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Key Insights
There is a challenge when the local governments are only the critical oversight of the central government’s compliance with air pollution policies. Air pollution is a problem affecting the existence and livelihood of man in China and the whole globe. Different approaches must be implemented by all entities, including the central government, to reduce the effects. With its knowledge of the procedures, the central government can knowingly overlook some policies failing to comply. In most countries, democratic systems allow the public and the Non-Governmental Organization to be part of disclosing the levels of pollution and the compliance statutes for both local and central governments. The Anderson et al. (2019) article reveals the need and the use of non-governmental organizations in disclosing the compliance levels of the central government on air pollution policies.
Policy Problem or Background
Air pollution negatively impacts human health and is also responsible for environmental acidification, eutrophication, and ozone formation at ground level. There are practical policies that guide government and companies in regulating air pollution. The challenge in China is the compliance level in obeying and holding different bodies. The local government in China is responsible for overseeing the central government’s compliance with policies, but their oversight is ineffective. China has an authoritarian structure that limits the public and non-governmental access to information on the functions and the level of policy implementation. Anderson et al. (2019) note that an authoritarian regime has historically been presented in the form of despotism and tyranny. Additionally, the authors argue that such political and legal authorities remain in states where power is concentrated in the hands of narrow local governments (Anderson et al., 2019). The distribution of power functions between them is conditional, and management relies mainly on power structures. The individual is suppressed, his rights, freedoms, and genuine interests are infringed, the media, NGOs, and many socio-political formations are “nationalized,” and the state has precedence over the law. Its organs are connected not only with legal norms but with instructions from above.
It is difficult to obtain information and publicly announce them when the local and the central government doesn’t is transparent to the public. In such cases, air pollution continues to affect the population without legal challenges. Even with the laid policies, air pollution still affects the Chinese due to a lack of enough freedom to disclose information on air pollution status. The Chinese government also have rules and regulation that limit the power of the public and the NGOs in pressuring and pushing for change in different areas. Thus, the government continues to perform poorly in managing and complying with the air pollution policies. The collaboration between the central and local governments in implementing authoritarian structures inhibits the public forums’ ability to disclose information. According to Anderson et al. (2019), countries that allow various NGOs to take part in revealing information have benefited by keeping the governments alert on their failures and thus improving.
The compliance challenge, identified by Anderson et al. (2019), falls under the principal-agent model. In this model, the central government mandates the local government to deliver or obey certain rules. The central government expects and pays the local government to monitor and comply with the rules. Thus, when the local governments fail to comply, monitoring the central government actions and compliance status becomes costlier. Thus, when a non-state agent intervenes and discloses information about the non-compliance, the local government complies to avoid the information reaching the central government. With no freedom to disclose information, the central government is unaware of the non-compliance of the local government, and thus nothing is changed.
The level of compliance can be positively affected by allowing the disclosure of information on air pollution. According to Anderson et al. (2019), the central government should take advantage of the public forums that challenge local governments’ failure to complain where they should. By focusing on non-authoritarian regimes, Anderson et al. (2019) note that it is characterized by the liquidation or significant restriction of the rights and freedoms of citizens. Such a political-state regime is a set of ways of exercising state power based on arbitrariness without considering the public’s opinion. The public discussion relies on the information they get from the NGOs. Thus, when the NGOs are denied the democratic right to disclose information, public participation in government performance is low.
The anti-democratic regime is defined by the elimination of political rights, the disclosure of information, and the suppression of dissents. It is a challenge for the central government and Chinese citizens since its costlier to implement various air pollution policies. In these contexts, the following problematic characteristic features are given: state control over all spheres of public information and control over public organizations (Kostka & Zhang, 2018). A person is primarily deprived of personal information disclosure rights, although formally, they can be proclaimed even in constitutions. The local governments in china are the source of these problems, and thus controlling how they relate to the public is crucial. After a comprehensive study on non-compliance status in air pollution policies, the study gave some recommendations in the section below.
