Policy Transfers as Normative Interactions: The Case of Environmental Policy-Making in China
Résumé
What can be the contribution of policy-transfer analysis to the understanding of international relations and comparative politics, particularly of emerging countries and the new balance of power they bring in international politics? China from this perspective offers a particularly interesting case, as the key to its economic development and social modernization has been a process of strictly controlled opening and its capacity to monitor some flux of exchanges, among which policy concepts and instruments have been critical for transforming and developing its governance capacity.
This chapter uses the case of environmental policy-making to show that interactions between domestic and international environmental norms are both selective and relatively ancient. It considers these influences at three distinct levels of public policy: cognitive tools; operational instruments; and policy networks. It argues that, despite the various constraints that the structure of the Chinese political system imposes on policy implementation, international and transnational normative interactions have played a decisive role in designing a new cognitive frame and a space for collective action in environmental policy at the domestic level. These normative interactions also contributed to defining an increasingly assertive role for China in the international arena.