The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China

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Chris: One of the things that I think was really interesting in your book is that it did have this core initial focus on environmental protection bureaus, but then you expand it and talk about Wuhan and COVID, and Flint, and also Vietnam, I think, as well. Can you say a little bit more about those cases and how they really show how this performative governance can break down a little beyond what you just described? And then people calling with their marital problems and wanted somebody to cry to, and things like that. In those situations, the bureaucrats are told to not hang up the phone, and then to keep talking to them until they’re satisfied with a conversation regardless of the content of the conversation. Chris: I’m curious as well, thinking more about the current day, and we started talking about this a bit before, right now as we’re recording this, still the COP27 in Egypt is going on. Central government of China has made a number of important commitments to the general global climate change efforts of, I think, peak carbon by 2030, and then carbon neutrality by 2060. Curious to hear what your assessment is of the current state of environmental governance in China, both related to the international community, and then also coming out of the 20th Party Congress, where in Xi Jinping’s speech, environment was mentioned a number of times. While all chapters have their qualities, I was especially intrigued by Ding’s rich and detailed ethnographic analysis in Chapter Three, as one delves into the day-to-day struggles and endeavours of Max, the nearly forty-year-old Chinese bureaucrat who works at the Lakeville environmental protection bureau (EPB). Based on a five-month ethnographic case study at Lakeville’s EPB, the reader is brought into the less visible reality of their organisational life. A series of detailed examples, from night-time inspections, to the long overtime hours and pressures bureaucrats face to respond to the deluge of citizen grievances, to the attention they give to the way they dress and what they eat in public for fear of being exposed on social media and accused of corruption, allow the reader to truly grasp the intricacies and complexities that bureaucrats must face. Ding focuses on “the little things,” on attitudes, gestures, or intentions (p. 76). In performing performative governance, Max and his colleagues must appear responsive to public opinion, demonstrate the benevolence of the state’s intentions, and make these efforts publicly visible .

What I’m guessing now, and this is purely just speculation on my part, is that we might see that the Chinese state will preempt the bad moods that will arise during future economic crises through the rhetoric of sustainable development and fighting climate change. Ironically, a slower economy makes it easier for China to achieve its carbon peak and carbon neutrality. And obviously, we can get into this debate about green growth and how likely that could happen. What I’m suggesting is that I think the economy has to be considered when we think about what China is going to do in the future in terms of the environment. And today, we are joined by Iza Ding, who is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh. Iza is a scholar of comparative political development and has published a number of important papers on environmental policy making, implementation, bureaucratic organizations, and more. Our podcast today focuses on her recently published book, The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China. Iza first explains what she means by a performative state with helpful comparisons between performative and substantive governance, and she also provides useful examples of performative governance that she gathered through her on the ground field work in an environmental protection bureau in China. Iza: The beauty of writing a book like this is that if you’re wrong, that’s even better because if we see more substantive governance now, it’s good for the world, it’s good for China, and China has indeed done a lot over the past few years. Everybody’s noticed the improvement of air quality in Beijing since 2017, although I think last year, there was another airpocalypse that happened. And then, China has also been trying to wean itself off coal. And then I think these commitments are definitely not just symbolic. And there’s been a lot of substantive actions. As a social scientist, I’m more comfortable talking about those things in relative terms than in absolute terms, just that I think capacity is relative. We see this clear trajectory from performative governance towards substantive governance in recent years. But am I comfortable with saying everything’s substantive? I think it’s definitely not the case.However, I also want to emphasize that there’s some differences between formalism and performative governance because performative governance is not just about filling out the forms, going through the motions and modeling through, and so on and so forth. It captures the formalist side of performative governance, but it’s not just that. It is also gestures of concern, gestures of submission, gestures of benevolence, and submission to the people. It is about being people’s punching bags. It is about serving people tea, it is about being nice to people, really showing that your sincerity, and then how much you care about them even though you cannot do anything about what they’re upset about. So, there is this more theatrical performative side to performative governance and there’s more this formalistic side of performative governance that is closer to this sociological concept of symbolic implementation, perhaps. Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.

