DSpace Collection:
http://hdl.handle.net/10722/38638
2024-03-28T12:11:15ZPeripheral nationalism in China and beyond : a cross-regional study of Hong Kong, the Baltic States and Kazakhstan
http://hdl.handle.net/10722/341569
Title: Peripheral nationalism in China and beyond : a cross-regional study of Hong Kong, the Baltic States and Kazakhstan
Authors: Liu, Siyang; 劉偲揚
Abstract:
This study aims to explain why peripheral regions exhibit different reactions towards their national identity. By examining Hong Kong since the colonial era, Kazakhstan and the Baltic states from Tsarist Russia to the end of the Soviet era, the research builds on previous literature on peripheral nationalism and generalizes a framework to explain the variation in the periphery's reactions given the similar immigration of the majority people in multi-ethnic authoritarian states. The study borrows the theoretical framework from integrated threats theory and Wimmer's boundary-based model of ethnic encountering. It holds that identity maintenance enjoys higher priorities than economic calculations in group interactions and proposes three corresponding scenarios.
The study makes two arguments. First, whether a certain group perceives its counterpart as a threat depends on the role the reference state plays in its nation-building and maintenance process. If the reference state has long been perceived as the backward or inferior "Other," then it is more likely to be perceived as a threat. In response, the superior group would resort to boundary shrinkage to preserve their identity, which usually means the pursuit of political autonomy or even secession. Second, depending on the percentage of immigration, the degree of boundary shrinkage may vary. More immigration poses imminent materialistic threats to the native group, resulting in a more intense boundary shrinking represented in the form of extreme exclusion of the immigrant's community, whereas a lower level of immigration has little material threats to the native group, and the group shrinkage would be rather mild.
The study argues that Kazakhstan's nation-building is a Soviet-assisted project, where Russians and the USSR are valued positively and placed in a higher hierarchy in Kazakhs' identity discourse, explaining their acceptance of the Soviet identity and the pursuit of a rather moderate Russian-related policy after independence amidst high Russian immigration in Kazakhstan. The Baltics, on the contrary, viewed themselves as Europeans who are superior to Russia. The hierarchy explained the Balts' rejection of Soviet identity, their ferocious and persistent resistance against Bolshevik control, and their exclusive policies towards Russia after independence. The ethnic hierarchy made Estonia and Latvia extremely sensitive to Russian threats due to the influx of Russian-speaking immigrants, which prompted their proposition of discriminatory policies against Russian residents after independence. On the other hand, Lithuania faced a lesser demographic challenge from its Russian residents, opting for a lenient policy towards them.
Regarding Hong Kongers, compared to China's socioeconomic instability, British Hong Kong proved to be a superior alternative for them due to its relative stability and prosperity. The positive/negative feedback from the colonial government and mainland China became the recurring theme that dominated Hong Kongers' identity formation, which explains their contestation of the national identity and the rise of anti-mainland sentiment in response to Beijing's comprehensive integration project.2024-01-01T00:00:00ZRegulatory oversight and information disclosure : information management under authoritarian environmentalism
http://hdl.handle.net/10722/341549
Title: Regulatory oversight and information disclosure : information management under authoritarian environmentalism
Authors: Xie, Mengqi; 謝夢琪
Abstract: While democratic systems may struggle to implement environmental regulations when faced with resistance organized from the bottom up, authoritarian regimes possess a unique advantage of silencing opposition and mobilizing support from the top down. However, this same configuration of political power can give rise to a major disadvantage in the form of acute information deficiencies inherent in nondemocratic societies. Citizens and stakeholders wary of censorship and administrators trying to avoid blame collectively distort the information supplied to the government, which can lead to a crisis in state competence as government access to environmental data, performance metrics, and other information required for effective regulatory response is no longer unreliable. The extent authoritarian regimes can mitigate their information deficits will determine whether their efforts will rein in regulatory challenges or, as some critics of environmental authoritarianism believe, directly devolve into elite factionalism and political purges.
