Interjurisdictional Competition and Cooperation in China: An Analysis of Sources and Policy Interventions at the County Level
Final Report Abstract
This project has made several theoretical and methodological breakthroughs in the fields of political science, Chinese politics, environmental governance, and urban planning. Theoretically, it: • Builds a theory of interjurisdictional relations that accounts for both competition and cooperation. • Discovers the increasingly cooperative trend among counties in China since 2013 and identifies it as the newest form of the state’s rescaling efforts for purposes of public goods provision. • Shows that in face of slowed growth rate, China now sees interjurisdictional cooperation as anchors to the regime’s longevity and legitimacy for its public goods provision function. • Identifies that leadership change in China has significantly shifted the appointment politics which raises questions on local officials’ willingness and capacity to deliver on Beijing’s mandates in the future. Methodologically, we: • Build a county-level cooperation dataset (2009-2020) and a cadre resume dataset (2003-2020) which offer not only the most updated but also the most comprehensive quantitative data for research of subnational China’s interjurisdictional relations and the CCP’s personnel politics. • Create a codebook that has coded the gender of 6410 political posts in Chinese politics (i.e., masculine, neutral, and feminine), greatly enriching the tool knit of scholars of Chinese politics as well as gender and politics. Our findings also offer some interesting surprises. • To start with, despite the fact that counties are increasingly cooperative, we show that the cooperative trend is embedded in the political tournament institution—counties only cooperate with non-competitors. • Second, while the state has been actively promoting cooperation-based initiatives (e.g., eco-compensation and poverty alleviation), cooperation among counties is not institutionalized. Even with an agreement, cooperation is mostly ad hoc, with no designated staff and office facilities. Even the regular meetings take tremendous coordination efforts as there is no rules to follow, raising question for the sustainability of this cooperation trend. • Third, justice is a major concern during the negotiation and implementation of agreement. Localities with a stronger economy usually have an upper hand in the process of negotiation, leading to the exacerbation of inequality between localities. • Finally, regarding central-local relations, we find that the central government of China is not as strong as has been previously suggested, and the top-down approach of governance is facing serious challenges with more cooperationdemanding issues arising.
Publications
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(2018). What makes for good and bad neighbours? An emerging research agenda in the study of Chinese environmental politics. Environmental Politics, 27(5), 782–803
Eaton, S., & Kostka, G.
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(2021). From targets to inspections: the issue of fairness in China’s environmental policy implementation. Environmental Politics, 30(4), 513-537
Kostka, G., & Goron, C.
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(2021). Not at the table but stuck paying the bill: Perceptions of injustice in China’s Xin’anjiang Eco-compensation program. Journal of Environment Policy & Planning, 1-17
Jiang, X., Eaton, S., & Kostka, G.
