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This study examines spatially dynamic diffusion processes of local policy adoption among municipal governments. Using city-level climate action plans (CAPs) adopted in the Southern California region during 2000-2018 as a study frame, our analysis unpacks spatial variations in the effects of geographic neighbors and regional leaders on local policy diffusion processes. We first argue that both factors will spur CAP diffusion among city governments. We then develop a novel hypothesis of a spatial moderating effect between these two influences. Specifically, we theorize that adjacent neighboring diffusion effects will be less prominent in the areas with nearby regional innovators, while neighboring effects will be more prominent in the absence of regional policy leadership. To examine this, we first use traditional event history and logistic regression analyses. We then investigate inter-city diffusion dynamics in greater detail with a novel geographically weighted regression (GWR) method that unravels regional variations in local diffusion effects. Our aggregate analysis finds that both geographic neighbors and regional leaders drive the diffusion of local CAP adoptions. The novel application of GWR further shows marked spatial variations within the region, suggesting that neighboring proximity-driven diffusion effects are muted by the influence of regional leaders. By spatially unpacking the effect of geographic proximity and regional leadership in policy diffusion, this study enhances our understanding of dynamic and varied diffusion processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of participation by indigenous peoples in Latin America in the political process of Environmental Policy Integration (EPI). Although the benefits of participation have been largely taken for granted, this article shows that participation makes the policy integration process even more complex. By selecting two cases of clean energy infrastructure projects (a wind power plant and a natural gas pipeline) in Mexico, whose policy processes included an indigenous consultation, this article traces the competing problem definitions in public policy debates and the resulting policy frame in relation to sustainable development. The goal is to assess the ways that indigenous consultation functions as a procedural EPI instrument aimed at boosting participation from a public that is largely composed by indigenous communities in the decision-making stage. This article contributes to the existing literature on policy integration in two ways: (1) it explores the role of participation by non-state actors in the policy integration process, especially in highly politicized policy areas such as energy and the environment, and (2) it identifies the limitations of applicability of policy integration literature, particularly in contexts where state–society interactions are radically different compared to Western countries, including Latin American countries inhabited by indigenous groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributing a new South American case study, this paper seeks to advance the research agenda on processes of policy integration by developing a better understanding of how nascent subsystems become integrated into mature ones and the role that changing beliefs of advocacy coalitions play in fostering policy integration. The paper examines environmental policy integration in Uruguay's forestry sector since the 1990s and is based on an inductive qualitative analysis of policy documents, sector reports, parliament hearings and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. This demonstrates that environmental policy integration has increased continuously since the 1990s, accelerating particularly during the 2000s. We can derive three insights that specifically address this path of integration: a change in the policy beliefs of the dominant advocacy coalition, international salience of the minority coalition's beliefs and participatory policy processes that foster interactions between opposing coalitions. Despite this, the two advocacy coalitions have crystallized with fundamentally different deep core beliefs about what a sustainable forestry sector should be. While one coalition argues that commercial tree plantations are sufficiently regulated in environmental terms, the other coalition maintains that the way that the pulp industry has developed in Uruguay is fundamentally unsustainable and therefore seeks to change the forestry sector as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effective conservation and promotion of biodiversity requires its integration into a wide range of sectoral policies. For this to happen, the issue must receive attention across policy sectors. Yet, we know little about how attention to the issue evolves over time and across sectors. Drawing from the literature on environmental policy integration/mainstreaming and policy process theories, we develop competing hypotheses, expecting either increasing or fluctuating attention to the biodiversity issue. We tested the hypotheses using the case of Swiss politics between 1999 and 2018. Applying a combination of computational methods, we analyze the content of a comprehensive collection of policy documents (n ≈ 440,000) attributed to 20 policy sectors. Comparing the sectors, we find that (1) a persistent increase in attention is the exception, (2) if there is an increase in attention, it is likely to be temporary, and (3) the most common pattern is that of invariant attention over time. Biodiversity integration—if it does happen at all—tends to occur in cycles rather than in steady long-term shifts. This implies that the conservation of biodiversity does not follow the cross-sectoral nature of the problem, but is subject to the dynamics of "politics," where actors, because of limited resources, engage with (aspects of) an issue only for a certain amount of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union's 2030 climate and energy package introduced fundamental changes compared to its 2020 predecessor. These changes included a stronger focus on the internal market and an increased emphasis on technology-neutral decarbonization while simultaneously de-emphasizing the renewables target. This article investigates whether changes in domestic policy strategies of leading member states in European climate policy preceded the observed changes in EU policy. Disaggregating strategic change into changes in different elements (goals, objectives, instrumental logic), allows us to go beyond analyzing the relative prioritization of different goals, and to analyze how policy requirements for reaching those goals were dynamically redefined over time. To this end, we introduce a new method, which based on insights from social network analysis, enables us to systematically trace those strategic chances. We find that shifts in national strategies of the investigated member states preceded the shift in EU policy. In particular, countries reframed their understanding of supply security, and pushed for the internal electricity market also as a security measure to balance fluctuating renewables. Hence, the increasing focus on