Participation and legitimacy in Chinese environmental politics: a realist approach

ABSTRACT Recent empirical literature suggests that some of the most prominent environmental policies that the Chinese government has pursued have involved at least some measure of participation from citizens. These findings suggest that at least some political authorities in China believe that effective environmental policies will require more participation. However, since the accounts of political legitimacy promulgated by the Chinese government have been developed in order to downplay the need for greater participation (at least in a liberal-democratic form), it is unclear whether these accounts of legitimacy can allow space for the kind of participation that successful environmental politics demands. In this article, I use a realist approach to political legitimacy to address this question. I argue that the dominant legitimation narratives in Chinese politics provide the government with legitimacy-related reasons to allow greater citizen participation in environmental politics, but also provide it with other legitimacy-related reasons to restrict participation.