested on a new dataset reporting the evaluations of 1,374 stakeholders on the design and performance of the EU lobbying regulation regime. The findings describe a transparency regime that scores low in perceived effectiveness and moderate to low in sustainability. Citizens criticise the quality of information disclosed and the Register's performance as a transparency instrument. The Register did not effectively bridge the information gap between the public and interest groups about supranational lobbying. In terms of sustainability, interest organisations appreciate the systemic benefits of transparency, but identify few organisation‐level benefits. Organisations that are policy insiders incur more transparency costs so they instrumentally support transparency only insofar it suits their lobbying strategies and does not threaten their position. Insiders support including additional categories of organisations in the Register's regulatory remit but not more types of interactions with policy makers. They support an imperfect regulatory status quo to which they have adapted but lack incentives to support increased transparency and information disclosure. Targeted transparency proves an ineffective approach to regulating interest groups’ participation in EU policy making, constituting a suboptimal choice for ensuring transparent, accountable and legitimate supranational lobbying.     

Lingering environmental pessimism and the role of government in Hong Kong

Based on data from two opinion surveys conducted in 2000 and 2008, this study shows that Hong Kong people have been consistently highly aware of the seriousness of different environmental problems and relatively pessimistic about the future resolution of these problems. Such pessimism is arguably related to their lack of confidence in the government's enforcement of environmental protection. Through an analysis of the environmental policy‐making and enforcement agency and three selected enforcement cases, the study further finds that the people's lack of confidence can be traced to the government's failure to bring about a comprehensive, integrated, far‐sighted environmental strategy with sophisticated institutional support and detailed enforcement mechanisms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Policy of decentralization and changing governance of higher education in post‐Mao China

Unlike the Mao era when educational development was entirely directed by the central government, there has been a strong trend to diversification and decentralization of education in the post‐Mao period. This article, being set in this context, examines how the policy of decentralization has affected the governance modes of higher education in Mainland China. More specifically, the article focuses on three major aspects of education governance, namely, financing, provision and regulation in education, with special attention given to examining the changing relations between the state, local governments and other agents in education delivery. One very significant consequence of the change is that the public‐good functions of education, of which the state has taken the primary role of a reliable guarantor, have diminished. Nonetheless, the state's role as a regulator and overall service coordinator has been strengthened rather than weakened under the policy of decentralization. These recent developments in China's higher education also reflect the global trend of decentralization in educational governance. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From “smart regulation” to “regulatory arrangements”

When regulators are faced with practical challenges, policy instrument choice theories can help them find the best solution. However, not all such theories are equally helpful. This paper aims to offer regulators a better alternative to the current policy instrument choice theories. We will specifically address the shortcomings of “smart regulation theory” and present an alternative that keeps the best of that theory while remediating its weak points. Some authors (Böcher and Töller 2003; Baldwin and Black 2008) say that smart regulation theory does not address institutional issues, compliance type-specific response, performance-sensitivity and adaptability of regulatory regime. We have resolved these problems by merging the smart regulation theory with the policy arrangement approach and the policy learning concept. We call the resulting approach “regulatory arrangement approach” (RAA). The central idea of the RAA is to constrain the almost infinite “smart” regulatory options by: the national policy style; adverse effects of policy arrangements of adjoining policies; the structure of the policy arrangement of the investigated policy and competence dependencies of other institutions. The reduction can be so drastic that the potential governance capacity falls below the smart regulation threshold. In other words, no smart regulatory arrangement can be developed in that institutional context unless policy learning occurs. In addition, a “smart” regulatory arrangement is no guarantee that the policy will succeed. For this reason, the performance of the regulatory arrangement is measured and evaluated. Performance below a certain threshold indicates that the regulatory arrangement needs to be adapted, which then results in policy learning. We illustrate the usefulness of this new approach with a secondary analysis of the Flemish sustainable forest management policy.     

Regulatory capitalism and its discontents: Bilateral interdependence and the adaptability of regulatory styles

The expansion of global trade has produced new challenges for the effective governance of product safety. We argue that many of these challenges arise at the bilateral level from the interaction of more or less adaptable national regulatory styles. When regulatory styles are unadaptable they produce gaps in risk management, slow and contested resolutions to crises, and limited regulatory cooperation. To examine these claims empirically, we study bilateral food safety regulation in four major exporter–importer dyads: China–Japan; Canada–United States (US), China–European Union (EU), and the US–Japan. The China–Japan dyad is the most adaptable, combining China's “export segmentation” regulatory style with Japan's strongly “risk‐averse, interventionist” style. The Canada–US dyad operates effectively, bringing together Canada's “global market–conforming” regulatory style with the US strategy of “sovereign regulator.” The China–EU dyad is less adaptable because the EU's “harmonization” regulatory style makes it difficult for the EU to adapt to the weaknesses of the Chinese food safety system. Finally, the US's sovereign regulator style clashes with Japan's interventionist style, making them the least adaptable of the four dyads. The paper concludes with a discussion of the broader relevance of our findings for the development of regulatory capitalism.     

