嵌入、吸纳和脱耦:地方政府环境政策采纳的多重模式

Embedding,Absorption and Decoupling: Local Governments Multiple Environmental Policy Adoption Modes

理解中国环境治理过程的关键在于打开地方政府响应中央环境议程的“黑箱”。不同于其他研究将地方政府的环境政策响应行为视为政策执行的结果,论文认为采纳不等于执行。政策采纳是地方政府对中央政策进行转化、转译以及再生产的过程。基于栖居制度视角,研究建构了分析地方政府环境政策采纳模式的制度分析框架,在此基础上,对无锡、广州和武汉河(湖)长制的采纳过程进行了追踪。比较案例分析发现,随着中央政策作为外生冲击进入地方政府治理场域,地方政府构建了三种政策采纳的制度模式:嵌入(典型案例为无锡)、吸纳(典型案例为广州)和脱耦(典型案例为武汉)。政策采纳模式的差异是受地方环境治理场域中的制度逻辑(包括环境治理的制度安排和文化-认知要素)、政社关系结构以及地方政府对于河(湖)长制的机会认知共同影响的。研究突破了既有环境治理研究的央地一元结构视角,强调了时间和地方情境的意义,揭示了地方政府环境政策采纳的复杂过程、机制和策略。

To understand environmental governance in China,we must open the black box of local governments’ responses to central policies. Different from the existing research that regards the environmental policy response behaviors of the local government as policy implementation,this study believes adoption is not the same as implementation. In the process of adoption,local governments have sufficient space to translate or transpose central policies. Based on the perspective of the inhabited institution,we constructed a framework to analyze the institutional modes of local governments’ adoption of environmental policies. Then,based on this framework,we traced the process of adopting the River and Lake Chief System in Wuxi,Guangzhou,and Wuhan. Through comparative case analysis,we found that as the central policy enters the field of local government as an exogenous shock,the local government had three institutional modes for policy adoption: embedding(Wuxi), absorption(Guangzhou),and decoupling(Wuhan). The differences are determined by the following factors: the institutional logic in the field of local environmental governance,including the institutional arrangements of environmental governance and cultural-cognitive elements;the structure of the relationship between the government and society;and local governments’ opportunity cognition of the River and Lake Chief System. This research breaks through the existing perspective of a unified central-local structure. It emphasizes instead the importance of time and local context and reveals the complex processes and mechanisms of local governments’ environmental policy adoption.