The Quest for Robust Legitimacy in China’s Water Resources Management

Legitimacy building is essential for environmental governing bodies worldwide. When legitimacy is successfully established, governing bodies can implement decisions more effectively without relying primarily on coercive enforcement. To build legitimacy, environmental governing bodies need to demonstrate to individuals that they are properly authorized and correctly exercise their power. In this PhD research, Tong Xu examines legitimacy building in the context of China’s water resources management, focusing particularly on the role that China’s legal system plays in these legitimacy-building processes. The analysis proceeds through two complementary parts. Part I investigates the efforts China’s environmental governing bodies have undertaken to build legitimacy. This investigation helps to understand whether these efforts suffice to achieve robust legitimacy, what specific limitations hinder them from translating into actual legitimacy, what specific limitations exist in China’s current legal system that constrain its capacity to support legitimacy building, and whether improvements in China’s legal system are necessary for achieving robust legitimacy or if enhancing non-legal aspects would suffice to achieve robust legitimacy. Building on the findings of Part I, Part II broadens the analysis by exploring approaches to support robust legitimacy. While these approaches are examined in light of the specific constraints that hinder the achievement of robust legitimacy in China’s context, they offer insights that extend beyond any single governance arrangement and can inform how governing bodies operating within different governance contexts can address similar challenges in realizing robust legitimacy.