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With China's commitment to achieving a carbon peak and carbon neutralisation by 2030 and 2060, respectively, the government's requirements for enterprises to adopt green technology are becoming increasingly urgent. We established a tripartite evolutionary game model of an enterprise, government and bank. We analysed conditions for the existence of stable points and factors affecting the choice of stakeholder's strategy. The influence of the change in each parameter on the evolutionary stable strategy was further studied. We found that the government's reward, subsidy and taxes for enterprise's green technology innovation can increase the willingness of enterprises to implement green technology innovation, and the role of taxes is greater than that of subsidies. The preferential interest rate for green innovation is conducive to stimulating enterprises to engage in green innovation, but the increase in the cost of green credit will reduce the willingness of banks to provide green credit. With the increase in the subsidy, incentives and the cost of environmental regulation, the policy burden of the government will gradually increase, thus reducing the willingness of the government to implement environmental regulation policy. The research presented in this paper furthers work on the theoretical modelling of green credit and environmental regulation policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental sustainability has been a key policy goal of the European Union (EU), particularly under recent EU Cohesion Policy strategic frameworks. This paper contributes to the analysis of the relevance of EU Cohesion Policy-related environmental sustainability investments, by assessing the impacts of the Operational Programme for Sustainability and Use of Resources (POSEUR 2014–2020), in the Portuguese North NUTS II. In detail, the impact scores of the following five analytical dimensions related to this programme were obtained: (i) low-emissions economy, (ii) adaptation to climate change, (iii) risk prevention and management, (iv) environmental protection and (v) resource efficiency. The analysis was supported by a territorial impact assessment methodology (TARGET_TIA) which was complemented by an online analytic geographic information system (GIS) policy evaluation platform (Impact-WEB_GIS). The results showed that the POSEUR's regional implementation efficiency fell short of the stakeholders' expectations. This can be explained by factors such as the obstacles posed by the prior underdeveloped infrastructural conditions, coupled with the panorama created by the Covid-19 outbreak. Nonetheless, the risk prevention and management dimension had a solid positive impact score that reflected the efficacy of POSEUR in tackling environmental threats, mostly in rural ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little knowledge of how policymakers manage governance networks ("metagovern") within climate policy and especially at non-executive levels of public management. One strategy to metagovern is through using intermediary actors such as funding bodies. However, as novel actors within climate governance, such "climate intermediaries" are under-researched. We address these gaps by exploring the metagovernance through an intermediary actor, namely the Norwegian "Klimasats" Fund. We find that the logic of funding bodies lends itself to "carrots" as opposed to "sticks", weakening the potential for transformation. Funding bodies can also increase existing differences in climate action between larger and smaller local authorities. However, funding bodies have a beneficial bi-directional functionality, incentivising local innovation whilst feeding lessons both up to and across government. Funding bodies also have the power to make local actors into intermediaries in their own right and can influence policy discourses. Thus, in assessing metagovernance at the non-executive level and using intermediary actors such as funding bodies, we reveal significant challenges, but also surprising opportunities, for the low-carbon transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of Europeanisation on domestic policies is often associated with the alignment of European policies and discourses with national ones. The Habitats Directive mandating wolf protection entailed heated debates across the EU, suggesting diverging values and interests at various levels of policy-making. I present an analysis of wolf policy and politics in Germany, where wolves have returned after a long period of extinction. Tracing the dynamics of institutions involved in wolf management in 2000–2021, I identify key groups involved, their activities and positions as well as the impact of European rules and discourses. Unlike in some other Central in Eastern European countries, German wolf policy was strongly influenced by Europeanisation that helped to sustain the institutional path of wolf conservation, despite criticism from dominant land-use actors who politicised the issue to relax conservation rules. I suggest adding safeguarding of latent policies to the catalogue of outcomes of Europeanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Administrative traditions have become a central concept in public policy and public administration research. Despite substantial insights gained, it is still unclear how administrative traditions affect the effectiveness of public policies. This paper addresses this shortcoming. It analyzes whether the effectiveness of a specific type of public policy, namely direct regulation, varies by a country's administrative tradition. Empirically, the focus is on regulations in the area of environmental protection. By analyzing the changes in air pollutant emissions of 14 OECD countries over a period of 25 years, the article finds that the effectiveness of environmental regulations is higher in countries with a managerial administrative tradition. While both managerial and legalistic bureaucracies can successfully implement minor policy reforms, it is primarily managerial systems that can effectively handle more ambitious regulations. Overall, it thus seems that a major benefit of managerial systems is the more flexible approach towards policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments develop policies that set strategic directions on matters of national significance, referred to in this paper as strategic policies. Australia's Commonwealth Government develops and influences national environmental and sustainability policies despite having limited constitutional powers in the management of natural resources. The Commonwealth Government has, over the past three decades, developed strategic policies aimed at sustainably managing forests, water, soils and agricultural lands. The design and implementation arrangements of environmental policies that have endured is not well studied, and this paper addresses this knowledge gap in the context of a federal system. The National Forest Policy Statement, the National Water Initiative and the Natural Heritage Trust have endured centre-left Labor and centre-right Coalition Governments, and serve as case studies. These policies have required structural adjustments to industries to varying degrees to limit impacts on the environment, leading to contestations about policy objectives. The policy cycle serves as the primary heuristic for analysis and the research finds that policy objectives are constrained by the Commonwealth Government's limited constitutional powers on environmental matters. Its participation in strategic policies is driven through notions of resolving a crisis and the policies endure in a phase of indifference to the original policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we explore the determinants of reforms intending to integrate policies and coordinate administrative units by focusing on necessary conditions. Firstly, we elaborate theoretical expectations about potential necessary conditions for cross-sectoral reforms. Secondly, we conduct a condition-oriented fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine our expectations, based on an original data set comparing policy integration and administrative coordination reforms, in environmental and unemployment policy, across 13 countries over 29 years. Our results indicate three necessary conditions for high reform intensity: external problem pressure is necessary for policy integration and administrative coordination in employment policy; either the strength or weakness of the reference party can take the role of necessary conditions depending on the policy field; low politicization of bureaucracy is necessary, especially for administrative coordination in environmental policy. These findings contribute to the development of a systematic theory of cross-sectoral policy and administrative change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]