Understanding China's climate change mitigation policy development: Structures, processes and outcomes

Climate change is one of the most important and urgent issues of our time. Since 2006, China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter. China’s role in an international climate change solution has gained increased attention. Although much literature has addressed the functioning, performance, and implications of existing climate change mitigation policies and actions in China, there is insufficient literature that illuminates how the national climate change mitigation policies have been formulated and shaped. This research utilizes the policy network approach to explore China’s climate change mitigation policy making by examining how a variety of government, business, and civil society actors have formed networks to address environmental contexts and influence the policy outcomes and changes. The study is qualitative in nature. Three cases are selected to illustrate structural and interactive features of the specific policy network settings in shaping different policy arrangements and influencing the outcomes in the Chinese context. The three cases include the regulatory evolution of China’s climate change policy making; the country’s involvement in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) activity, and China’s exploration of voluntary agreement through adopting the Top-1000 Industrial Energy Conservation Program. The historical analysis of the policy process uses both primary data from interviews and fieldwork, and secondary data from relevant literature. The study finds that the Chinese central government dominates domestic climate change policy making; however, expanded action networks that involve actors at all levels have emerged in correspondence to diverse climate mitigation policy arrangements. The improved openness and accessibility of climate change policy network have contributed to its proactive engagement in promoting mitigation outcomes. In conclusion, the research suggests that the policy network approach provides a useful tool for studying China’s climate change policy making process. The involvement of various types of state and non-state actors has shaped new relations and affected the policy outcomes and changes. In addition, through the cross-case analysis, the study challenges the “fragmented authoritarianism” model and argues that this once-influential model is not appropriate in explaining new development and changes of policy making processes in contemporary China.

Fear and U.S. foreign policy during the Truman administration, 1945-1952

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the Truman administration used fear to generate popular support for its Cold War foreign policies. Three issues were examined through the use of published government documents, personal memoirs, and weekly periodicals to assess the responses of the American public: the enactment of universal military training (UMT), the Soviet detonation of an atomic device, and the Truman administration's decision to build the hydrogen bomb. This study shows that the changing attitudes in the Truman administration toward the Soviet Union occurred in a climate of fear. Through press releases and by exerting influence on the media, the administration attempted to control the information the public received. Through the use of propaganda, the Truman administration pursued the implementation of UMT, generated fear of the Soviet Union after its detonation of the atomic bomb, and gained relative public support for the decision to build the hydrogen bomb.