Policy Recommendations
Based on the problem identified, various recommendations are presented. The study recommends regulating the local government to prevent them from affecting the NGOs capabilities of disclosing non-compliance information. The recommendation’s purpose is to give NGOs and the public more freedom in admitting the local government’s non-compliance with central mandates. To prevent pollution resulting from industrial, legal, economic, and fiscal regulations are enacted. Additionally, these legislations control the functioning of polluting activities and certain substances to protect the environment from the harmful effects of emitted pollution and promote sustainable development through local government oversight (Pastory, 2019). The action framework must prioritize prevention and upstream interventions that guarantee efficient public information disclosure and consider the direction of the place where the activities are carried out.
The study also recommends using PITI (Pollution Information Transparency Index) to monitor local authoritarian governments. With the PITI methodology, there is less dependency on the provincial government’s permission to disclose information to the public. The methodology also improves the relationship between local governments and local NGOs, thus making it more effective. Even with the existing retaliations, the PITI methodology pushes the local governments to change in disclosed areas, thus being effective in helping the compliance challenge. The study also recommends that other non-state entities, such as universities and media, use disclosers to improve collective action and enhance compliance. The free flow of information and ideas are concepts naturally associated with democracy, and these concepts are central to direct access to information (Touchton et al., 2021). The importance of a direct statement or direct knowledge is an increasingly constant theme of development and transparency. In this sense, non-government organizations disclose information about the state’s functioning aimed at helping the government understand the needed changes.
Within the scope of this framework, regulatory instruments establish the compliance levels applicable to the integrated prevention and control of pollution, as well as the rules to avoid air pollution. The legal framework for air policy is designed in such a way that it allows organizations to have the freedom to disclose information to the public and the central government. As a way of guaranteeing compliance with the previous commitments, the central government is also obliged to prepare, adopt and implement national programs for the control of NGOs freedom, as well as to allow them to monitor and report the emissions of these pollutants and their respective effects (Touchton et al., 2021). Direct information guides point for constructing public information policies to promote or access state actions and compliance availability.
Visualizations
The creation and functioning of the non-state organizations of the sector are designed for the autonomy of a better future, satisfying the needs of social groups or the community through information disclosure. After the involvement of the NGOs, disclosure of environmental regulations compliance has improved since 2012. This improvement has been facilitated by introducing indices such as the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI), which allows competition among cities based on the minimalization of pollution. The following figure shows the increase in (PITI).
With more decentralization and the controlling the power of local governments over NGOs and other non-state disclosure of information, there are more actions towards air pollution. Public information can be understood as that set of documents/information generated or guarded by the public entity regarding government activity. The following table also shows the weight of different disclosure items for the Chinese government as rated by Anderson et al. (2019).
The ratings and the weight assigned to each category show how vital the information is in disclosing air pollution. For example, the records for enterprise violations carry more weight, and actions can be taken more transparently after disclosure. Freedom of information directly correlates with leading, and access to information, in addition to human and fundamental rights of high relevance, represents high-density democratic techniques in forming human relations in a given political and social community. The recommendations presented push for reforms to allow the NGOs to monitor government compliance. As Anderson et al. (2019) concluded, positive changes are expected to increase NGOs’ government monitoring. The following table depicts an environmental scenario if no reforms give NGOs and public entities the information disclosure power.
Compared with other countries lack of public power to pressure local governments to comply with regulations will increase the rate of Air pollution by 2025. In conclusion, it is imperative to give NGOs and other non-state entities the power to disclose environmental information to reduce non-compliance. There was a growing involvement of people and entities, mainly NGOs, not daily by the state, which will allow the growth of the movement of transparency of public accounts and the concept of accountability and compliance in environmental policies.
References
Anderson, S. E., Buntaine, M. T., Liu, M., & Zhang, B. (2019). Non‐governmental monitoring of local governments increases compliance with central mandates: a national‐scale field experiment in China.American Journal of Political Science, 63(3), 626-643. Web.
Kostka, G., & Zhang, C. (2018). Tightening the grip: environmental governance under Xi Jinping. Environmental Politics, 27(5), 769-781. Web.
Pastory, P. (2019). Inter-governmental relations and procurement non-compliance in African local government systems: Insights from Tanzania.Journal of public procurement, 19(4), 277-294. Web.
Touchton, M., Wampler, B., & Peixoto, T. (2021). Of democratic governance and revenue: Participatory institutions and tax generation in Brazil.Governance, 34(4), 1193-1212. Web.
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