Governing the Commons without Intimacy: Neighboring Stranger Communities and the Everyday Implementation of Environmental Policy

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9: Governance, Policy, and the State

Abstract

How can social policy reshape everyday life and culture? Scholarship on state-society relations and commons governance has emphasized either top-down regulation or community-based self-governance, yet provides limited guidance for how the two interact to reshape everyday practices in urban settings. This study identifies structural and normative conditions that connect social policy to local communities, enabling the reconfiguration of individuals' daily habits such as waste-sorting. The Neighboring Stranger Community (NSC) concept is introduced as a community type in which residents share bounded space yet remain largely anonymous to one another. The NSC plays a central role through institutionalization and mutual monitoring enabled by low intimacy, while value alignment between state policy and community interests further sustains compliance. These conditions are examined through the case of the volume-based waste fee (VWF) policy in South Korea using national waste statistics (1992-2004) and continuous difference-in-differences design. The analysis shows that regions with a higher share of apartment housing experienced a greater improvement in recycling after the VWF policy. Furthermore, the mechanisms underlying the NSC are investigated through moderation models using survey data (n = 1,254) and a key informant interview. The results show that low intimacy and moderate residential duration are core features that enable the NSC to function effectively. Value alignment, achieved through civil society's participation in the pilot project and the policy's improvement of urban living conditions, further sustained compliance. These findings highlight that NSCs such as apartment communities can function as intermediaries in commons governance even without strong personal ties, overcoming the state-community dichotomy in previous scholarship. Recognizing such community structures as part of the social foundation for policy implementation offers meaningful insights for future environmental governance.

Author

• Eunsang Kim, Yonsei University