3. Theoretical Approaches to the System of Governance of Renewable Energy in China

We have discussed the puzzle of how and under what conditions good governance can be generated in our review of the literature pertinent to sustainable energy. It seems that one of the notable controversies underlying the account of orthodox governance is about the effectiveness of decentralisation, the main question being whether decentralisation is conducive to achieving substantial changes of policy and governance (e.g. Bardhan and Mookherjee 2007). This discussion has not only become prevalent in the literature of governance theory but has also increasingly become the central point of dispute in the literature of environmental politics. The rise of the theory and practice of decentralisation is increasingly used in the ‘back-story’, as it were, of globalisation, in which scepticism about the role of the state has prevailed (Bevir 2009). Considered as the means and process of displacement of state power (Pierre and Peters 2000, p. 89), decentralisation is not only a new solution to economic and administrative public demand but is also regarded as a normative institutional design that is plausible for the modern state (Stoker 1998; Rhodes 2007).