markets and market integration in the European 2030 package echoed the increasingly central role of the internal market for electricity supply security in national strategies. These findings also highlight that countries dynamically redefined their goals relative to the different phases of the energy transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) is frequently used to explain agenda setting and decision making across a variety of policy domains, it has been criticized for failing to contribute to theoretically rigorous and empirically falsifiable policy scholarship. This study argues that by explicitly attending to the institutional context in which a policy process occurs—a previously under-articulated aspect of the MSF—scholars can better develop and test theory about the framework's components under delimited conditions. This approach is demonstrated through the development and analysis of a case study of transnational policymaking in the Colorado River Delta. By attending to how key MSF variables interact with features of the process's collaborative institutional context, this study identifies case-specific drivers of policy change and develops broader theory about the mechanisms by which these factors may influence policymaking in similar institutional settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effectiveness has been understood at three levels of analysis in the scholarly study of policy design. The first is at the systemic level indicating what entails effective formulation environments or spaces making them conducive to successful design. The second reflects more program level concerns, surrounding how policy tool portfolios or mixes can be effectively constructed to address complex policy objectives. The third is a more specific instrument level, focusing on what accounts for and constitutes the effectiveness of particular types of policy tools. Undergirding these three levels of analysis are comparative research concerns that concentrate on the capacities of government and political actors to devise and implement effective designs. This paper presents a systematic review of a largely scattered yet quickly burgeoning body of knowledge in the policy sciences, which broadly asks what capacities engender effectiveness at the multiple levels of policy design? The findings bring to light lessons about design effectiveness at the level of formulation spaces, policy mixes and policy programs. Further, this review points to a future research agenda for design studies that is sensitive to the relative orders of policy capacity, temporality and complementarities between the various dimensions of policy capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the developing world, payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs are popular policy instruments that allow those who rely on such amenities as drinking water and clean air to pay the landowners who, in turn, provide and care for those services so the resources are protected and sustainably available in the future. Despite the popularity of PES programs as policy instruments, they have been proven largely ineffective in achieving their long-term goals. Specifically, they have failed to conserve the targeted ecosystem services. We examine Mexican instrument constituencies that have promoted use of a PES program, the payments for hydrological services (PHS) program. Instrument constituencies are groups of policy actors who are bound by an interest in a particular policy instrument or solution. Although the PHS program has been in existence for nearly 20 years, the evidence points to policy drift and overall policy failure. The path-dependent nature of the instrument constituency and resulting feedbacks have crowded out any chance of more effective forest or water conservation programs from being established. A case-based counterfactual analysis is employed to consider alternative program choices that could exist in the absence of a PHS instrument constituency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on policy dynamics has long argued for a better conceptualization and measurement of the dependent variable ("policy"), but this fundamental point has often been neglected in the policy feedback literature. In this paper, we explore how far disaggregating policy into different elements (policy instruments, objectives, and settings) addresses this gap. We do so by examining the world's largest market-based climate policy instrument—emissions trading in the European Union—and reveal a number of valuable new insights. First, even if positive policy feedback locks in a policy instrument, actor contestation does not disappear, but narrows down to the more detailed level of policy settings. Second, feedback may operate differently at each policy level: the policy instrument and its settings may strengthen at the same time as support for broader objectives weakens. Finally, positive feedback may simultaneously strengthen opposing actors' support for multiple policy elements, leading to a form of "policy stability by stalemate." These findings highlight the need for a new, interdisciplinary phase of policy feedback research that more fully disaggregates the dependent variable across a wider range of policy areas and policy instrument types. Policy scientists are well equipped to contribute to and benefit from such a debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy scholars are paying increasing attention to the role of language in policy debates, with particular emphasis on narratives. Policy narratives serve as strategic tools that, among other things, can shift public opinion in favor of policy preferences. One narrative element that has received little attention thus far from policy scholars is analogy, though analogies frequently appear in policy stories. This study applies insights on analogical reasoning from the fields of cognitive and political psychology to the literature on policy narrative. I argue that analogies are best classified as a component of the story's plotline, and explore the potential micro-level impacts of analogies on policy attitudes. Using the Narrative Policy Framework, I examine the empirical effects of exposure to analogy on public opinion related to nuclear power using data from a national-level survey of 2544 US adults conducted by the Marist Poll. In a split-sample design, respondents were exposed to narrative prompts that discussed nuclear power generally or with reference to past accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and/or Fukushima, and then asked about their views on nuclear energy. The results indicate that the effects of analogizing are limited, as participants that hear negative analogies do not have attitudes that are significantly more negative toward nuclear power. However, there are interesting interaction effects between analogy exposure and partisanship, suggesting the existence of partisan entrenchment on the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The requirement of bottom-up action from all the countries to deal with climate change makes it necessary to analyze the factors influencing policy adoption. This article contributes to the policy literature by shedding