Research On Response Straregies And Norms Of Local Governments Under The Pressure Of Vertical Environmental Accountability

Local governments have undertaken the implementation of environmental policies on behalf of the national will in our country.Their behavior choices in the implementation process go hand in hand with the realization of the central environmental policy objectives.However,the interest differentiation of the central and local governments makes it difficult for local governments to maintain the consistency of objectives with the central government when implementing ecological environment policies,which eventually leads to the deviation between governance effectiveness and policy value and policy objectives.To force local governments to carry out their environmental responsibilities and implement environmental protection policies,the central decision-making level has raised the attention to ecological and environmental protection to an unprecedented height and continued to strengthen environmental accountability.In the face of such a highpressure situation of environmental protection,how the local government will respond to the central environmental policy and whether it will fully implement the environmental policy in accordance with the central will is a key issue that needs to be clarified.Based on this,through the eco political analysis of vertical accountability and bureaucratic response,this paper analyzes the changes of vertical accountability pressure and pressure transmission mechanism,and summarizes different types of response strategies under the conventional accountability mode and mobilization accountability mode of local government:formal response,informal response and quasi-exit response,Based on this,this paper constructs the analysis framework of local government response strategy under the pressure of vertical environmental accountability.Further,this paper makes an in-depth analysis of three different local government response strategies and their performance:formal response,informal response,and quasi exit response,and makes an empirical test in the specific form of environmental accountability.Specifically,the generalized spatial autoregressive model is used to analyze the data of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide in 267 prefecture level cities in China to verify the formal response and informal response under the conventional accountability model respectively;The double difference model is used to analyze the data of central environmental protection inspectors in 287 prefecture level cities in China to verify the quasi-exit response under the mobilization accountability mode.According to the research of this paper,it is found that:first,the formal response under the conventional accountability mode presents a fully implemented local government response strategy,which has a significant emission reduction effect on environmental binding indicators,reflecting the self-protection mentality of local governments;Second,the informal response under the conventional accountability mode presents the response strategy of local government as an option.It only actively governs the binding indicators of political performance evaluation and ignores the non-binding indicators,which reflects the shirking mentality of local government;Thirdly,the quasi-exit response under the mobilization accountability mode presents the response strategy of local government as a stage implementation,shows the high-efficiency and transient governance effect,and reflects the mobile governance of local government.Accordingly,in order to improve the performance of regional environmental governance,this paper focuses on the characteristics and logic of different response strategies of local governments,and puts forward countermeasures to standardize different response strategies of local governments and diversified response strategies under multiple accountability situations from four aspects:breaking the local self-protection mentality,implementing the local environmental protection responsibility,avoiding the rebound of ecological pollution and improving the overall effect of ecological system.