Yixian Sun
Biographic Data
| ID | 3587927 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yixian Sun |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yixian |
| FAMILY NAME | Sun |
| SIGNATURE | SUN Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bath |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2415-2327 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 125 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Carbon lock-in due to policy myopia: The influence of political elites and interest groups on Pakistan's energy governance
Varieties of Local Implementation for Net Zero in China: Evidence From Three Cities
Since China updated its nationally determined contributions in 2021, achieving carbon peaking before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060—the so‐called “dual carbon” goals—has become the new guiding principle of China's climate governance. However, few studies have examined the implementation of China's dual carbon goals, particularly the variation at the subnational level. To bridge this knowledge gap, we investigate the strategies to implemen…
Mining governance and green energy transitions: Developmental implications for the global south
Compound path dependence in green transitions: A comparative analysis of EV policy coordination in Indonesia and Thailand
The rise and characteristics of China in global environmental governance: Insights from China’s global environmental leadership database
With China’s progress on green development and recent geopolitical shifts, the international community has high expectations for China to lead global environmental governance. However, China’s efforts to lead international environmental cooperation remain understudied. We developed China’s Global Environmental Leadership (CGEL) Database to systematically track international environmental governance initiatives led by Chinese actors. Our analysis …
Dataset development in earth system governance: Learnings, stakes, and pathways for impact
The construction and use of datasets have become an important practice in Earth system governance research. By systematically cataloguing various outcomes, policy issues, actors, sites, and processes, datasets enhance the reliability, transparency, and replicability of research. Yet, despite growing interest, efforts to share data, integrate datasets, and develop common standards remain fragmented. This Perspective surveys various scholarly effor…
Is goal-setting an effective strategy for global sustainability governance? Insights from the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets. This agreement sets a 15-year plan to steer the world towards a more sustainable and equitable trajectory. However, as we have passed halfway through this agenda, the world is far from achieving most goals within this timeframe. Such lack of progress has even prompted the UN Secretary …
Global Environmental Politics amid Geopolitical Turbulence
Over the past decade, three overlapping trends have fundamentally reshaped and now characterize the global geopolitical order: the rise of emerging powers, increasing military conflicts, and growing international trade tensions. These features of the global order are deeply connected to global environmental politics (GEP) and governance, as a warming world spurs some aspects of geopolitical change, while the geopolitical dynamics themselves have …
China Aspires to be an Environmental Leader: How Should the Rest of the World Engage
China has transformed from a laggard to a rising leader of environmental governance. It plays a unique and essential role in promoting environmental cooperation, financing and implementing global green infrastructure, and generating and disseminating environmental technology and scientific knowledge. On each front, global progress cannot be made without China, especially with the US’ retreat from global leadership under the second Trump presidenc…
Rethinking the science-policy interface for chemicals, waste, and pollution: Challenging core assumptions
Negotiations for a new science-policy interface aim to complement similar bodies for climate change and biodiversity. • Existing models of science-policy panels are ill-suited to address unique aspects of chemicals and waste issues. • Policy uptake is a key feature of the new panel’s design. • Participation by stakeholders is vital, but industry input requires safeguards. • Further research on chemicals and waste issues will be able to contribute…
No more coal abroad! Unpacking the drivers of China's green shift in overseas energy finance
Over the last decade, China's development finance for coal-fired power plants has been seen as a major barrier to clean energy transition in developing countries. In September 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China would stop supporting new coal projects abroad. This pledge was made beyond the expectation of many observers as it seems to deviate from China's long-standing approach of non-interference in its overseas development p…
Mask Diplomacy? Understanding China's Goals in Delivering Medical Aid in the First Wave of the Covid-19 Pandemic
In the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, China provided medical assistance on an unprecedented scale. While some observers have underscored the strategic purposes of China's COVID-19 aid, referred to as “mask diplomacy,” they have yet to assess this argument against empirical evidence. We seek to examine whether China's medical aid was used as a strategic tool, or it remained reactionary and fragmented, by combining a new dataset on the global…
How information, social norms, and experience with novel meat substitutes can create positive political feedback and demand-side policy change
The food system causes more than a third of the global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, of which half are from livestock. Shifting towards plant-based diets could significantly reduce deforestation, protect biodiversity, and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris climate targets. Arguably, large-scale shifts in meat consumption require ambitious policy change. Yet, deep-rooted eating habits, pleasure, cultural …
