The Politics of Time

Abstract

Abstract Over the past twenty years, historians and political scientists have explored extensively how structures, institutions, coalitions and recently also information have affected China’s environmental governance. Much less is known about how time consciousness has informed political action. This paper draws on theories of historical times to analyse key party and government documents on forest management published between 1949 and 2021. Two research questions are tackled. How has time been negotiated in programmatic ideas of forest development? How has time-consciousness connected to forest policymaking in different historical periods? The findings demonstrate that environmental policies in China were not only informed by ideological struggles over programmatic ideas and how (i.e., by which governance mode and instruments) to best manage natural resources. The policies were also affected by ideological struggles over temporalities and time horizons. The findings draw attention to an under-researched factor in political processes in China and across societies and political systems.