Institutional Design of Collaborative Water Governance: The River Chief System in China

ABSTRACT Collaborative governance has been increasingly applied in the field of water governance. However, this approach is often criticized for overlooking the political nature of water governance and the necessity of collaboration across multiple dimensions. The river chief system (RCS) in China represents a collaborative water governance approach designed to address collaboration challenges in Chinese water governance sector and ultimately combat its severe river pollution. This study develops a conceptual framework to analyze the institutional design of the RCS and examine its effectiveness in structuring vertical, horizontal, and territorial collaborations in local water governance. Taking the RCS in Xiamen as a case study, we find that public entities predominantly engage in collaborative initiatives mandated by higher‐level authorities, while collaborations between state and nonstate actors mainly focus on information collection and public environmental education. The collaborative processes under the RCS are characterized by the unchallenged authority of political leaders, exclusive decision‐making mechanisms, restricted information flows, implicit pay‐off structures, and limited involvement of nonstate actors. Consequently, the institutional design of the RCS falls short in fostering effective multidimensional collaboration among diverse actors. This study contributes to the literature on collaborative governance by offering insights into the institutional design of collaborative water governance within an authoritarian context and sheds lights on China's recent reforms of environmental governance.