Environmental governance of China's Belt and Road Initiative
On the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we present this special symposium to advance knowledge on environmental governance of China’s overseas engagement. While China’s fast-growing investments across the world have large implications for global and local environmental politics, this phenomenon has so far received insufficient attention of students of environmental politics. Moreover, China has become increasingly proactive…
The many aspects of voluntary sustainability governance: Unpacking consumers’ support for tea standards in China and the UK
Voluntary standards have become a promising mode of governance to promote sustainable production and consumption in global value chains. Despite a growing number of studies on consumers' preferences for sustainable products, insufficient attention has been paid to the heterogeneity of existing standard systems, which prioritize different issues (e.g., environment, labor, and health), have different origins and sponsors, imply different costs and …
Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the central normative framework for sustainable development worldwide. The effectiveness of governing by such broad global goals, however, remains uncertain, and we lack comprehensive meta-studies that assess the political impact of the goals across countries and globally. We present here condensed evidence from an analysis of over 3,000 scientific studies on the Sustainabl…
Greening China’s Belt and Road Initiative: From Norm Localization to Norm Subsidiarity
From 2015, China began to promote eco-sustainability in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through not only vision statements but also specific guidelines and governance initiatives. What has driven these policy changes? Bringing together theories of norm localization, norm subsidiarity, and policy deliberation, we argue that China’s move toward green BRI began as a norm localization process where environmental norms emerged in the open policy sp…
Emergence and Structuring of the Clean Energy Regime Complex
While many have observed a regime complex for global clean energy governance, research has not yet accorded sufficient attention to the interplay of multiple streams of politics that have led to the structuring of overlapping governance initiatives and, ultimately, the articulation of a set of norms that hold this regime complex together. To understand these dynamics, this article argues that with the visibly increased agency of transnational act…
The role and limits of strategic framing for promoting sustainable consumption and policy
Sustainable commodity governance and the global south
The global economic system and access and allocation in earth system governance
Ensuring sustainability of earth systems is intrinsically dependent on the incorporation of equity and fairness in the regimes and institutions that govern the global economy. Accordingly, to design effective and just earth system governance (ESG), it is crucial to understand how the global economic system affects access to and allocation of environmental benefits and burdens among people and countries around the world and what are the relevant c…
Varieties of Crises: Comparing the Politics of Covid-19 and Climate Change
The COVID-19 pandemic is the largest public health crisis in recent history. Many states have taken unprecedented action in responding to the pandemic by restricting international and domestic travel, limiting economic activity, and passing massive social welfare bills. This begs the question, why have states taken extreme measures for COVID-19 but not the climate crisis? By comparing state responses to COVID-19 with those to the climate crisis, …
Promises and risks of nonstate action in climate and sustainability governance
Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement stand as milestone diplomatic achievements. However, immense discrepancies between political commitments and governmental action remain. Combined national climate commitments fall far short of the Paris Agreement's 1.5/2°C targets. Similar political ambition gaps persist across various areas of sustainable development. Many therefore argue that actions by nonstate actors, such as businesses an…
Private Governance in Developing Countries: Drivers of Voluntary Carbon Offset Programs
In the Paris Agreement era of climate governance, private market-based initiatives are expected to play a catalytic role in achieving global commitments. However, the literature has been largely silent on the political causes of the variable and often limited uptake of such initiatives in the Global South. This article uses original project-level data to investigate the participation in voluntary carbon offset (VCO) programs across developing cou…
Chen, Ling. Manipulating Globalization: The Influence of Bureaucrats on Business in China
Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the central normative framework for sustainable development worldwide. The effectiveness of governing by such broad global goals, however, remains uncertain, and we lack comprehensive meta-studies that assess the political impact of the goals across countries and globally. We present here condensed evidence from an analysis of over 3,000 scientific studies on the Sustainabl…
Promises and risks of nonstate action in climate and sustainability governance
Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement stand as milestone diplomatic achievements. However, immense discrepancies between political commitments and governmental action remain. Combined national climate commitments fall far short of the Paris Agreement's 1.5/2°C targets. Similar political ambition gaps persist across various areas of sustainable development. Many therefore argue that actions by nonstate actors, such as businesses an…
Emerging markets and private governance: The political economy of sustainable palm oil in China and India
