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This paper compares the key arguments of ecological modernization theory (EMT) with the reality of recent environmental reform in China. Based on data gathered from a survey and in-depth interviews with executives from Hong Kong-based enterprises operating in Guangdong province, we examine the changing roles of government, market, and civil society actors in the reform process, focusing on various types of pressures these actors have exerted on business enterprises. Compatible with Mol's (2006) conjectures, ecological concerns have gradually gained a foothold in existing political, economic, and to a lesser extent, social institutions. Yet, the relevant actors and their patterns of interactions differ from what EMT generalizes from Western European experiences. Specifically, local governments are assuming a more formalized relationship with firms in regulatory enforcement. Among market actors, organizational buyers along the supply chain have exerted more noticeable pressures on manufacturing firms than industrial associations and individual consumers. Civil society, while remaining less of an institutionalized actor in the environmental policy process, appears to pose a perceptible threat to at least some firms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The nonprofit sector has become an arena of increased political contestation. Rather than being shaped passively by global trends and broader power relationships among social classes and organizations, the nonprofit sector and the larger civil society have increasingly become forces shaping social and political developments. To account for how these forces unfold in different countries, one needs to go beyond social origins theory, the power-distributional account, and sociological institutionalism and draw on concepts from historical institutionalism that explicitly consider how dynamic interactions between institutional forces and long-term historical changes shape patterns of political contestation. By examining the developmental trajectories of environmental NGOs in South Korea, this article explains how political contestation—embedded within institutional and historical processes of critical junctures and path dependence—may shape developmental trajectories of the nonprofit sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]