How Standing Coordination Can Sustain Environmental Enforcement Between Policy Campaigns in China

Chinese environmental governance has long depended on campaigns, episodic concentrations of political attention that temporarily align fragmented agencies. Whether that dependence can be outgrown remains unsettled: campaign and routine enforcement coexist, producing contradictory signals in some settings and a durable hybrid in others. This article proposes that an organizational condition separates these outcomes. Political sponsorship cannot be kept in reserve, but the coordinative capacity a campaign assembles, namely visibility of violations, control of a cross-departmental case, and interagency cooperation, can be held between mobilizations by a standing coordinating organization. The argument is developed through a longitudinal single-case study of a polluting chemical plant’s closure in Nantong, drawing on twenty interviews, the organization’s founding provision, policy documents, an administrative chronology, and operating records. Process tracing across three failed mobilizations and one successful closure identifies three mechanisms: standing detection, case ownership, and embedded accountability, and shows the pre-Centre process breaking at different points in different episodes. Renewed leadership attention accelerated an existing case instead of rebuilding one. By explaining how campaign-built capacity persists between mobilizations, this article specifies an organizational condition for sustainable public administration and durable environmental policy implementation, offered as a proposition for comparative testing.