And I see this a lot at the local level. And I say the same thing will probably go for Xi and Chen Jining. So, it remains to be seen. When their job are generalists, you have to give people employment, you have to deliver economic growth, and while protecting the environment, it’s really hard to do going forward. So that’s one of my observations. And then, oftentimes, the conversations, it turned out, had nothing to do with the environment and somebody caught in and complained about air pollution from his neighbor’s cooking. And then you listen to them, you realize there’s some ancient hatred between this person and the neighbor. Chris: I always like ending on a good note. And so, both of these things that you mentioned, the one history that Xi Jinping has in promoting environmental topics, which I was not aware of, does sort of bode well for at least, potentially indicate some of his underlying interests, which is so hard to tell nowadays. Iza: That is definitely my sense that around about the trade war, and I think my observation is that Chinese citizens, just like the voters in democracies, that they’re also a single issue, not voters, but single issue people, right? Like we’re all single issue people, maybe like two or three, but not more than that. I think the attention of public opinion really changes. Obviously, when Chái Jìng’s 柴静 documentary, Under the Dome, was first released, it was viewed so many times, and everybody was supporting it on social media. But if you think about how people talk about this today, many people believe it’s some kind of American conspiracy because it received funding from American foundations, and it’s a documentary to sabotage China’s economic growth. And then Chai Jing is also perceived as not a good figure. And then some might even call her a traitor. Overall, Ding succeeds perfectly in showing the importance of distinguishing “‘government performance’ and the government’s theatrical representation of its performance” (p. 154). If the rich, exhaustive, and varied theoretical discussions in the opening chapters may discourage some readers, this book makes interesting reading for anyone interested in the history, development, and context of China’s environmental policies over the past two decades. At a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to make room for dissenting voices, Ding’s analyses make a significant contribution to ongoing debates about what sustains an authoritarian state in an Anthropocene era.One thing that was noted, and also, I mentioned in my book is that in the past, I think there are some really intriguing empirical studies showing that if you are a director of the environmental bureaucracy, it means the end of your career. One of my interviewees from the organization department, which is the CCP’s bureau office, said that being assigned, being promoted to become a director, EPB director, it means the end of somebody’s careers. And then there’s this really interesting paper in the Journal of Contemporary China finding that if you’re a local director of an Environmental Protection Bureau, your likelihood of being promoted to more powerful positions within the Party State is a lot lower than if you were directing the DRC or other more powerful bureaucracies. Iza: Yeah, then go into the street spraying disinfectant onto the street, being performative. I guess it is also, people consider that symbols of effective good governance that is performative governance. But then you also see a lot of predatory behavior from the state. And it’s hard to figure out how public scrutiny plays a part into that, because in this case, do we still believe that the state cares about what people want, and what exactly do people want? Do they want zero COVID or do they want more economic activities and more freedom to move around? And I think people’s preferences have changed. If you think about public opinion, it’s very capricious., it’s malleable, it changes even from day to day in this COVID situation. So, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around this COVID thing. Speaker: Iza Ding, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, University of Pittsburgh The book illuminates the theatrical side of environmental governance in everyday Chinese politics. The author bases her definition of performativity on Merriam-Webster’s definition of performative as a means of image cultivation or the conveying of positive impressions, but also on Judith Butler’s understanding of performativity as language, gesture, and all sorts of symbolic social signs (p. 8). On a theoretical level, Ding develops a subtle exploration of the intricacies between Goffman’s and Butler’s understanding of performativity to arrive at a nuanced but clear definition of performative governance, which she uses throughout the book to examine how state behaviour is and is not performative. Ding’s deep insight into the everyday life of bureaucrats helps to analyse a certain type of performativity, namely as a symbolic achievement of good governance, which she defines as a broad national and societal consensus on how a given government should behave, and, ultimately on its sources, characteristics, alternatives, and consequences. If much of the book focuses on theories of performativity in the Chinese context, it also offers new opportunities to reflect on the longevity of “performance legitimacy” despite ineffective policies and all the challenges to state capacity that have been extensively explored in the “fragmented authoritarian” literature (Lieberthal 1992; Mertha 2009) .

