Climate promotion tournaments and collaborative governance: central-local dynamics in China’s carbon neutrality policy implementation

The ‘promotion tournament’ constitutes a hierarchical incentive mechanism wherein superior governments incentivize subordinate officials by conditioning career advancement on demonstrably outperforming their peers, thereby securing recognition and upward mobility within the administrative hierarchy. This study introduces the novel theoretical construct of ‘climate promotion tournaments’ – a conceptual innovation examining whether competitive intergovernmental dynamics can be harnessed to foster collaborative governance between central and local governments. Employing a mixed-methods approach that synthesizes empirical extensive field studies with systematic documentary analysis, we formulate an evolutionary game model to rigorously analyze strategic interactions, behavioral dynamics, and equilibrium stability under China’s carbon neutrality policy implementation. Results indicate that an ideal equilibrium involves the central government effectively advancing the climate promotion tournaments, while local governments actively engage in these tournaments. Economic capacity and promotion prospects are two key factors in central-local dynamics within climate promotion tournaments. As the economy grows faster and promotion prospects increase, the central and local governments become more active in advancing climate promotion tournaments, which in turn makes it easier to form collaborative governance. The findings validate the efficacy of climate promotion tournaments in fostering central-local collaborative governance, while also extending theoretical frameworks and practical insights to improve carbon neutrality policy implementation.