light on the conditions, which incentivize countries to adopt more climate mitigation policies. The theoretical argument builds on the integrated approaches to study policy diffusion, which include both internal and external determinants as explanations for the adoption of policies. While previous applications typically operationalize the latter by regional proximity, this study highlights the added value of network dependencies capturing political and cooperative interactions across countries. The article finds that the adoption of climate policies is a matter of social influence. Countries are more likely to adopt policies if they cooperate with countries that have adopted more climate policies and are in a similar structural position to countries that are active in climate protection. This article not only is an important theoretical contribution to the policy literature but also enriches our methodological and empirical understanding of climate policy diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In acknowledgement of the complexity of environmental challenges, research on learning in environmental policy has grown substantially over the past two decades across a range of disciplines. Despite this growth, there are few comprehensive assessments of the literature on learning in environmental policy. This article fills this gap by providing insights on the overall coherence and impact of this body of scholarship. To do so, we analyze a sample of 163 articles from 2004 to 2014 using a standardized coding framework. The results provide an in-depth assessment of the status of the literature on learning in the context of environmental policy, as well as the quality of the literature. We demonstrate that despite the diversity in research questions and goals, the literature is lacking with respect to diversity in cases and context, theoretical development, clear conceptualization and operationalization of learning, and advancements in empirical approaches to study learning. From these insights, we discuss the challenges and opportunities for scholars in studying learning and provide recommendations for building the theoretical and methodological rigor of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflict over environmental policies often hinge on the risk to human health posed by a given technology or facility. The agenda setting literature, especially theories of punctuated equilibrium and conflict expansion has long recognized the importance of how a policy is understood, or its issue definition, to explanations of policy change or stability. Much of this literature assumes actors are relatively willing to change their issue definition to facilitate a change in venue with little consideration except strategic advantage. The research presented in this paper suggests this might not always be the case. Through an analysis of a land fill conflict in Ontario, Canada, this paper examines how a strong preference for a preferred issue definition, the threat to human health posed by a proposed landfill, shapes the availability and success of the strategies deployed by the groups advocating that issue definition. The findings presented suggest that it is institutional receptivity of the available policy venues that ultimately explains the ability of these groups to achieve policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks whether strong bureaucracies can effectively constrain the continuously growing stock of rules in modern democracies through organizational coordination and learning. To answer this question, the paper analyzes the growth of rule stocks in the areas of environmental policy and social policy in 23 OECD countries over the period between 1976 and 2005. To do so, it develops a new measure of rule growth based on the content of laws and regulations rather than their length. The analysis highlights that effective bureaucracies are indeed better able to contain rule growth in these areas than weak bureaucracies. Since rules have to be implemented, countries suffering from bureaucratic capacity and quality constraints thus appear to be stuck in an implementation deficit trap. Appropriate implementation is not only inherently more challenging for countries with weak public administrations, but the body of rules to be implemented also tends to grow quicker in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central concern in policy studies is understanding how multiple, contending groups in society interact, deliberate, and forge agreements over policy issues. Often, public discourse turns from engagement into impasse, as in the fractured politics of climate policy in the USA. Existing theories are unclear about how such an 'adversarial turn' develops. We theorize that an important aspect of the adversarial turn is the evolution of a group's narrative into what can be understood as an ideology, the formation of which is observable through certain textual-linguistic properties. Analysis 'of' these narrative properties elucidates the role of narrative in fostering (1) coalescence around a group ideology, and (2) group isolation and isolation of ideological coalitions from others' influence. By examining a climate skeptical narrative, we demonstrate how to analyze ideological properties of narrative, and illustrate the role of ideological narratives in galvanizing and, subsequently, isolating groups in society. We end the piece with a reflection on further issues suggested by the narrative analysis, such as the possibility that climate skepticism is founded upon a more 'genetic' meta-narrative that has roots in social issues far removed from climate, which means efforts at better communicating climate change science may not suffice to support action on climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the spirit of the policy sciences, knowledge should be used to improve the practice of democracy. In today's policy world, communication is a key element of policy making. Too often groups become trapped in promoting their own narrative rather than building bridges to other groups by adopting alternative narratives. In this study, we ask, when involved in a public policy issue, do stakeholders analyze their audience? In other words, do stakeholders consider larger values and beliefs in an attempt to help orient a problem or issues when they move from discussing the issue with like-minded groups to discussing the issue with the general public? Our study uses a survey to examine how stakeholders involved in a river restoration issue switched or did not switch from their own personal message choice to what they believed was the best communication choice for talking about river restoration with the public. Overall, 47% of stakeholders switched their preference when asked how river restoration should be discussed with the public. We examine how attitudinal indicators, background information, and demographics related to which stakeholders switch and which did not switch their choices. The implications of these findings for democracy and policy analysis along with the ethical considerations of the research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dominant form of integrated water resources management (IWRM) assumes