Regulating through leverage: Civil regulation in China

The overarching goal of this study is to examine the efforts of Chinese NGOs to prevent and/or control industrial pollution risks and then use the findings of this research to study the nature of civil regulation in, and beyond, China’s authoritarian setting. It first argues that 'regulation through leverage' takes place in all types of regulation, not just civil. Second, regulation in our modern world is no longer a simple binary affair. Multiple players and multiple instruments concurrently interact on the regulatory landscape. Third, the thesis underlines the importance of examining authoritarian regimes in more detail to understand the kind of space they may or may not have for civil regulation, and how various pre-conditions shapes civil regulation. Fourth, in contrast to much of the existing literature that casts the state in a supporting role of civil regulation, this thesis shows that civil regulation in China takes place both in the shadow of the state and through the state and as such the occurrence of civil regulation does not necessarily have to coincide with a retreat of the regulatory state. Fifth, the examination of the civil regulatory phenomenon contained in this thesis underline the point that the field needs to rethink our understanding of the constitutes of civil regulation. Six, the theoretical implications of the findings derived from the study discusses the prospect of civil regulation in a world where governments worldwide are devising elaborate ways to obstruct the activities of independent civil societies.