Social Capital Theory Study On Environmental Rule Of Law In China

In recent years, great achievements have been made in China’s environmental system construction of legal norms, rule of law implementation, rule of law monitoring and security. The environmental law system, being fundamentally compatible with ecological civilization, has initially taken shape. But environmental group events and emergencies have been increasing rather than decreasing and problems of ecological environment have become progressively prominent, indicating the dysfunction of environmental rule of law partly or even of majority part at the current stage in our country. In terms of the environmental rule of law itself, reasons accounting for this mainly lie in such respects as:conflicts in the concept of the environmental rule of law; being insufficiently authoritative in law systems on environment and the sluggish operation of the environmental rule of law. The study of environmental law on these problems still largely remains within the law framework, merely paying attention to system construction, but lacking in the research on the fulfillment and implementing conditions. We have single-mindedly focused on the establishment of environmental law system but being deficient in environmental law enforcement and judicature, especially in relevant factors affecting this. Thus, it is necessary to jump out of the shackles of the existing legal theory ant seek the support of some frontier theories in other disciplines, hence to explain and correct the failing phenomenon of current environmental rule of law.Social capital theory, evolving from the intersection of sociology and economics, has exerted a significant influence on other social sciences and is a considerably convincing theoretical paradigm to explain the economic, political and social phenomena currently. It can also be introduced into the field of environmental rule of law, offering an explanation and correction of some failures in it. Social capital is an important resource that can somewhat promote or hinder social economy or the development in some certain aspect. It is rooted in certain social relationships or social structures and embedded in factors such as certain networks, norms and trust and contained in its culture. The fundamental perspective to study environmental rule of law lies in networks, norms and trust constituted by the core social capital. This will have a significant impact on the concept, system and operation of environmental rule of law, not only serving as an analysis of failures in environmental rule of law, but to provide a new direction and dimension for its correction.It’s better to analyze reasons giving rise to failures in environmental rule of law through networks of environmental legislation, law enforcement, judicature and rule of law monitoring based on network investigation. Reasons are founded as following: Prominence of the vertical networks and problems in horizontal networks, especially insufficient citizens’ network participation, authority relations alienation namely the dislocation of executive authority and administrative organs, the impact of foreboding strong ties and deficient weak relationship on rational negotiations on environmental legislation. In the implementation network of environmental rule of law consisting of environmental law enforcement and judicature, the lack of network closeness and too many "structural hole" make it hard to guarantee strict law enforcement and fair administration of justice; the coexistence of authority relationship deficiencies and authority relations transition affects the environmental law enforcement and judicial credibility; the vertical and horizontal network and the unreasonable structure of the strong and weak relationships has influenced the effectiveness of environmental law enforcement and justice; In the network of environmental law supervision, the prominence of the strong ties in the vertical network easily repels outsiders and lose its supervisory role; the deficiencies of weak ties in horizontal networks is likely to lead to failure in effective play of oversight role; the prevalence of "structural hole" will make it difficult to pass information within the network, thus weaken the oversight role. We are required to optimizing the members of different networks of environmental rule of law, improve its structure, increase the accumulation of social capital through perfecting its operation mechanism, thus to correct failures in environmental rule of law and optimize the networks of it.It’s also efficient to give an explanation of failures in environmental rule of law through cultural norms, practice norms and soft law norms on environment based on norm investigation on environmental rule of law. The conflicts on concept of environmental rule of law are mainly due to the internal conflicts between Scientism and humanism, anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism, economic and ecological doctrines in the cultural norms on environment; the inadequate authoritative power of environmental legal system can be attributed to the conflicts between environmental legal system and cultural norms on environment, practice norms and soft law norms on environment. The reasons of sluggish operation of environmental rule of law can also be found in those norms listed above. Failures in environmental rule of law need to promote normative integration of the concept of environmental rule of law through eco-cultural spirit shaping, through a combination of "top-down" and "bottom-up" methods to advance the normative integration of environmental legal system, through unswerving ecological practices to push forward the normative integration of environmental rule of law operation.It’s also an important perspective to explain failures in environmental rule of law through conceptual trust, institutional trust and operational trust based on trust investigation of environmental rule of law from various disciplinary views. From interpersonal trust analysis of environmental rule of law based on psychology,social trust analysis of environmental rule of law based on sociology and political trust analysis of environmental rule of law based on politics, we can find internal connections between lack of conceptual trust of environmental rule of law in our country and concept conflicts of environmental rule of law, between lack of institutional trust and lack of authorities of environmental law, between lack of operational trust and operational obstacle of environmental rule of law and also account for the failure of environmental rule of law in China. To correct failures in environmental rule of law, we need to strengthen conceptual, institutional and operational trust of environmental rule of law to enhance the role trust playing as social capital in supporting environmental rule of law.All in all, one of the important reasons for the failure of environmental rule of law is a lack of networks, norms, trust and other social capital. Thus, it is important to optimize the networks, integrate specifications and construct trust to increase the stock of social capital in order to correct environmental rule of law dysfunction.In short, the improvement of environmental rule of law performance is inseparable from social capital investment and support.