Guided by a conceptual overview of the informational challenges unique to authoritarianism, this project examines the viability and effectiveness of two policy tools when transplanted to authoritarian regimes. First, regulatory oversight in the form of top-down inspections helps the central authorities verify self-reported and internally transmitted information about enforcement and compliance levels on the ground, but it may interact perversely with factional fault lines, distorting the investigative scope and focus. I assess China’s central environmental inspections on regulatory compliance. The results show that the inspectors target city officials for poor regulatory outcomes, but those with weaker ties to the central leadership are also more likely to be inspected. My findings point to the use of environmental oversight to discipline regulators with stronger ties to central leaders over deceptive behavior.
Second, information disclosure offers a more indirect tool to address information undersupply by fixing the problem at source. Whether the targeted business or industrial entities respond positively to the call for greater disclosure may be determined by political affiliations rather than regulatory needs. I studied the environmental information disclosure of listed firms based in China from 2010 to 2021. The finding shows that politically connected firms disclose less in general, but their ability to obtain regulatory carve-outs disappears when scrutiny from the top intensifies, rendering the shift in disclosure patterns more pronounced for these firms in comparison with less connected ones.
This project introduces a new framework for conceptualizing environmental authoritarianism as an information problem and, through the analysis of central inspections and disclosure campaigns in China, draws empirical insights into how much political factors constrain these policy tools in the context of undemocratic rule. My answer is that politics matters, in that both cases indicate adverse impacts of factionalism on the patterns of oversight and disclosure, but not to the extent that the functional concerns about compliance and enforcement become completely crowded out as many may assume. This suggests that as informational inefficiencies loom in the pursuit of environmental regulation and governance in authoritarian regimes, future models of environmental authoritarianism should take into account the political motives of different actors in seeking and supplying information.2024-01-01T00:00:00ZCompensation, diversion, and the conservation-development tradeoff : field evidence from China
http://hdl.handle.net/10722/335985
Title: Compensation, diversion, and the conservation-development tradeoff : field evidence from China
Authors: Wang, Mengqiao; 王梦桥
Abstract: Nature reserves play a critical role in biodiversity conservation efforts, but their occupation of lands and resources often conflict with the economic interests of local communities. As a result, policymakers face a tradeoff between conservation and development goals—a dilemma that remains understudied by social scientists. This thesis explores how human society responds to the Conservation-Development Tradeoff (CDT) in two parts.
Part one focuses on how policymakers and the affected local communities try to resolve this dilemma. Conventional solutions focus on the “compensation” mechanism---governments compensate local residents to offset the economic hardship caused by conservation measures. However, recent research has shown that this mechanism can be ineffective in developing countries, and people from non-democratic countries have a limited capacity to press their governments for sufficient reimbursement. This paper presents an alternative “diversion” mechanism: communities who are affected by the strict conservation regulations and inadequate compensation are incentivized to migrate to cities for better income before settling there permanently. While compensation was designed by the government to resolve local opposition, the diversion mechanism develops spontaneously by the communities themselves to adapt to the situation when they can rely neither on agricultural practices nor compensation. Based on interviews from three Chinese nature reserves with varying levels of economic development, I find clear evidence that diversion helps to reduce the number of human-wildlife conflicts in the protected areas and can effectively improve the local income level. I also observed that diversion becomes more prevalent as economic development increases.
The second part focuses on the society at large, as public opinion can make major impacts on conservation policymaking. It is important to explore the level of public support for conservation policies that are conditional on the tradeoff. Existing surveys have consistently shown strong public support for biodiversity conservation, but the question was presented in the abstract, predominantly in developed countries. I conducted the first comparative survey on public support for biodiversity conservation in the United States and China (a developing country), with a focus on the CDT. The results show that both American and Chinese citizens are highly supportive of conservation in the abstract, but significantly less supportive when made aware of the tradeoff.