Private governance programs are now an important source of regulation in global value chains – particularly in context of North–South trade. But can these programs play a similar role in the value chains feeding into fast-growing emerging markets like China and India? Most scholars doing research on the topic draw a pessimistic picture. They argue that the scope conditions for private sustainability governance are not yet present in these markets…
Greening China’s Belt and Road Initiative: From Norm Localization to Norm Subsidiarity
From 2015, China began to promote eco-sustainability in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through not only vision statements but also specific guidelines and governance initiatives. What has driven these policy changes? Bringing together theories of norm localization, norm subsidiarity, and policy deliberation, we argue that China’s move toward green BRI began as a norm localization process where environmental norms emerged in the open policy sp…
Microblogging-Based Civic Participation on Environment in China: A Case Study of the PM 2.5 Campaign
Poor air quality has been affecting the Chinese people for many years due to the country’s speedy industrialization and urbanization. However, very few initiatives had been taken by civil society until 2011. The air pollution campaign between October 2011 and March 2012 initiated on a Chinese microblogging website, mobilized millions of citizens and effected policy change. It is often seen as a milestone in the chronology of public participation …
Swimming in their own direction: Explaining domestic variation in homegrown sustainability governance for aquaculture in Asia
Transnational Public-Private Partnerships as Learning Facilitators: Global Governance of Mercury
Drawing from theories of regime interplay and social learning, this article investigates linkages between hybrid governance schemes and intergovernmental regimes. My analytic framework suggests that, by enhancing cooperation among stakeholders, transnational public-private partnerships will facilitate policy-makers’ learning, and accordingly advance the formation of intergovernmental regimes. Here I use qualitative methods to examine the influenc…
The role and limits of strategic framing for promoting sustainable consumption and policy
Sustainable commodity governance and the global south
Private Governance in Developing Countries: Drivers of Voluntary Carbon Offset Programs
In the Paris Agreement era of climate governance, private market-based initiatives are expected to play a catalytic role in achieving global commitments. However, the literature has been largely silent on the political causes of the variable and often limited uptake of such initiatives in the Global South. This article uses original project-level data to investigate the participation in voluntary carbon offset (VCO) programs across developing cou…
How information, social norms, and experience with novel meat substitutes can create positive political feedback and demand-side policy change
The food system causes more than a third of the global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, of which half are from livestock. Shifting towards plant-based diets could significantly reduce deforestation, protect biodiversity, and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris climate targets. Arguably, large-scale shifts in meat consumption require ambitious policy change. Yet, deep-rooted eating habits, pleasure, cultural …
Varieties of Crises: Comparing the Politics of Covid-19 and Climate Change
The COVID-19 pandemic is the largest public health crisis in recent history. Many states have taken unprecedented action in responding to the pandemic by restricting international and domestic travel, limiting economic activity, and passing massive social welfare bills. This begs the question, why have states taken extreme measures for COVID-19 but not the climate crisis? By comparing state responses to COVID-19 with those to the climate crisis, …
China Aspires to be an Environmental Leader: How Should the Rest of the World Engage
China has transformed from a laggard to a rising leader of environmental governance. It plays a unique and essential role in promoting environmental cooperation, financing and implementing global green infrastructure, and generating and disseminating environmental technology and scientific knowledge. On each front, global progress cannot be made without China, especially with the US’ retreat from global leadership under the second Trump presidenc…
Rethinking the science-policy interface for chemicals, waste, and pollution: Challenging core assumptions
Negotiations for a new science-policy interface aim to complement similar bodies for climate change and biodiversity. • Existing models of science-policy panels are ill-suited to address unique aspects of chemicals and waste issues. • Policy uptake is a key feature of the new panel’s design. • Participation by stakeholders is vital, but industry input requires safeguards. • Further research on chemicals and waste issues will be able to contribute…
No more coal abroad! Unpacking the drivers of China's green shift in overseas energy finance
Over the last decade, China's development finance for coal-fired power plants has been seen as a major barrier to clean energy transition in developing countries. In September 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China would stop supporting new coal projects abroad. This pledge was made beyond the expectation of many observers as it seems to deviate from China's long-standing approach of non-interference in its overseas development p…
Mask Diplomacy? Understanding China's Goals in Delivering Medical Aid in the First Wave of the Covid-19 Pandemic
In the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, China provided medical assistance on an unprecedented scale. While some observers have underscored the strategic purposes of China's COVID-19 aid, referred to as “mask diplomacy,” they have yet to assess this argument against empirical evidence. We seek to examine whether China's medical aid was used as a strategic tool, or it remained reactionary and fragmented, by combining a new dataset on the global…
