GOVERNING ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS IN CHINA: UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS DO LOCAL GOVERNMENTS COMPROMISE?

In recent years, governing environmental conflicts concerning the planning, construction, and operation of urban facilities has increasingly become a challenge for Chinese local governments. Chinese governments seek adequate responses to deal with these conflicts, for instance by ignoring criticism and sticking to initial decisions, by suppressing protests, or by compromising. In this article, by analysing 10 cases of conflict in China using crisp‐set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA), we aim to investigate which combinations of diverse conditions lead to changes in local governments' decisions. Four contextualized paths to explain both the presence and the absence of these changes are identified. These findings increase our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the governance of environmental conflicts in China and may inform Chinese governments and non‐state actors who are seeking ways to deal adequately with them.     

EXIT AND VOICE IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT RECONSIDERED: A ‘CHOICE REVOLUTION’?

Market‐based public management reform has introduced customer choice among competing providers of public services. Choice entails exit, an option which Albert Hirschman famously reserved for the market, while voice is the key mode of communication in political life. Based on elite and mass surveys, the article studies how exit is perceived by citizens and local political and administrative leaders in Norway and Sweden, and how the two strategic options relate to each other. Citizens are more positive towards customer choice and exit than are leaders, albeit with some variation across different public service sectors. Political and administrative leaders are positive towards customer choice models as a strategy to empower clients but more critical in terms of the potential loss of accountability and control that contracting out services may entail.