Hosted by the Institute for China & World Studies and the School of Political Science & International Relations (SPSIR) of Tongji University, the Tongji Youth Workshop on Governance & Strategy No.18 was successfully held in Conference Room 113, Yifu Building, Siping campus on October 30, 2020. Dr. Xu Jingyuan, a postdoctoral fellow at the School of International Relations & Public Affairs, Fudan University, was invited to share her research results with more than 30 teachers and students of Tongji on the theme of “Government Expenditure on Environmental Protection and Official Budget Strategy”, and had extensive discussion with the participating young teachers and graduate students of Tongji. This workshop was moderated by Associate Professor Zhong Zhenming, Associate Dean and Head of the Department of International Relations of SPSIR.

In the sharing session, Dr. Xu first proposed that according to traditional budget studies, government expenditure on the environment is mainly a response to the deterioration of the ecological environment. However, little attention is paid to the role of public organs and participants in the financial resource allocation decision-making. With global environmental governance moving towards institutionalized since the late 1970s, this issue has become more and more worthy of attention. In this context, Dr. Xu used the information processing theory and empirical data collected from Hong Kong to explore the strategies used by officials to influence environment budget legislation. Through the analysis of the budget inquiry process in the parliament, she summarized the main strategies used by officials to obtain financial support from the parliament, i.e. including environmental issues to broader policy issues, such as emphasizing its impact on public health and technological development, to increase the bargain chips through inter-agency collaboration; emphasizing the political support and performance of the proposed projects to be funded, to increase parliament’s confidence in the effectiveness of funding; and helping legislators “foresee” the potential risks and expected costs of no funding or insufficient funding, to remind legislators of their potential responsibilities for the consequences.

Dr. Xu’s research in the context of institutionalization of environmental issues has showed an increasingly fierce political debate and legislative inquiry process on environmental issues, and also pointed out that government must constantly optimize negotiation strategies in striving for funds, which will undoubtedly help to understand the bureaucracy in the environmental budget legislative process. At the same time, through a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, she tried to show the decision-making process and game logic within institutions, which aroused the interest and affirmation of the teachers and students of Tongji present.

In the Q&A session, young teachers from the Departments of Political Science, Sociology, International Relations and Diplomacy of the School put forward personal opinions and questions on the innovation and extension of related research from the interaction between environment and technology, the comparison between environmental politics and environmental economics, and the relationship between internal mechanisms and external environment. Doctoral and master students from the School also asked their questions on the analytical logic of environmental politics and other aspects. Dr. Xu gave wonderful answers to these questions based on her own experience and full understanding of data and cases.

In closing, Associate Dean Zhong thanked Dr. Xu and the participating teachers and students of Tongji. He believed that all the participants had taken away valuable knowledge about environmental politics from this workshop, and her research findings will have academic value and practical significance for cross-disciplinary collaborative research. Finally, he welcomed Dr. Xu to Tongji again for more sharing and communication.