SPEAKER: Ran RAN Associate Professor of Political Science School of International Studies Renmin University of China DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 2018 TIME: 4:00-5:30pm PLACE: 126 Barrows TITLE: Decentralization, Blame and Policy Implementation Gap in China’s Environmental Politics DESCRIPTION: The obvious paradox within China’s environmental politics is the big gap between the central government’s policy and its implementation outcomes at local levels. While the supporters of decentralized environmental governance theory believe that decentralization can produce better environmental performance mainly because lower-level governments are closer to the people and environmental issues and therefore more legitimate than the national government, this talk will explain why decentralization is widely regarded as one of the most significant reasons for China’s environmental governance crisis, examining how and why local governments and officials are often blamed for creating the huge gap between China’s environmental policies and implementation outcomes. BIO: Dr. Ran RAN is currently an associate professor of political science at Renmin University of China. Her research interests are in Comparative Environmental Politics, Decentralization and Chinese Politics. She earned the Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2009 and in 2009-10 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California. Dr. Ran’s publications have appeared in Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, China Quarterly, Journal of Cleaner Production, among others. Her book published in 2015 systematically examined the paradox of the Environmental Policy Implementation Gap through the framework of “environmental authoritarianism.”