Then in social science terms, they can be either developmental or predatory. And then, indeed, in our literature you see both terms — developmental and predatory — have been used to describe powerful agencies within China, like the National Development Reform Council Commission and the state-owned enterprises. So, it’s not obviously weak, but then you gradually realize that actually they couldn’t do anything to enforce regulations. So, I saw some of the egregious practices by the factories and it was very clear they were not abiding by regulation, but then you also saw that EPB was really weak in front of the businesses. They didn’t even have the legal authority to close down factories or to issue large fines. And the authority was actually in the hands of the municipal government or higher-level governments. So, then the people I’m observing, these street-level bureaucrats, they’re held responsible, right? Citizens think they’re responsible for improving air quality, but then they actually couldn’t do anything. So, I argue that when both are low, state behavior is inert. So, the state, in this case, is incapable of delivering its promises and solving the problem in question, but it’s under no public pressure to do so. And then, when capacity is high and scrutiny is low, state behavior is what I call paternalistic. In this case, the state is like the parent of a small child with lots of power over there unscrutinizing offspring. And then just like a parent, the paternalistic state can use their power to do either good or bad things. However, it’s not to say that performative governance always works in China, it’s not the case. The second comparison I did was between Wuhan government’s response to the COVID virus and then the Flint Water Crisis. In this case, despite the fact that China and the United States had very different regimes, one is autocracy, the other is a democracy, but performative governance broke down in both cases because of whistleblowers releasing of distracting information to the public.

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So, I have four cases. The first two cases I compare two water crises in China and Vietnam. And then, typically, China and Vietnam are considered as “most similar cases” because they’re both authoritarian regimes getting similar scores from the Freedom House. But then, after these water crises and officials in both countries went swimming into the river, and then their swimming was also captured in the news media. Chris: One thing that also jumped out, I mean, you do discuss it in later chapters, is COVID, and this is something where it seems that there was a lot of substantive implementation. Can you say a little bit about how China’s COVID policies and responses fit with theory that you’re developing? But then, when I got to Lakeville, which was supposed to be my good case, and what I realized gradually is that there was very little substantive environmental governance to speak of. And what I saw was performative governance instead. And what I saw, the first thing is that the bureaucracy actually had very, very little capacity. The capacity is not really obvious because when you see them, they hire extremely qualified bureaucrats. All these bureaucrats, they have masters or PhD degrees in environmental sciences, engineering, and law. And then the bureaucracy also had some super fancy technology. Everybody had this law enforcement iPad they carried around with them, where they could enter data, and the data will be synced with the EPB central database, and so on and so forth.

HOLBIG, Heike, and Bruce GILLEY. 2010. “Reclaiming Legitimacy in China.ˮ Politics & Policy 38(3): 395‑422. And also, enterprises calling the hotline to complain about environmental violations, regulatory violations by this enterprise, this paper plant, and then you realize the caller is another paper plant that’s right next to this paper plant that’s being complained about. So, there’s a lot of those things.Iza: Yeah. Exactly. It’s an Erdogan crying, and apparently public approval improves for about two months. Iza: So, the two by two has two dimensions. The first dimension is state capacity and the second dimension is scrutiny. In this very case, I’m looking at public scrutiny, because in the literature on bureaucracy, we typically focus on scrutiny from principals to their agents, so the classic principal agent problem. I think like Chen Jining, as a counterexample to that theory, so maybe we’re going to start seeing people in the environmental bureaucracy being promoted. And obviously, this has not happened at a systematic level yet. But I think, once, if that happens more, then I think that’s also another good signal for the environment. The cookie is set by CloudFare service to store a unique ID to identify a returning users device which then is used for targeted advertising.