Research On The Inter-government Coordination In Local Governments’ Environmental Governance

As the leader of local environmental governance,the internal organization and coordination of local government has always been considered as a deep problem in environmental economics and environmental governance research.When China is accelerating the modernization of environmental governance system and capacity in recent years,the value of this research is further emphazied.Existing research on the inter-government coordination in local governments’ environmental governance is mostly carried out from the macro qualitative level of public management and administrative management,while there is still a big gap in the micro quantitative analysis from the perspective of economics.Moreover,this coordination occurs not only between horizontal and vertical local governments,but also between different departments within local governments,which is largely ignored by existing economic research.Based on this,this article chooses to use the research ideas,perspectives,and paradigms of economics,combined with theoretical models and empirical analysis,to explore the strategic coordination mechanisms and their real laws among different departments within the government,between local governments at the same level,and between local governments at different levels in environmental governance from multiple perspectives.This will provide valuable references for relevant research expansion and government policy-making.First,within local governments,the main logic of inter-department coordination of environmental governance strategies lies in the cross-functional cooperation between different departments and the balance of economic and environmental utility.Based on the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2003 to 2017,this thesis uses panel vector autoregression(PVAR)model and fixed effect models to investigate the strategic coordination between the finance department and environmental protection department in local environmental governance.The empirical results show that,on the whole,there is a codirectional environmental strategic coordination between the two departments.When the environmental protection department’s governance efforts are stronger,the financial department will correspondingly increase its share of environmental expenditure.However,further discussion of spatial and temporal heterogeneity shows that the strategic interaction between departments is not always significantly in the same direction.For different stages of development and different regions,the inter-department coordination has obvious heterogeneity due to the dynamic tradeoff between the government’s preference for economic development and environmental protection,and is insignificant for the western provinces.Secondly,at the same level,the coordination of environmental governance strategy is mainly based on spatial spillover and government competition.Based on the threotical analysis and panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2016,this thesis uses a spatial econometric model to investigate the strategic interaction of prefecture-level municipal governments in environmental governance.The empirical results show that the environmental governance strategies of prefecture-level cities with close geographical distance have natural and universal coordination in the same direction.The assessment competition within the same province would also lead to obvious convergence between the environmental governance efforts of prefecturelevel cities,but this relationship is more likely to exist between the prefecture-level cities with direct competition(with similar ranking of economic performance or environmental performance)in the same province.Last but not least,for the upper-and lower-level local governments,the coordination of environmental governance strategies mainly relies on the environmental performance assessment inspired by promotion opportunities,which is reflected in the interaction between the selection decisions of the upper-level government and the governance decisions of the lower-level government.Based on the threotical analysis and panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2005 to 2015,a probit regression model is used to investigate the relationship between the environmental performance of lower-level government and the promotion decision of its upper-level government.The empirical results show that the better environmental performance that city leaders have,the more likely they are to be promoted by upperlevel government.Furthermore,this thesis finds that environmental performance also plays a threshold role in this vertical strategic coordination.Only when environmental performance reaches a certain level,can economic performance significantly improve the probability of lower-level leaders being promoted by upperlevel government,which verifies the effectiveness of the one-vote veto rules for environmental protection.The heterogeneity discussions find that the vertical coordination based on environmental performance assessment was more effective after 2007,and in regions with more transparent environmental information disclosure or less pressure on economic growth targets.This thesis argues that the inter-government coordination in local environmental governance reflects the dynamic balance between economic development and environmental protection,and between the functions division and utility of different government subjects under the overall national organization and coordination system.Based on the above threotical analyses and empirical studies,this thesis summarizes the differences and commonalities of inter-government environmental strategic coordination in different dimensions of local government,and provides corresponding policy implications.