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Globally, several governments have adopted various forms of green stimulus policies (GSP) to manage environmental challenges and revitalize their national economies during crises. However, research on the varieties of GSPs within a country and the possible drivers of this diversity remain scarce. This study qualitatively compares the green growth and green new deal policies adopted under two different administrations in South Korea. Although both GSPs share similar components, they vary in their focus on nuclear energy and international cooperation. This study postulates that these differences are associated with the degree to which each administration saw GSP through the lens of a developmental state. Besides providing a comparative tool for examining GSPs and their elements, this research contributes to GSP research in a non-Western developed-country setting by highlighting how domestic factors shape the nature and composition of GSPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North Korea remains one of the countries whose energy conditions should be drastically improved not just for its own people but also for the international community to achieve multiple energy-related goals under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. To generate future energy cooperation ideas, this study examines previously proposed or implemented programs between North Korea and international entities, recognizing that they have largely neglected to incorporate the evolving local energy landscape and priorities of North Korea. This study thus pays particular attention to the development and diffusion of renewable energy under the Kim Jong-un administration, from which it draws a policy-oriented suggestion that the renewable energy field could offer a path to future international energy cooperation with North Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the length of tenure of elected heads of local governments (HOLG) and performance of local governments remains ambiguous, with few empirical studies on it. Korea presents a compelling case in that it has limited HOLG to serve only three consecutive terms based on the untested belief that longer tenures have a negative effect on local governments. To address these gaps, this study applies the fixed effect panel model, using the Korean government data from 2008 to 2014. Our findings reveal a negative relationship between tenure length and efficiency, particularly among local governments demonstrating a low level of efficiency. The relationship between the length of tenure and integrity is also negative, especially among local governments with low levels of integrity. However, given that these relationships disappear when factors specific to local governments are controlled, our findings should be interpreted cautiously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2016 seemed to mark a critical juncture in China’s non-profit sector as the government passed several laws and regulations, including the Charity Law. This study examines this development as part of the historical evolution of legal regimes governing NGOs, and considers the contexts of these recent legal changes. By doing so, this paper aims to infer the implications for the governance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in China. Compared to previous laws and regulations, those introduced by Xi Jinping’s administration suggest the party-state’s heightened willingness to acknowledge the numerical growth and diversification of NGOs and their contributions to Chinese society. However, the new laws and regulations also indicate the government’s willingness to adopt a more explicit divide-and-rule approach to NGOs. On the one hand, the government aims to actively incorporate those NGOs that it considers useful and innocuous into an increasingly institutionalized system of social governance and rule of law. On the other, the government is likely to apply the policy of outright rejection and repression to those it identifies as threatening the party-state’s authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid economic development of Singapore has been attributed to its plan-rational technocratic elite, according to the developmental state model. However, few studies have addressed the impacts of the country’s deeply entrenched developmental state tradition on its environment and environmental governance. This article establishes the nexus between these two by examining Singapore’s transition into a garden city. It demonstrates how the Singaporean government has maintained a top-down, nonparticipatory approach to policy making in line with the postulations of authoritarian environmentalism and how this mode of governance is related to the developmental state legacy. While Singapore’s environmental policy resulted in its international reputation as a model green city with a remarkable expansion of green spaces and infrastructure, these outputs signify the results of the developmental state’s deliberate planning and management based on a utilitarian view toward nature rather than on the outcomes of an organic and comprehensive transition to a green society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a brief introduction of the existing literature on environmental pioneer states and their internal characteristics, this study examines various low-carbon green growth (LCGG) initiatives that the South Korean government introduced to market Korea as a trendsetter in the global environmental arena. The country's domestic foundations for environmental innovation, however, reveals a dissonance between its international aspirations and the internal conditions that are needed to sustain the pursuit. This case of mixed environmental achievements by a rising middle-power state suggests the insufficiency of a state-led approach to environmental innovation and leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The impacts that governments and institutions have on environmental policy-making constitute a core concern in environmental politics. Authoritarian environmentalism (AE) presents a model of top-down, non-participatory environmental policy-making. The model, however, remains underspecified with its premises untested and its application confined to non-democratic countries. This study addresses these gaps through a case study of South Korea’s Four Major Rivers Restoration Project. The study illustrates how various path-dependent legacies from the era of the authoritarian developmental state shaped the policy context in which policymakers in democratic Korea adopted AE as its approach to environmental governance. More broadly, this case demonstrates how the relationship between a type of regime and its mode of policy-making and policy outcomes is tenuous, suggesting that environmental politics should move beyond the examination of formal institutional features to incorporate various state development trajectories to unravel the nature of their environmental politics and policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article employs the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), a set of concepts developed to account for policymaking primarily in the United States, to analyze factors that led China to downsize its latest big hydropower project, on the Nu River. The ACF helps us identify two conflicting coalitions based on their policy beliefs and the resources they mobilized to translate their beliefs into policy change, which the ACF also helps us explain. Conflict between state agencies contributed to the rise of a societally based environmental coalition to oppose a state-centered development coalition, and struggle and strategic learning between these coalitions led to interventions by the premier and a scaling down of the project from 13 dams to four. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since it was first introduced in the late 1990s, the concept of deliberative democracy has had policy appeal for both Chinese policymakers and scholars. The Chinese government has recently introduced various deliberative institutions in a top-down manner to address diverse governance challenges. Deliberation at the level of civil society, however, has remained largely limited under the Chinese authoritarian regime setting. This paper illustrates how Chinese civil society actors have increasingly exerted bottom-up pressure to attain a greater degree of deliberation, transparency, and accountability in policymaking, by using the case of a series of anti-dam campaigns conducted by environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) over the past decade. Throughout their campaigns, ENGOs have urged both the central and local governments to adopt more participatory and transparent policymaking and examine the potential social and environmental impacts of large dams. They have done so particularly by invoking the very laws and policies that the government has recently introduced. This study suggests that future research on deliberative democracy in China should pay greater attention to non-state actors and their roles in practicing and promoting bottom-up deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision-making process underlying large dam construction in China used to be dominated either by powerful leaders or by bureaucratic departments pursuing parochial organizational interests. This article asks whether such state-centric explanations can be applied to China’s more contemporary hydropower development. Reconstructing the events surrounding the Nu River hydropower development project from 2003 to 2009, this study demonstrates that a wide array of nonstate actors, including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international entities, emerged as new sources of policy input and influence. They advocated the careful consideration of environmental and social impacts of large dams and public participation in policymaking. To achieve these goals, nonstate actors formed networks based on shared beliefs and preferences and engaged in rights-based activism. This study concludes nonstate actors, their preferences, and their strategies should be given more attention for a complete understanding of the evolving nature of Chinese policymaking, particularly in the domain of hydropower development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]