Climate Collaborative Municipal Networks and the Dynamic Transformation of the Chinese Environmental State: A Case Study of Guangzhou Municipality

Climate change is a global issue that has increasingly been recognized as requiring collaborative efforts of actors at different levels of interaction. Cities are recognized as important sites of climate governance with climate collaborative municipal networks (CCMNs) being significant players in the climate governance regime. Nevertheless, scholarly attention on the role, the governing processes, and the impact of CCMNs has been limited to cities embedded in stable environmental regimes of European and other OECD countries. China’s environmental governance system is, on the other hand, undergoing a dynamic process of transformation. Changes are being observed in political, economic transitions and processes of international integration, but also in the emergence of institutions beyond state and market, such as networks. This research aims to conceptually and empirically contribute to the literature on environmental governance in China by investigating the role and governing processes of CCMNs in selected Chinese cities. It first analyzes the internal and external dynamics of several CCMNs; second, it investigates the impact of CCMNs on the governanceprocesses, political space, and autonomy of municipalities; finally, it makes inferences about the impact of CCMNs on the Chinese environmental state. At the current stage of this ongoing research, the first case study is conducted in Guangzhou Municipality, steered towards the above research objectives. Techniques in network analysis will be adopted in combination with theories in collaborative governance. The expected findings encompass identifying roles ofvarious actors involved in the governing process (namely, nodes in the network analysis), analyzing modes of interaction among actors (namely, ties of the network), and assessing the effectiveness of certain policy instrument or specific governance responses towards climate change (namely, outcomes of networking). This research seeks to generate theoretical implication by unveiling key determinants and explanatory mechanisms shaping the collaborative process within and across CCMNs, with empirical implications on the design of administrative structure and policy instruments at the municipal level in responses to climate change challenges.