The emergence of the environmental state under authoritarianism (China, Vietnam and beyond)

This research project will enquire into new forms of the environmental state in China, Vietnam and beyond, and test the resulting governance models on their ability to solve the dual crisis of social and environmental protections in ecologically sensitive fringe areas to national parks and protected areas, including their degree of successful interaction with local groups and communities. By means of interdisciplinary research methods, the project will examine their most salient characteristics, including regulatory capabilities, policy frameworks, political processes that connect central and local levels of the state, tools of implementation, participatory mechanisms, and new emerging ‘state-society’ relations. The project aims at new theorizing on the defining characteristics of emerging environmental states in the region of study as well as it aims at solid empirical studies on how variations of the environmental state perform in addressing pressing socio-environmental issues, such the dual crisis of economic inequality and ecological unsustainability.