Julia Christine Marinaccio

Environmental Governance in Rural China in the Information Age (ongoing since August 2020)

In my postdoctoral research, I study informational environmental governance in rural China. I draw on theories from the sociology of technology and science to focus on the technical aspects of informational environmental governance. Learning from case studies in different environmental fields, I examine the following three aspects: (1) The role technologies of environmental management play in the relationships between individuals and agencies in different places. (2) The way these technologies reconfigure their users – that is, to what extent they shape the users’ relationship with the natural environment and their understanding of its management –, and so affect practices and outcomes of environmental management in China’s countryside. (3) The wider implications of the political imperative of technology-supported informational governance for those places, where technological innovations are absent or subjected to limits.

Dealing with the absence of absentee voting: Taiwan’s 2020 elections in transnational voter spaces (ongoing since March 2020)

Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections 2020 became a significant political event in Taiwan, drawing unusually broad international attention. The candidates, their campaigns, and exit polls were ubiquitous in national and international media, turning Taiwan’s elections into a question of national identity and survival which also resulted in high voter mobilization beyond the island of Taiwan. Whilst there is abundant literature focusing on Overseas policies and transnational governance, much fewer studies have explored how Taiwan’s population abroad shapes domestic politics at home. What is more, there is a lacuna on voting behavior and voter mobilization in Overseas Taiwanese spaces. Against the absence of institutions that allow its population to vote from abroad, the question arises of how Overseas Taiwanese deal with this lack of opportunity. Drawing on theories of transnational political participation, this study aims to enhance our understanding of the political engagement of Overseas Taiwanese at home with a case study on Austria. It explores the motives and interests that drive the action of individuals to engage in, or refrain from, political participation, in terms of voting and voter mobilization. The findings of this research rely on data drawn from a mixed-methods design which includes a survey among Overseas Taiwanese in Austria, interviews and private conversations with associations and individuals, document analysis, and publicly available data in online forums and social media groups. The research aims to contribute to ongoing debates on immigrant votes in the discipline of Political Science and add new findings of transnational experiences of Taiwanese to the discipline of Overseas Chinese Studies.

Operationalizing Ideology: Cadre Training and Environmental Governance in China (book project: publication of dissertation)

In this book, I explore the role of training Chinese officials in the central government's efforts to operationalize what I call the Chinese Communist Party's ideology of sustainability. Departing from the assumption that regime resilience relies the party-state's capacity to turn its propagated values into consistent action, I argue the training of Chinese state officials to be a critical instrument in the party’s attempt to turn its abstract ideas into concrete action on the ground. By means of a case study on the State Forestry Administration, I unpick China’s training structure comprised of cadre and sector-specific training, explain the processes of ideological prescription, and reveal why training fails to enhance local capacities where it is most needed.

China's Environmental Image(s) Abroad (together with Marion Oberbach) (October 2019 - September 2020, completed)

China’s influence and impact on international climate politics and ecological systems abroad has been on the rise and the current central government under the leadership of Xi Jinping has made environmental and ecological protection a top priority. Although research on China’s image in German media is abundant, there is a lacuna of focus studies exploring China’s environmental image in detail, and data dates to before 2014. In our paper, we present findings of qualitative content analysis of 315 news reports in three major German media outlets between October 2015-2016 and October 2017-18. We show that China-related environmental news touch upon a variety of environmental issues, but only a few reports engage in an in-depth discussion or analysis and they mostly relate to German or European discourses. Despite all-encompassing developments in China’s environmental politics and governance over the past years, the majority of the reports take a critically negative stance in most environmental fields. Notwithstanding, our topic analysis suggests a slight trend towards more neutral or positive-optimistic reporting, especially in the fields of renewable energies and electric mobility. China’s new positioning in international climate politics resonates in German news reports in which it has turned from a delaying into an active actor who evokes continues to evoke high expectations.