This dissertation offers three contributions. First, the interviews showed that the diversion mechanism, a practically important yet overlooked strategy. Specifically, future policymaking should incentivize the affected groups to migrate to urban areas, which can both improve the income levels of local communities and contribute to the conservation efforts. Secondly, the surveys showed less support for conservation policies after the respondents learned about the tradeoff, which reveals an overestimated level of public support. Thirdly, this thesis provides novel empirical evidence on how local communities and the public respond to the tradeoff in China, a crucial player in global environmental governance with rich biodiversity and a large low-income population. As many of the affected local communities suffer from inadequate compensation, and public awareness of this is low, findings from this work have profound implications for academic research and conservation policymaking.2021-01-01T00:00:00ZUnpacking adaptation in implementation : the case of China's food safety policy
http://hdl.handle.net/10722/335572
Title: Unpacking adaptation in implementation : the case of China's food safety policy
Authors: Feng, Naikang; 冯乃康
Abstract: Adaptation is essential for implementing policy in complex, locally heterogeneous, and evolving contexts. Current research on policy implementation primarily comprises two perspectives: a top-down approach that views adaptation as a control issue with potentially problematic outcomes, but overlooks the diversity of adaptations among multitier actors; and a bottom-up perspective that emphasizes the discretion of street-level bureaucrats in addressing contingencies, but may not adequately account for the impact of underlying organizational contexts. Bridging these perspectives and examining varied adaptations across an implementation system, with a particular focus on the policy decision-making processes within street-level organizations (SLO), is crucial but remains limited in existing research.
This thesis integrated policy instrument choice, policy capacity, and related theories into implementation theory and expanded the policy bureaucracy concept to encompass the study of SLOs. It advocated examining adaptative diversity in implementation systems and emphasized street-level managers’ (SLM) policy role in facilitating adaptations. A fine-grained policy instrument approach was proposed to capture how policy intentions were actualized through varied government instruments, enabling a comprehensive and comparative investigation of implementation adaptations. The empirical setting was China’s rapidly-developing food safety regulatory system, providing an opportunity to explore policy implementation adaptations within an authoritarian regime facing challenges of scale politics and long-term policy outcome sustainability.
The first empirical chapter analyzed the adaptations of multi-level agents in policy instrument mixes. It identified various instruments used, including a shift from hierarchical-authoritative to market-accommodative and network-collaborative ones, and core and supplementary instruments. The study also revealed local variations in instrument density and intensity, emergent adaptive patterns, and sub-city level (e.g., street/township) agents’ notable contribution to the observed adaptive diversity. Adapted mixes were shaped by local conditions and implementation approaches at different system levels.
The second empirical chapter examined the configuration of managerial and policy roles of SLMs through latent profile analysis, given the substantial involvement of SLOs in adaptive implementation activities. The study identified four subgroups of SLMs, displaying considerable variations in managerial styles, policy work prioritization, individual working experiences, organizational backgrounds, and related organizational performance. Additionally, the research introduced a new dimension of instrumentation role to the literature.
The third empirical chapter developed a capacity-based framework to comprehend the diverse conditions facilitating local adaptation in implementation. Viewing the frequent adoption of network-collaborative instruments by SLOs as an adaptation during implementation, this study revealed that an SLO’s self-reflective and improvement capacity (internal plausibility) and organizational responsiveness to external demands (external sensitivity) mutually enable the change. This offered multiple feasible pathways for reform under varying circumstances, allowing SLMs to select adaptable strategies best suited to their contexts.
This thesis enhances our understanding of policy implementation adaptations in China’s context, going beyond the traditional accounts of implementation deficit and street-level discretion. It contributes to the implementation literature by endorsing a systemic perspective that recognizes diverse temporal-spatial adaptive patterns among implementing agents within a polity. Furthermore, it fosters dialogue between policy-making and implementation research by elucidating the policy roles of street-level managers and the organizational basis for adaptations in policy implementation.2023-01-01T00:00:00Z