that existing parochial path dependencies need to be overcome to transform fragmented, contested regimes into the integrative design of IWRM. This paper is an exploratory study of stakeholder perceptions around China's Yellow River, which has been hailed as a successful case of IWRM. We find that while water reforms have ostensibly achieved a programme that adheres to the formal discourse of IWRM, subjective perceptions of the stakeholders, as revealed by the Q methodology, still display elements of a localized, fragmented narrative, requiring constant negotiation. Primary elements of the discourse include the following positions: (1) localized, contextual approaches to governance persist; (2) market efficiency and environmental protection are seen as competing goals; and (3) technology creates new gains, but constant negotiation is needed to distribute them fairly. These narratives show that rather than 'overturning' old paths, the water reforms created a deliberatory arena in which old and new ideas meld into what we refer to as a 'thick' institutional narrative. Our work provides a new perspective on policy change, as well as the persistence of institutional life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their theory of social constructions of target populations, Schneider and Ingram argue that in degenerative policy systems policy designs and policy outcomes will disproportionately benefit those socially constructed as Advantaged and disproportionately harm those socially constructed as Deviants (1997). Though heretofore unexamined, an implication of Schneider and Ingram's model presented in Policy Design for Democracy (1997) is that the effects of policy with widespread outcomes should be rankable with respect to targets' social constructions, with Advantaged receiving less than Contenders who receive less than Dependents who receive less than Deviants of bad outcomes, and vice versa for good outcomes. Air pollution policies affect members of all four types of socially constructed groups, air pollution is well known to have social justice components, and air pollution is of particular interest because of its seeming universal application. So we performed an empirical, quantitative analysis of this rank-order hypothesis using data on air pollution in cities in California's Central Valley. The analysis finds evidence that social constructions of subpopulations in Central Valley cities help to explain the incidence of air pollution in the hypothesized rank-order way. The results provide new evidence of the value of the Schneider and Ingram (Policy design for democracy. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1997) model in the area of outcomes, and new evidence regarding the social justice of seemingly universal policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments have struggled to successfully implement large-scale integrated policy approaches, often resulting in policy failure. However, there has been little investigation into why this is the case. This paper links the discourse on policy failure and integrated policy approaches and identifies what aspects of 'integration' cause failure. It argues that programme failure occurs in integrated policy approaches when there are unachievable goals or timelines, poor policy design and/or when the incorrect types of processes are selected. Policy process failure is particularly evident in an integrated policy's implementation where multi-sector and multi-level issues arise, whereas failure in the politics of integrated approaches is found in political gain and blame avoidance of key decision-makers. This framework is then applied to Australia's Oceans Policy demonstrating that it was unable to achieve its original objectives; the layering process of new policy and institutions on established silos was ineffective; and the new institutions did not have the integrative capacity required for successful implementation. The Australian experience reveals that an institutional model that can deal with multiple issues, jurisdictions and sectors holistically is essential if integrative capacity is to be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary environmental policy has often been criticized as picking the low-hanging fruit, producing benefits that are relegated to a self-selected sample, and improvements observed in voluntary environmental policy are indistinguishable from business as usual. These criticisms are, in part, the result of the two-stage models used to evaluate voluntary environmental programs that may over-control for the mechanisms that lead to program effectiveness. In addition, voluntary environmental policy may play a valuable role in achieving effective, efficient, and meaningful change in corporate behavior through spillover of public goods to non-participating firms, and changing norms of corporate behavior that are not detected using econometric methods. This manuscript details evidence across the body of literature that supports this hypothesis and suggests a variety of mechanisms that voluntary environmental programs may produce social welfare benefits with low social costs. The decision to employ voluntary environmental programs should be based on an assessment of trade-offs of consequences between adopting ineffective programs and costs involved with failing to adopt effective programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses two related puzzles. The first puzzle is that parts of the environmental federalism literature suggest that federal states are ill-equipped to solve nation-wide or global environmental problems such as climate change, but climate policy scholars usually emphasise the opposite. The second puzzle is that Austria (a federal EU Member State) is regularly praised as an environmental policy leader but has missed its Kyoto target by about 19 %. The paper addresses both puzzles by analysing to what degree federalism is responsible for Austria's poor mitigation performance. Since the nine Austrian provinces are mainly responsible for regulating the building sector that accounts for about 25 % of total energy consumption and 13 % of the greenhouse gas emissions, the analysis focuses on the integration of climate change mitigation in building policies. The empirical core of the paper analyses all major EU, federal and provincial policies that aimed to green the building sector since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. After showing that these policy outputs cannot explain considerable sectoral emission reductions, we conclude that Austrian federalism did not facilitate but hinder climate change mitigation because it added a vertical dimension to an already complex horizontal integration challenge. However, since federalism can by far not explain Austria's failure to reach its Kyoto target domestically, we also conclude that it is only one of many independent variables that shape climate change mitigation. Finally, we argue that Austria is neither an environmental policy leader nor a laggard, but an opportunist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although in recent years great emphasis has been placed on global agreements and national commitments on climate change, ultimately