The Politics of the British Environment since 1945

This article examines, first, how environmental concerns have shaped British politics since 1945, making the environment an object of governance; and second, how political developments have an environmental history, focussing on the environmental demands of social democracy. It contends that environmentalism should be considered alongside other political ideologies, such as socialism and feminism, as helping to constitute the modern British state and the evolving relationship between government and the citizen. It considers how the management of the terrestrial environment became a hotly contested matter in the postwar decades, drawing a distinction between the politics of ‘landscape preservation’ and ‘nature conservation’. This discussion is related to access politics and questions of rural governance and regulation, particularly with respect to the agricultural sector. The article concludes with a discussion of some current environmental concerns, reflecting on the possible transition from today's ‘carbon democracy’ to tomorrow's ‘renewable democracy’.     

The Limits of Regulation: Indirect Party Access to State Resources in Australia and the United Kingdom

The way in which political parties use state resources indirectly (e.g., parliamentary expenses) receives substantial attention in public debate, particularly when surrounded by perceptions of misuse. However, scholarly studies of resources indirectly available to parties through their functions in the state, how they are used and regulated, are rare. This article presents an analytical framework that identifies and categorizes the range of indirect resources linked to parties' institutional roles. It locates these resources within a four‐fold matrix of regulation, distinguishing regimes that vary in their detail and whether compliance is externally monitored. Undertaking comparative case studies of parliamentary resource use in the United Kingdom and Australia, we argue that the blurring of party‐political and parliamentary roles can impede the effectiveness of regulatory regimes that democracies adopt, regardless of detail and external enforcement. These findings have important implications for regulatory reforms that seek to constrain parties' behavior to depoliticize democratic governance.     

混合型监管：政策工具视野下的中国药品安全监管

在当代中国,社会性监管正在被越来越多地运用到公共卫生、生产安全和环境保护等公共治理过程.以药品安全监管为个案,结合西方社会性监管的有关理论,从建章立制、设立标准、建立奖惩机制以及优化执行系统四个政策工具角度,对当代中国药品安全监管的政策过程进行分析,结果表明,由于受到社会治理模式转型的影响,中国药品安全监管模式可以被界定为"混合型监管".一方面,中国的药品安全监管政策在形式上已经具有了一些现代监管型政府的特点,例如建章立制、设立标准,并综合运用经济、法律和行政等手段;另一方面,却在许多方面仍然带有许多前监管型政府特征,而这些特征大都是计划经济时代的产物.虽然监管型政府正在逐渐取代全能型政府而成为未来中国政府可能的治理模式,但是从政策分析的角度来看,监管型政府的建设在中国并不是一蹴而就的.建设一个高效的现代监管型政府,仍然是市场经济时代下中国国家政权建设过程中的重要目标.     

China's corporate credit reporting system: A comparison with the United States and Germany

Corporate credit reporting (CCR), which aims at increasing trust in corporates, constitutes an intriguing, yet understudied set of regulatory institutions as it is both a regulatory object and subject at the same time. Differences in national CCR systems pose challenges for multinational companies and have increasingly become a subject of international conflicts on regulatory standards. In this context, the case of China deserves special attention since the country pursues both institutional divergence and convergence with international examples. Hence, the characterization of China's regulatory regime remains difficult. By comparing the institutional context of CCR in China to those in the United States and Germany, this paper sheds light on a specific aspect of China's complex regulatory regime. At the same time, it provides insights into the Chinese manifestation of CCR, which are important for the international business community.     

Corporations at a crossroads: How multilevel governance interactions shape participation and effort in private governance regimes

This article argues that the interactions between firm agency in corporate management and the multilevel governance structures in which firms operate condition firms' participation and effort in private governance regimes. Empirically, I examine the Fortune Global 500 firms' decisions about participation and the extent of participation in the Carbon Disclosure Project during 2011–2015. Given firms' strategic considerations, the efficacy of corporate management structures and practices is conditioned by domestic regulatory and global regime contexts, and this efficacy varies across developed and developing countries. In developed countries, corporate, domestic, and global governance positively reinforce each other as drivers of private regulation on climate change. These governance levels are complements not substitutes. By contrast, the main drivers of participation and effort in developing countries are corporate management structures and practices, the stringency of domestic regulatory institutions, and their interactions. This article's results are robust to alternative specifications, including an alternative modeling approach.     

When experimentalist governance meets science‐based regulations; the case of food safety regulations

This paper examines a central regulatory mechanism that shapes food economies. Food safety regulations in the United States rely on a science‐based transnational regulatory system known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP), which bears central features of what Sabel and Zeitlin identified as experimentalist governance: a new form of regulation that is flexible, responsive, and involves stakeholders in iterative and direct democratic deliberation. The core theoretical question the paper examines is what the reliance on science means for the promise of an experimentalist policy regime to enable a new form of democratic politics. Based on a case study of the HACCP system implemented by the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service since the late 1990s, HACCP's reliance on food science has acted as an effective divider between producers who were able to take advantage of the system's flexibility and others for whom this was challenging. There is clear evidence that HACCP posed a disproportionate burden on small processors and that some of them were unable to adapt to the requirements of the regulatory system. In so far as the HACCP‐based food safety regulations delineated the kind of producer that thrived in the system and contributed to the demise of another set of producers, the regulatory system shaped market outcomes.