Uncovering the verticality and temporality of environmental policy mixes: The case of agricultural residue recycling in China

Abstract

AbstractIn the face of unprecedented ecological crises, a consensus has been consolidated in the global community to fundamentally alter current modes of economic growth and patterns of resource allocation, in pursuit of a low‐carbon transition. Environmental governance plays an important instrumental role in this global agenda. The policy mix framework has emerged as a holistic approach to the design and analysis of environmental policies. A policy mix encompasses different dimensions, featuring not only the horizontality but also the verticality and temporality of interactions. Nevertheless, existing literature on environmental policy mixes focuses on the horizontal interactions, and very few studies have systematically explored the vertical and temporal interactions of policy mixes. Drawing upon the case of agricultural residue recycling in China, this study captures the evolution of both the narrative temporality and the verticality of environmental policy mixes. More importantly, the changing political narratives around residue recycling exert an intangible but significant influence on the vertical interactions between multilevel governments in both policy making and policy implementation, in which institutional and organizational arrangements constitute a key operational and mediating mechanism to manage vertical coordination. The study finally proposes three avenues for future research on environmental policy mixes.