The global economic system and access and allocation in earth system governance
Ensuring sustainability of earth systems is intrinsically dependent on the incorporation of equity and fairness in the regimes and institutions that govern the global economy. Accordingly, to design effective and just earth system governance (ESG), it is crucial to understand how the global economic system affects access to and allocation of environmental benefits and burdens among people and countries around the world and what are the relevant c…
Environmental governance of China's Belt and Road Initiative
On the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we present this special symposium to advance knowledge on environmental governance of China’s overseas engagement. While China’s fast-growing investments across the world have large implications for global and local environmental politics, this phenomenon has so far received insufficient attention of students of environmental politics. Moreover, China has become increasingly proactive…
Emergence and Structuring of the Clean Energy Regime Complex
While many have observed a regime complex for global clean energy governance, research has not yet accorded sufficient attention to the interplay of multiple streams of politics that have led to the structuring of overlapping governance initiatives and, ultimately, the articulation of a set of norms that hold this regime complex together. To understand these dynamics, this article argues that with the visibly increased agency of transnational act…
Microblogging-Based Civic Participation on Environment in China: A Case Study of the PM 2.5 Campaign
Poor air quality has been affecting the Chinese people for many years due to the country’s speedy industrialization and urbanization. However, very few initiatives had been taken by civil society until 2011. The air pollution campaign between October 2011 and March 2012 initiated on a Chinese microblogging website, mobilized millions of citizens and effected policy change. It is often seen as a milestone in the chronology of public participation …
Transnational Public-Private Partnerships as Learning Facilitators: Global Governance of Mercury
Drawing from theories of regime interplay and social learning, this article investigates linkages between hybrid governance schemes and intergovernmental regimes. My analytic framework suggests that, by enhancing cooperation among stakeholders, transnational public-private partnerships will facilitate policy-makers’ learning, and accordingly advance the formation of intergovernmental regimes. Here I use qualitative methods to examine the influenc…
Emerging markets and private governance: The political economy of sustainable palm oil in China and India
Private governance programs are now an important source of regulation in global value chains – particularly in context of North–South trade. But can these programs play a similar role in the value chains feeding into fast-growing emerging markets like China and India? Most scholars doing research on the topic draw a pessimistic picture. They argue that the scope conditions for private sustainability governance are not yet present in these markets…
Promises and risks of nonstate action in climate and sustainability governance
Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement stand as milestone diplomatic achievements. However, immense discrepancies between political commitments and governmental action remain. Combined national climate commitments fall far short of the Paris Agreement's 1.5/2°C targets. Similar political ambition gaps persist across various areas of sustainable development. Many therefore argue that actions by nonstate actors, such as businesses an…
Private Governance in Developing Countries: Drivers of Voluntary Carbon Offset Programs
In the Paris Agreement era of climate governance, private market-based initiatives are expected to play a catalytic role in achieving global commitments. However, the literature has been largely silent on the political causes of the variable and often limited uptake of such initiatives in the Global South. This article uses original project-level data to investigate the participation in voluntary carbon offset (VCO) programs across developing cou…
Chen, Ling. Manipulating Globalization: The Influence of Bureaucrats on Business in China
Swimming in their own direction: Explaining domestic variation in homegrown sustainability governance for aquaculture in Asia
The global economic system and access and allocation in earth system governance
Ensuring sustainability of earth systems is intrinsically dependent on the incorporation of equity and fairness in the regimes and institutions that govern the global economy. Accordingly, to design effective and just earth system governance (ESG), it is crucial to understand how the global economic system affects access to and allocation of environmental benefits and burdens among people and countries around the world and what are the relevant c…
Varieties of Crises: Comparing the Politics of Covid-19 and Climate Change
The COVID-19 pandemic is the largest public health crisis in recent history. Many states have taken unprecedented action in responding to the pandemic by restricting international and domestic travel, limiting economic activity, and passing massive social welfare bills. This begs the question, why have states taken extreme measures for COVID-19 but not the climate crisis? By comparing state responses to COVID-19 with those to the climate crisis, …
The role and limits of strategic framing for promoting sustainable consumption and policy
Sustainable commodity governance and the global south
The many aspects of voluntary sustainability governance: Unpacking consumers’ support for tea standards in China and the UK
Voluntary standards have become a promising mode of governance to promote sustainable production and consumption in global value chains. Despite a growing number of studies on consumers' preferences for sustainable products, insufficient attention has been paid to the heterogeneity of existing standard systems, which prioritize different issues (e.g., environment, labor, and health), have different origins and sponsors, imply different costs and …
Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the central normative framework for sustainable development worldwide. The effectiveness of governing by such broad global goals, however, remains uncertain, and we lack comprehensive meta-studies that assess the political impact of the goals across countries and globally. We present here condensed evidence from an analysis of over 3,000 scientific studies on the Sustainabl…
Greening China’s Belt and Road Initiative: From Norm Localization to Norm Subsidiarity
From 2015, China began to promote eco-sustainability in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through not only vision statements but also specific guidelines and governance initiatives. What has driven these policy changes? Bringing together theories of norm localization, norm subsidiarity, and policy deliberation, we argue that China’s move toward green BRI began as a norm localization process where environmental norms emerged in the open policy sp…
Emergence and Structuring of the Clean Energy Regime Complex
While many have observed a regime complex for global clean energy governance, research has not yet accorded sufficient attention to the interplay of multiple streams of politics that have led to the structuring of overlapping governance initiatives and, ultimately, the articulation of a set of norms that hold this regime complex together. To understand these dynamics, this article argues that with the visibly increased agency of transnational act…
Mask Diplomacy? Understanding China's Goals in Delivering Medical Aid in the First Wave of the Covid-19 Pandemic
In the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, China provided medical assistance on an unprecedented scale. While some observers have underscored the strategic purposes of China's COVID-19 aid, referred to as “mask diplomacy,” they have yet to assess this argument against empirical evidence. We seek to examine whether China's medical aid was used as a strategic tool, or it remained reactionary and fragmented, by combining a new dataset on the global…
How information, social norms, and experience with novel meat substitutes can create positive political feedback and demand-side policy change
The food system causes more than a third of the global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, of which half are from livestock. Shifting towards plant-based diets could significantly reduce deforestation, protect biodiversity, and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris climate targets. Arguably, large-scale shifts in meat consumption require ambitious policy change. Yet, deep-rooted eating habits, pleasure, cultural …
Environmental governance of China's Belt and Road Initiative
On the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we present this special symposium to advance knowledge on environmental governance of China’s overseas engagement. While China’s fast-growing investments across the world have large implications for global and local environmental politics, this phenomenon has so far received insufficient attention of students of environmental politics. Moreover, China has become increasingly proactive…
No more coal abroad! Unpacking the drivers of China's green shift in overseas energy finance
Over the last decade, China's development finance for coal-fired power plants has been seen as a major barrier to clean energy transition in developing countries. In September 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China would stop supporting new coal projects abroad. This pledge was made beyond the expectation of many observers as it seems to deviate from China's long-standing approach of non-interference in its overseas development p…
China Aspires to be an Environmental Leader: How Should the Rest of the World Engage
China has transformed from a laggard to a rising leader of environmental governance. It plays a unique and essential role in promoting environmental cooperation, financing and implementing global green infrastructure, and generating and disseminating environmental technology and scientific knowledge. On each front, global progress cannot be made without China, especially with the US’ retreat from global leadership under the second Trump presidenc…
Rethinking the science-policy interface for chemicals, waste, and pollution: Challenging core assumptions
Negotiations for a new science-policy interface aim to complement similar bodies for climate change and biodiversity. • Existing models of science-policy panels are ill-suited to address unique aspects of chemicals and waste issues. • Policy uptake is a key feature of the new panel’s design. • Participation by stakeholders is vital, but industry input requires safeguards. • Further research on chemicals and waste issues will be able to contribute…
Carbon lock-in due to policy myopia: The influence of political elites and interest groups on Pakistan's energy governance
Varieties of Local Implementation for Net Zero in China: Evidence From Three Cities
Since China updated its nationally determined contributions in 2021, achieving carbon peaking before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060—the so‐called “dual carbon” goals—has become the new guiding principle of China's climate governance. However, few studies have examined the implementation of China's dual carbon goals, particularly the variation at the subnational level. To bridge this knowledge gap, we investigate the strategies to implemen…
Mining governance and green energy transitions: Developmental implications for the global south
Compound path dependence in green transitions: A comparative analysis of EV policy coordination in Indonesia and Thailand
Political science (20 works) · Corporate governance (16 works) · Economics (16 works) · Politics (14 works) · Business (12 works) · Sustainability (12 works) · China (11 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works)