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Ecological civilization Politics and Governance in Hangzhou: New pathways to green urban development?

This study applies a governance perspective to examine how China’s national ecological civilization framework is implemented at the city level. With Hangzhou, one of China’s leading green cities, as a case, the study focuses on how the city’s party-state authorities respond to various pressures from the central leadership and from society to improve environmental governance. Hangzhou’s government applies a new public management approach with public sector performance contracts, performance reviews, and associated results management procedures that are integrated with a battery of social participation instruments. The city government aims to mitigate contradictory goals relating to the need for continued economic growth and for simultaneous environmental improvements based on plans for ecological civilization development and protection of ‘red’ ecological bottom lines. It is argued that Hangzhou’s authorities are testing a novel approach that cou ld con t r ibu te t o nar row ing the ‘implementation gap’ in China’s local green politics by enhancing the local party-state’s abi l i ty to handle new instruments of governance in environmental politics. Available, but rather fragmented data suggest that environmental improvements are occurring, but the link between the new g o v e r n a n c e f r a m e w o r k a n d t h e s e improvements is diff icult to establish.