action on mitigation and adaptation must take place at the local level. Many local authorities have to face questions of whether they should develop policies on climate change, and if so, on what evidence should policies be designed and delivered. This paper describes how academic research on the economics of low carbon cities (the 'mini-Stern review') helped create such an evidence base for the Leeds City Region and its constituent local authorities. We describe how the response to the evidence and the pathways to impact were different in the individual local authorities and what this means for our understanding of evidence in local policy making. In terms of Weiss' (Social sciences and modern states: national experiences and theoretical crossroads. Advances in political science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ) classification, the study was mainly useful as an argument and idea rather than being used instrumentally. We find that the policy and political context in each authority determines to a large extent whether such an academic study is useable as evidence. The contents and timing of the study need to align with existing policy and/or political agendas: is climate change on the agenda at all, with what priority and how is it framed. We find confirmation of a relationship between the policy problem type and the role of evidence as argument, idea or data. The mini-Stern study itself was just one contribution to wide-ranging processes of informing, convincing, pressurising, etc., not just within the different councils but also within the wider communities. Other contextual factors include composition, agenda and activities of local civil society and the local business community. Finally, it depends on the expertise of policy officers in the councils what use is made of evidence. Making policy takes (much) time, translation and negotiation across levels and sectors. Policy work describes how policy officers bring their diverse forms of knowledge to bear on policy questions; how this work is done is something that is learned from practice rather than from the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to propose the main elements of a theoretical and methodological framework for the assessment of the success of complex policy mixes, to highlight the conflicts between individual instruments and other elements within those mixes and to propose policy recommendations in order to mitigate them. Some criteria are defined, and different levels of analysis are considered. The challenges in evaluating policy packages are illustrated with the case of the coexistence between renewable energy support and emissions trading schemes. It is shown that policy mixes inherently lead to interactions between the different instruments, either in the form of conflicts or synergies. Conflicts are horizontal (i.e., between different types of instruments) and/or vertical (i.e., between different administrative levels). It is suggested that mitigating those conflicts could require administrative coordination. Relevant coordination could take place between different administrative levels and relate to different instruments or different design elements within similar instruments. However, given the trade-offs between different criteria, the role of coordination is necessarily limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy feedback is a widely used concept, but many who use it only focus on the positive and/or unintentional feedback effects of certain types of policy. The literature as a whole is therefore poorly equipped to make sense of the negative policy feedbacks that often appear in more regulatory areas such as climate change, where target groups are put under pressure to shoulder concentrated costs. Advocates of the 'new' policy design have an opportunity to address this gap by exploring how policy makers approach the design of policies that intentionally generate positive policy feedbacks and/or are resilient to negative ones. This paper contributes to that effort by identifying the conditions under which specific instrument designs are likely to have opportunity enhancing and/or constraining effects. It relates these expectations to a design situation where positive feedback seemed unlikely, and hence, the challenge of designing locked-in policies was correspondingly greater. It concludes by drawing on the findings of this exploratory case to investigate what the 'new' policy design can do better to explicate the temporal aspects of design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution analyses under what conditions expert input is most likely to be regarded by government representatives as useful and how government representatives use input provided by experts. It widens the analytical lens examining multilateral negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) between 2009 and 2011. The findings confirm the importance of deep knowledge, long-term involvement in the policy subsystem and networks. This research illustrates the importance of policy-entrepreneurial strategies such as proactively approaching government representatives and volunteering knowledge. Joining government delegations can increase expert input as they may gain access to the negotiation text. It is crucial to provide input early on in the negotiation cycle before the national negotiation position is decided. Scientific consensus on climate change facilitated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) resulted in a convergence of the actor's beliefs towards understanding climate mitigation and adaptation as normative imperative. Actors, however, interpret expert input based on the consensual IPCC findings differently depending on their conflicting political objectives. Thus, instrumental and political use of expert input by the interest groups overlaps in the UNFCCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that while research on deliberative democracy is burgeoning, there is relatively little attention paid to the contributions of civil society. Based on an interpretive conceptualization of deliberative democracy, this paper draws attention to the ways in which civil society organizations employ 'storylines' about environmental issues and deliberative processes to shape deliberative policy making. It asks, how do civil society organizations promote storylines in the deliberative system to change policy? How do storylines constitute policy and policy-making processes in the deliberative system? I answer these questions through an empirical analysis of two environmental controversies in the USA: environmental justice in New Mexico and coalbed methane development in Wyoming. Findings indicate that civil society organizations used storylines in both cases to shift the dynamics of the deliberative system and to advance their own interpretations of environmental problems and policy-making processes. Specifically, they used storylines (1) to set the agenda on environmental hazards, (2) to construct the form of public deliberation, changing the rules of the game, (3) to construct the content of public deliberation, shaping meanings related to environmental policy, and (4) to couple/align forums, arenas and courts across the system. These findings suggest that promoting storylines through accommodation and selection processes can be an important mechanism for shaping policy meanings and for improving deliberative quality, although these effects are tempered by discursive and material forms of power, and the competition among alternative storylines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary agreements (VAs) negotiated between environmental regulators and polluters are increasingly popular in developing countries. According to proponents, they can sidestep weak institutions and other pervasive barriers to conventional mandatory regulation in such countries. Yet little is known about the drivers of their use and their effectiveness in poor countries. The considerable literature on voluntary initiatives in industrialized countries, where both VAs and socioeconomic conditions differ, may not apply. Using a conceptual framework drawn from the economics literature, we examine four prominent VAs in Colombia, a global leader in the use of this policy. We find that the main motive for using VAs has been to build capacity needed for broader environmental regulatory reform and that partly as a result, VAs’ additional effect on environmental performance has been limited. These findings contrast with those from industrialized country studies, which typically conclude VAs are used as a low-cost substitute for impending mandatory regulation and have few benefits because of weak regulatory pressure. Our findings suggest that in developing countries, VAs may be best suited to capacity building, not environmental management per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the location of hazardous facilities that contribute to environmental degradation indicates an unequal distribution of such sites within low socioeconomic status communities. In this paper, we contribute to research investigating whether there are similar patterns of unequal prioritization in environmental remediation, by assessing cleanup of a broader, more diverse set of contaminated sites, all brownfields that receive federal grants, with a finer level of geographic detail than previous studies. First, we set the context by assessing the characteristics of the communities in which brownfield sites are currently located. Then, we compare the likelihood and temporal prioritization of cleaning up brownfield sites based on the composition of the neighborhoods in which they are located. We find that brownfield sites are more likely to be located in both poor and predominantly minority communities, but while sites located in poor communities tend to be cleaned up relatively quickly, sites located in communities with larger minority populations tend to be cleaned up more slowly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate policy is a relatively young and dynamic area of public policy making. However, its development has attracted far more attention than the results it delivers in practice, which of course are the concern of policy evaluators. This article attempts to provide the first systematic cataloging of the emerging patterns of policy evaluation undertaken in different parts of the European Union. Theories of policy evaluation suggest that these evaluation practices should acknowledge the inherent complexity of climate policy making, be reflexive by questioning official policy goals, and be participatory. A meta-analysis of 259 climate policy evaluations suggests that current practice engages with some but not all of these issues. This article concludes by analyzing the implications of this finding for those in the academic and practitioner community who are keen to understand the extent to which climate policy evaluation is delivering on its promises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

better understanding of firms' response strategies to regulatory uncertainty enables policymakers to improve policymaking efficiency and to enhance the effectiveness of regulation. Based on a literature review, we categorize responses according to their objective toward regulatory uncertainty into four strategies: avoidance, reduction, adaptation, and disregard strategies. Unique data from a worldwide cross-industry survey show that firms predominantly pursue reduction, and to a lesser extent adaptation and disregard strategies, in response to post-Kyoto regulatory uncertainty. Surprisingly, firms in fact only sporadically pursue avoidance strategies, in contradiction to their own public announcements commonly made during policymaking to realize such strategies. The degree of regulatory uncertainty perceived and its interpretation as a threat increase the pursuit of most of these strategies. In addition, firms' response strategies to post-Kyoto regulatory uncertainty differ across industries and partly across regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The level of effectiveness of an environmental policy depends to a significant degree on the level of acceptance and cooperation of citizens. The relevant literature indicates that social capital may significantly influence environmentally responsible behaviour connected with the implementation of an environmental policy. In this context, the present article aims to further explore this field by introducing the issue of non-economic social costs and benefits imposed from environmental policies. In particular, it is supported, both theoretically and empirically, that social costs and benefits may influence the decision of individuals to cooperate and comply with an environmental policy and thus may be a significant indicator for environmental behaviour. Furthermore, these social costs and benefits may differ among individuals and are influenced by social capital elements. Consequently, through the article the need of exploring social capital prior to environmental policy implementation is underlined along with the need of creating social capital assessment techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with governance of long term socio-technical transitions required to orient development trajectories of advanced industrial counties along more sustainable lines. It discusses the contribution that ‘transition management’ can make to such processes, emphasizes the irreducibly political character of governance for sustainable development, and suggests that the long-term transformation of energy systems will prove to be a messy, conflictual, and highly disjointed process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition management is a new concept for long-term policy design for the reflexive governance of socio-technical systems. It has recently attracted attention beyond its original context, the Netherlands. Yet, considering the local origins of transition management, it is also valid to question whether its assumptions concerning the governance of long-term transitions ‘travel well’. This article aims to explore early experiences of transferring the transition management model into the Finnish context on the basis of two case studies in different sectors. We suggest that the policy design changes when it is moved to another country and identify factors that influence the outcome of the transfer process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public involvement in environmental policy analysis and planning may be in some cases for the purpose of incorporating public values and preferences in decision making. Narrative policy analysis is put forward as a method, which is particularly useful to the practice of public involvement for maintaining a juxtaposition of views throughout the policy development and planning process. It is argued that this process may facilitate the consideration of public preferences in a decision-making process. This can be achieved through the joint development of a meta-narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper seeks to advance neo-institutional work that has traditionally portrayed environmental and social protection policies as constraints followed by businesses. Drawing from the policy sciences literature, we propose that in the United States, businesses tend to show increasing resistance as the protective policy process moves from initiation to selection and growing cooperation thereafter. Most importantly, we also contribute to the neo-institutional theory literature by positing that this inverted U-shaped policy process–business response relationship proposed for the U.S. context may be moderated by variations in the level of democracy, system of interest representation, regulatory approach, and national income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In policy analysis, studies on policy termination are rare. This article offers such a study. It presents the story of how, despite attempts by the government to terminate it, Dutch nature policy on ecological corridors continued to be implemented by regional governments and in the field. A case analysis is presented that integrates theories and insights not only from the termination literature but also from the literature on implementation. The different factors identified in the literature that enable or constrain implementation and termination have served as a basis for developing possible explanations of the case study. They cannot, however, serve as generic theories with predictive power. Policy termination as well as policy implementation are highly contextual processes and the question which factors will enable or constrain policy termination and implementation can only be answered on a case by case basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the role of prescriptive regulation and citizen-suit litigation (regulatory enforcement) in natural resource conservation in the USA. It first briefly explains why the judiciary is so involved in resource management and why litigation is so often used as a conservation tool. It then summarizes the extent to which regulatory enforcement is being threatened and/or undermined by Congress, the executive branch, and other interests. The analysis shows how regulatory enforcement often facilitates the use of less adversarial conservation strategies and that there are important synergies between them. Regulatory interactions with collaborative conservation, land and resource acquisitions/easements, and adaptive ecosystem management are analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of significant efforts at the national level to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in the United States has provided the impetus for a number of state programs. This article assesses the efficiency of these programs in making real progress in GHG reductions. It also explores the effect of state programs on the eventual adoption of a strong national GHG mitigation policy. While state programs are likely to demonstrate the viability of new mitigation approaches, they are also likely to create a set of expectations and precedents that will make a strong and coherent national policy more difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All advanced industrialized societies face the problem of air pollution produced by motor vehicles. In spite of striking improvements in internal combustion engine technology, air pollution in most urban areas is still measured at levels determined to be harmful to human health. Throughout the 1990s and beyond, California and France both chose to improve air quality by means of technological innovation, adopting legislation that promoted clean vehicles, prominently among them, electric vehicles (EVs). In California, policymakers chose a technology-forcing approach, setting ambitious goals (e.g., zero emission vehicles), establishing strict deadlines and issuing penalties for non-compliance. The policy process in California called for substantial participation from the public, the media, the academic community and the interest groups affected by the regulation. The automobile and oil industries bitterly contested the regulation, in public and in the courts. In contrast, in France the policy process was non-adversarial, with minimal public participation and negligible debate in academic circles. We argue that California's stringent regulation spurred the development of innovative hybrid and fuel cell vehicles more effectively than the French approach. However, in spite of the differences, both California and France have been unable to put a substantial number of EVs on the road. Our comparison offers some broad lessons about how policy developments within a culture influence both the development of technology and the impact of humans on the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates the contribution of stakeholder dialogues to environmental policy making. It makes a distinction between stakeholder dialogues as consensus building and stakeholder dialogues as deliberation. Although consensus building seems to be the dominant approach in participatory environmental policy making, this article questions the merits of consensus building and it uses the experience of the Dutch stakeholder dialogue project Climate OptiOns for the Long term (COOL) to explore, in a deliberative design, the shortcomings of a consensus-building approach and how they are possibly dealt with. The article presents the results of two deliberative methods that have been used in the COOL project – the repertory grid analysis and the dialectical approach – to demonstrate how a deliberative design can help policy makers to critically assess arguments in favor of and against a broad range of policy options, and deal with stakeholder conflict in an early phase of the policy process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we set out to bridge a surprising methodological gap between two time-honored research traditions – news media content analysis and the policy sciences analytic framework. Lasswell, a recognized pioneer of both the method and the framework, discussed the mutual benefits of each decades ago. But few researchers, if any, have formally linked the two. To that end, in this article we (1) make the case for using news media content analysis to inform research studies using the policy sciences analytic framework; (2) introduce an original content analysis categorical system for that purpose; (3) demonstrate that system with a study of 90 national news articles about the stratospheric ozone hole; and (4) compare our system to others used to examine news content. We report that our system, used by human coders, is well geared to describing and mapping trends in the social process surrounding the development of the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty during the intelligence gathering and promotion phases encompassed by our data sample. We argue that other content analysis systems fall short – in structure and purpose – of meeting the promise ours holds to the policy scientist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines bilateral cooperation between developed countries (home country) and developing countries (host country) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to enhance carbon dioxide sinks. With the home-host country pair as the unit of analysis, our logistic regression model examines 158 Activities Implemented Jointly (AIJ) investment projects from 1993 until 2002 across 2541 country-pairs. Because the marginal costs of reducing emissions may be lower in developing countries, the AIJ projects served as a policy laboratory to assess whether such investments might be advantageous to both countries in the event future regimes allowed emission credits from such bilateral projects. Instead of investing in home countries where maximum pollution reductions (or carbon sequestration) might be possible, home countries invest in locations where they can conduct their policy experiments at low transaction costs. Prior trade and aid relationships were used as a proxy. Regarding energy projects, location decisions are driven by home countries’ desire to reduce air pollution that they receive from abroad. Geography – proximity of a host country to a home country – in interaction with host country's coal production, is a very important driver of location decision in AIJ energy sector projects. Location of sequestration projects is impacted by the host country's potential for avoiding deforestation as well as by previous aid and trade patterns between a home and a host country. Proximity is not important in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expert valuation, a process used to determine how much stakeholders value eco-system aspects, places experts as intermediaries for public-preference input into the environmental policy process. While the rise and refinement of expert valuation might capture ecosystem values more comprehensively, two dilemmas are also worth of consideration: (1) will expert valuation and benefit cost analysis supplant democratic expression; and (2) will refinement of expert valuation still leave the ecosystem under valued? This article reorients the current problem from focusing on the need to refine methods to capture more ecosystem benefits to consider how valuation can contribute to a set of more democratic processes that allow the public to contribute to and consider a broader range of policy options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a macro-level theory of framing to explain the intractable or ‘icked’ nature of environmental policy. Using conflict in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) as a case study, we review how proposed solutions – technical, scientific, and economic – and cultural issues often lead to inadequate policy solutions. We then propose that interest groups, the media, and elected officials do not act solely as linkage mechanisms, but, rather, as policy marketers who market public opinion to citizens. The macro-level trends of a marketing culture in tandem with the rise of consumerism are explored in the context of GYA politics. Finally, we describe how our proposed macro-level theory of framing points to a rich research agenda for empirically testing questions about issue framing, policy marketers, and public opinion formation in environmental policy conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the public in US policy making has shifted substantially during the past several decades. This shift is particularly evident in environmental policy, where collaboration among multiple stakeholders is on the rise. Much of the literature on collaborative environmental management emphasizes the need for widespread community involvement, especially from private citizens. Many proponents of collaboration have argued that broad inclusion can lead to better environmental solutions while also establishing legitimacy, building social capital, and overcoming conflicts. Yet such broad inclusion may be costly in terms of time, energy, and resources, and it may not yield the desired results. Thus, a key question is how the breadth of public involvement is linked to collaborative group accomplishments. This study, using watershed groups in Ohio, demonstrates several links between group membership and results. Groups with a broader array of participants tend to excel in watershed plan creation, identifying/prioritizing issues, and group development and maintenance. In addition, groups comprised of a relatively balanced mix of governmental and non-governmental participants are more likely to list planning/research and group development and maintenance results than are groups comprised primarily of non-governmental participants. In contrast, groups with a narrower membership and groups that are composed primarily of non-governmental participants may focus more on pressuring government for policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the impact of the international institutional framework embodied in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on Canada's response to climate change. Norms of liberal environmentalism in the compromise of the Kyoto Protocol; International and domestic institutional context for Canada's climate change policy; Evolution of Canada's global role in addressing climate change.

Examines the localism in environmental policy by revisiting the case of the U.S. Division of Grazing. History of balancing local and national interests in U.S. politics; Problems with applying capture theory to the Taylor Grazing Act (TGA); Impact of TGA on grazing control in the U.S.; Controversy over Joseph Livingston's grazing in Colorado; Implications of the Livingston case to the Division of Grazing's struggle with localism.

Examines how the standard paradigm for environmental economics breaks down in the presence of positive feedback or lock-in. Concepts of positive feedback and lock-in; Information on the sulfur dioxide trading system created by the United States' 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act; Environmental policies under positive feedback; Policies to mitigate the impacts of positive feedback.

Examines the roles of non-state actors in international environmental governance. Participants in international environmental affairs; How to encourage local interest in global environmental problems; Scaled-down contexts for global environmental policy.

Explores how to design public policy mechanisms to stimulate rather than impede pollution-preventing technological innovation. Role of the government in technological innovation for a minimal waste society; Design criteria for policy for `green' technological innovation; Assessment of the United States environmental policy as a stimulus for `green' innovation.