Explaining the variations in legal mobilization of environmental nongovernmental organizations in authoritarian China: A fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis

Abstract

Despite the growing literature on legal mobilization under authoritarianism, the variations of legal mobilization in authoritarian regimes have been less studied. Drawing on a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis of 175 environmental public interest litigations from 2009 to 2019, as well as in-depth interviews with environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) representatives, this is the first article to present how organizational, political, legal, and social forces (which are demonstrated by six conditions: capacity, political embeddedness, political endorsement, access, legal stock, and alliance) combine to explain the variations of NGOs' environmental legal mobilization through the use of strategic and nonstrategic litigation in authoritarian China. Although the state's policy to pluralize regulatory actors to improve environmental governance has set up a relatively friendly institutional backdrop for environmental legal mobilization, this study finds that political forces such as the relationship between NGOs and the state and the ambivalent attitudes towards environmental protection between central and local government have significantly influenced the behavioral patterns of NGOs' legal mobilization. Moreover, this study uncovers four types of legal mobilization of Chinese environmental NGOs: allied mobilization, progressive mobilization, steered mobilization, and symbolic mobilization. This study enriches the understanding of the behavioral patterns of nonstate actors in legal mobilization in authoritarian regimes and beyond.