Panel Paper:
Ecological Civilization Construction and Audit Supervision in China: A Preliminary Theoretical Framework
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Webinar Room 3 (Online Zoom Webinar)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Ecological civilization construction(shengtai wenming jianshe,生态文明建设, short for ECC) is not only a national strategy for ecologically sustainable development in China, but also a hopeful vision that governments will do their best on building a healthy global ecosystem. As one of the fundamental supervision institutional arrangement in China's national governance system, national audit is authorized to systematically monitor public money, state-owned resources, governments and officials’ accountability, public policy in the construction process. To better understand how audit supervision(shenji jiandu, 审计监督) works to promote ECC, this article suggests a preliminary theoretical framework of national audit based on the interpretation of the top-level design and audit practice since 2015. I begin this article by exploring the demands for audit supervision in ECC. As an external supervisor, national audit is expected to close the policy-implementation gap in the process of ECC. Focusing on the metagovernance function of public audit, I point out that national audit acts as a powerful metagovernor according to the top-level design. After describing the audit practice, I build a hybrid metagovernance framework of national audit to analyze its impact on the ECC. I also identify the challenges of national audit which need more studies on how national and local audit offices perform duty effectively according to the complex and dynamic of ECC. I hope the first proposed framework could strategically support the policymakers, practitioner, and researchers to understand the relationship between ECC and audit supervision in China.
Full Paper:
