Agenda‐Setting at the Energy‐Water Nexus: Constructing and Maintaining a Policy Monopoly in U.S. Hydraulic Fracturing Regulation

Despite calls to increase federal oversight of hydraulic fracturing (HF), the U.S. Congress has maintained a regulatory system in which environmental regulatory authority is devolved to the states. We argue that this system is characterized by a long‐standing “policy monopoly”: a form of stability in policy agenda‐setting in which a specific manner of framing and regulating a policy issue becomes hegemonic. Integrating theories on agenda‐setting and environmental discourse analysis, we develop a nuanced conceptualization of policy monopoly that emphasizes the significance of regulatory history, public perceptions, industry–government relations, and environmental “storylines.” We evaluate how a policy monopoly in U.S. HF regulation has been constructed and maintained through a historical analysis of oil and gas regulation and a discourse analysis of eleven select congressional energy committee hearings. This research extends scholarship on agenda‐setting by better illuminating the importance of political economic and geographic factors shaping regulatory agendas and outcomes.     

Governance Arrangements for Transboundary Issues: Lessons from the Food Waste Programs of Italian Regions

Focusing on transboundary issues contributes to highlighting how new governance modes can emerge from increasing interdependence and complexity in public policies. This article analyzes food waste as a transboundary issue that cuts across different policy subsystems (PSs), intersects multiple levels of government, and calls into question consolidated policy making for new modes of governance. The analytical framework provides a multidimensional approach and a new typology of governance arrangements to be used in empirical research. Evidence from an Italian case study and an empirical investigation of 20 regional food waste programs shows that regions can adopt different driving ideas and can activate a variety of governance arrangements and differentiated, as well as viable, modes of integration between consolidated PSs. The article argues that different tool mixes combined with different levels of governance complexity may lead to a variety of governance arrangements and a differentiated likelihood of policy integration.     

Exploring Aggregate vs. Relative Public Trust in Administrative Agencies that Manage Spent Nuclear Fuel in the United States

Trust is a key component of democratic decision‐making and becomes even more salient in highly technical policy areas, where the public relies heavily on experts for decision making and on the information provided by federal agencies. Research to date has not examined whether the members of the public place different levels of trust in the various agencies that operate within the same policy subsystem, especially in a highly technical subsystem such as that of nuclear energy and waste management. This paper explores public trust in multiple agencies operating within the same subsystem, trust in each agency relative to aggregate trust across agencies that operate within the nuclear waste subsystem, and trust in alternative agencies that have been suggested as possible players in the decision‐making process. We find that trust accorded to different federal agencies within the nuclear waste subsystem varies. The variation in trust is systematically associated with multiple factors, including basic trust in government, perceptions about the risks and benefits of nuclear energy/waste management, party identification, and education. These findings have significant implications for research on public trust in specific government agencies, alternative policy entities, and for policy makers who want to design robust and successful policies and programs in highly technical policy domains.     

Conservation in Context: Toward a Systems Framing of Decentralized Governance and Public Participation in Wildlife Management

Governance scholars have long championed the adaptive utility of decentralized management institutions, in part due to their ability to bring diverse stakeholders into decision‐making processes. However, research into the link between decentralization and participation often looks at policy design but bypasses important system feedbacks that shape sustained participation over time. To paint a more robust picture detailing how decentralization and participation are related, this paper uses a complex systems framework to explore interacting structural, operational, and cultural components of decentralized wildlife governance institutions in the United States and Botswana. Through this comparative analysis, I argue that the landscape of public participation in decentralized governance institutions appears to be significantly impacted by three factors: 1) how decentralization processes occurred, 2) where in the process of decision making participation is situated, and 3) perceptions of power distribution between groups with competing interests.     

Identifying the Causes of Issue Attention and Policy Change: Evidence from U.S. Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Drilling Policy, 2008

The flow of attention in the policy process is dynamic and disruptive. While we know changes in issue attention often result in policy change, the causal mechanisms underlying the different stages of the attention allocation process remain unclear. This article uses Punctuated Equilibrium Theory to examine an underdeveloped aspect of issue attention within policy‐making institutions: how specific policy indicators influence the entry and exit of issues on policy‐making agendas. Partisan issue attention in the House of Representatives is used to analyze a significant change to U.S. offshore oil and natural gas drilling policy in 2008. The results highlight how historically high gasoline prices precipitated a shift in attention to offshore drilling and subsequent policy change. Moreover, gasoline prices Granger‐cause attention to energy policy in partisan speeches over time. The analysis further reveals how competing policy frames and a salient focusing event shaped congressional and public discourse, leading to subsequent changes in attention. Taken together, the findings broaden our understanding of the policy process by identifying the specific forces behind the entry and exit of issues on the policy‐making agenda.     

Venue Preference and Earthquake Mitigation Policy: Expanding the Micro‐Model of Policy Choice

Seismologists have reported that a majority of recent earthquakes in Oklahoma have been triggered by the activities of oil and gas companies. Despite this fact, there is evidence of strong opposition toward earthquake mitigation policy. In this article, we argue that how individuals define issues affect their policy choice. Furthermore, we incorporate the concept of venue shopping from the literature on macro theories of the policy process to investigate the effect of problem definition in shaping individual venue preference for policy choice. Using unique survey data, we find that problem definition, particularly issue causality and issue image, is strongly related to individual support for earthquake mitigation policy. However, a more nuanced relationship between individual problem definition and venue preference is observed. Our findings contribute to scholarly endeavors to understand the politics of problem definition at an individual level, which may be the precursor of understanding policy choices at the institutional level.     

A Bridge in Flux: Narratives and the Policy Process in the Pacific Northwest

Policy narratives play an important role in the policy process. Often policy narratives originate from advocacy coalitions seeking increased support from the public for their policy stance. Although most Narrative Policy Framework studies have focused on national policy issues, this study examines a state and local economic development project by exploring the policy narratives from competing coalitions in favor and opposed to the project. Specifically, in the Portland–Vancouver area of Oregon and Washington, local policy discussions have been dominated by a proposal for a new mega bridge on Interstate‐5 connecting the two cities across the Columbia River. A new government agency (CRC—Columbia River Crossing) was formed for the implementation of this project. Upon approval of a proposal, CRC experienced heavy backlash from citizens, local businesses, community leaders, and other stakeholders leading to the formation of two competing coalitions in opposition and support of the bridge. This study, using content analysis of 370 public documents, finds that competing coalitions utilize policy narratives in strategic ways to characterize the opposing coalition, themselves, and other actors in the policy subsystem. This study also suggests that the strength and cohesion of a coalition's narrative contributes to its policy success and the winning/losing status of a coalition potentially determines the types of strategies they will use. Last, this study introduces and tests a new narrative strategy called the impotent shift testing a coalition's strategic use of the victim character.     

Determinants of Firm‐Level Lobbying and Government Responsiveness in Agricultural Biotechnology in China

Understanding what stimulates agribusiness firms to lobby the government and what makes the government responsive to lobbying are the two issues that have been discussed extensively in the debates concerning determinants of biotechnology policy. This paper examines the factors influencing agribusiness firms' lobbying and government response using econometric modeling on a new data set of 160 leading agribusiness firms in the food, feed, chemical, and seed industries in China. The results show that approximately 10% of agribusiness firms lobbied the government about biotechnology policy and regulations and over half of those that lobbied received a verbal or written acknowledgment from government agencies. Seed and feed companies are more likely to engage in lobbying than chemical companies. Owning GM patents not only has a positive impact on firms' lobbying activities, but firms with these patents are more likely to receive a government response to their lobbying efforts. The experience of selling GM products does not significantly influence lobbying activities or response from the government.     

Shaping the Scope of Conflict in Scotland’s Fracking Debate: Conflict Management and the Narrative Policy Framework

This study applies a narrative lens to policy actors’ discursive strategies in the Scottish debate over fracking. Based on a sample of 226 newspaper articles (2011–2017) and drawing on key elements of the narrative policy framework (NPF), the research examines how policy coalitions have characterized their supporters, their opponents, and the main regulator (Scottish government). It also explores how actors have sought to expand or contain the scope of conflict to favor their policy objectives. Empirically, only the government strives for conflict containment, whereas both pro‐ and anti‐fracking groups prioritize conflict expansion through characterization contests and the diffusion and concentration of the costs/risks and benefits of fracking. In theoretical terms, the study proposes that Sarah Pralle’s conflict management model, which emphasizes symmetrical strategies of conflict expansion by both coalitions, is a potential tool to revise extant NPF expectations about the different narrative strategies of winning and losing coalitions. Moreover, the fact that policy actors mostly employ negatively rather than positively framed characters in their narratives may be a valid expectation for similar policy conflicts, particularly under conditions of regulatory uncertainty.     

Technological Distribution in Uganda: Information and Communications Technology and the State in an Eastern African Nation

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) include old technologies—such as the radio and the television—as well as newer technologies—such as the Internet and wireless telephony. This study considers the process that the government of Uganda has used to adopt and implement ICT policy. This study also considers the techniques which the government of Uganda has used to distribute ICTS in public locations such as government offices, schools, and hospitals. In particular, this study attempts to consider the political motivations for distribution. The Ugandan government's attempt to distribute this technology reflects strengths in the area of distribution of artefacts, particularly to rural areas. Information and communications technologies are an important part of the Ugandan economy. In addition, ICTs strengthen the ability of citizens to communicate with each other across regional and language borders through shared access points. Methodologically, this paper uses the case study method. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with politicians, policy makers, civil society activists, citizens, academics, medical personnel, regional government officials, and business people. This paper argues that politicians use ICTs as a component of a basket of goods and services that they can distribute to witnessing publics. This paper argues that ICT should be viewed as a type of infrastructure, and that as a public good, it can be used as a “club” good or “pork.” Although several authors discuss the potential of ICTs as democratizing, this paper documents that the Ugandan government has employed ICTs in oppressive ways, including for the surveillance of opposition leaders, and for social control.     

Analyzing Territorial and Sectorial Dimensions of Public–Private Partnerships in Science,Technology, and Innovation policies

The performance of innovation systems depends, to a great extent, on the degree of public–private collaboration they involve. Thus, innovation policies often aim to enhance this collaboration through public–private partnerships. These partnerships are a multidimensional phenomenon whose success depends on factors related to each of their dimensions. This paper proposes the use of an analytical model that reflects the multidimensional nature of public–private partnerships and analyses to what extent they are applied in a specific innovation system in order to identify the territorial and sectorial factors that act as barriers or drivers to use them. This model aims to help policy makers design appropriate public–private partnerships in each context. The case under review is the Spanish innovation system, given that this system has been suffering from a structural lack of collaboration for several decades, despite the implementation of policies aimed to foster this. Thus, if the model works, it should be able to identify key factors that influence greater or more restricted use of the different PPP formulas.     

Factors Driving the Promotion of Hydroelectricity: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis

In the wake of the COP21 conference in Paris, the transition to a low‐carbon energy supply remains a central issue on the political agenda. The deployment of renewable energies is often challenged by multiple issues (e.g., public acceptance, landscape protection, and so forth). Political actors try to overcome such challenges with various measures; however, the policy instruments used vary greatly in their strength. This article questions what factors lead to the adoption of strong policy instruments promoting hydroelectricity. Explanatory factors are derived from Kingdon's multiple streams framework and are analyzed with fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis within the Swiss cantons. The findings show that the strength of policy promoting hydroelectricity depends on the conjunction of mainly two factors: ambitious climate targets and an already well‐established hydroelectricity sector that generates large tax revenues for the cantons. Depending on the context, the strength of left‐wing and green parties as well as the current level of exploitation play an important role with the aforementioned factors.     

A 21st Century Low‐Carbon Transition in U.S. Electric Power: Extent,Contributing Factors,and Implications

The U.S. electric power sector has experienced a substantial shift of the generation mix since the turn of the century, moving from heavy reliance on coal‐powered generation to one drawing more from natural gas and, more recently, renewables. This transition has been forged by a mix of macroeconomic factors (recession and recovery); technological breakthroughs (horizontal drilling coupled with hydraulic fracturing; improvements in natural gas plant efficiency); clean energy policies at federal, state, and local levels of government; and private sector demands for carbon‐free energy sources. These factors have combined to reduce carbon emissions from electric power generation substantially this century. In this article we examine the extent of this transition, its causes, as well as the distinct American institutional factors steering it, including energy and environmental federalism, electoral politics, and the political economy of clean energy policy enactment and resistance.     

Household Costs and Resistance to Germany's Energy Transition

Germany is an exemplary case of an energy transition from nuclear energy and fossil fuels toward renewables in the electricity sector, but it also demonstrates repeated, increasingly successful countermobilization by energy incumbents and their allies. The course for Germany's energy transition was largely set with the adoption of a feed‐in tariff law in 1990, but since then the energy transition has been altered by a series of policy‐making episodes, each of which was shaped by the outcomes of the previous episodes; there has been a combination of reinforcing and reactive sequences. This article uses policy windows and advocacy coalition theory, supplemented by work on resistance to carbon pricing, to analyze the four periods in which opponents of the energy transition had the greatest opportunities to limit or reverse it. It makes three main arguments intended to influence future research on energy transitions: (1) episodes of opposition to the feed‐in tariff policy occurred when problem awareness and political commitment converged, (2) the outcomes of those conflicts depended on the balance of mobilization by advocacy and opposing coalitions, and (3) rising household costs due to the renewable energy surcharge drove both problem awareness and the composition of the opposing coalition, which helped lead to a more far‐reaching retrenchment of renewable energy policy in 2014 than in earlier periods.     

The Politics of Technology Decline: Discursive Struggles over Coal Phase‐Out in the UK

The decline of carbon intensive technologies is a key element in the ongoing energy transition and our attempts to tackle climate change. At the same time, our understanding of technology decline and of the associated policies and politics is still limited. This paper builds on the sustainability transitions perspective, a novel approach to analyze socio‐technical transformation, including the complex interplay of policy and technology change. We study the decline of coal‐fired power generation in the United Kingdom from 2000 to 2017 by analyzing the discourse in The Guardian. We find scientists and environmental NGOs criticizing coal for climate and health reasons. Government and incumbent businesses tried to re‐legitimate coal but eventually, their resistance collapsed and coal was almost completely abandoned in just a few years. Particularly devastating for coal were failed promises around carbon capture and storage, rapid diffusion of wind energy, and pressure from various policies. This study contributes to better understanding the contested nature of decline, and the interplay of discursive struggles, technology change, and public policy in sustainability transitions.     

The Role of Scientific Excellence in the Changing Meaning of Maize in Mexico

Making policy is giving a meaning to objects. This perspective on policy making gained importance in the 1990s with the emergence of discursive approaches. In this article, we use the concepts of Hajer's discourse coalition approach to shed light on the evolving meaning of maize in Mexican society. Specifically, we trace a parallel between the evolution of biotechnology policy and discourses on maize over a 25‐year period. The article argues that until recently, the protection against biotechnological manipulations enjoyed by maize has been bolstered by a discourse granting the plant a special status in the country's history. However, the emergence of a new discourse grounded on the practice of scientific excellence is now challenging the old perspectives, and also finding support among government officials. As a result, the Mexican policies granting maize special protection is changing, and this policy change will likely trigger changes in the symbolic meaning of maize.     

Politics,Science, and Termination: A Case Study of Water Fluoridation Policy in Calgary in 2011

Policy termination is identified as a rare occurrence and thus difficult to study. However, one policy area, community water fluoridation, has seen an apparent increase in termination in recent years. We examine the specific case of termination in Calgary, Alberta in 2011 with a specific goal to apply Kingdon's Multiple Streams Approach to the policy termination framework. Our findings suggest that of key importance for the termination of water fluoridation was the impending need for an upgrade to the fluoridation infrastructure, the effectiveness of the local anti‐fluoridation activists, the speed of decision making, and a prominent framing of the issue in ethical terms. The opening of a policy window made possible by the 2010 Calgary municipal election, one that introduced a number of new members to council, as well as the presence of a policy entrepreneur who took advantage of the window's opening, were of specific importance to the success of policy termination.     

Technology Innovation as a Response to Climate Change: The Case of the Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation of Alberta

Innovation is the central element of climate change policy in many jurisdictions. Reduced to technology development and linked to market‐driven priorities, innovation accommodates the interests of large emitters in the energy sector and underpins a sustainable development discourse that denies ecological limits to economic growth. This study examines the use of innovation as a key component of climate change policy in the case of Alberta's Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation, utilizing a political economy approach to explain the drivers of government funding priorities. An analysis of this technology fund's investments over nine years, under two different governments, revealed that nearly half of the revenue has been used to subsidize R&D in the fossil fuels industry in the name of clean energy development, and that this priority has continued despite recent government commitments under the Paris CoP agreement. The carbon levy system that generates revenue for the fund has been unsuccessful in incentivizing facility reductions, pointing to the need for more stringent regulation. Innovation as a framework for transition to a post‐carbon economy is severely limited by its exclusion of the roles of social knowledge and citizen participation in envisaging and designing paths for change.     

Policy Adoption and Policy Intensity: Emergence of Climate Adaptation Planning in U.S. States

The United States is experiencing growing impacts of climate change but currently receives a limited policy response from its national leadership. Within this policy void, many state governments are stepping up and taking action on adaptation planning. Yet we know little about why some states adopt State Adaptation Plans (SAPs), while others do not. This article investigates factors that predict the emergence of SAPs, both in terms of policy adoption and policy intensity (goal ambitiousness). Applying the diffusion of innovation theory, I consider the relative influence of internal state characteristics, regional pressures, and test for conditional effects between government ideologies and severity of the problem. The results show interesting differences between predictors that influence policy adoption and ambitiousness. States are more motivated to adopt a policy when faced with greater climate vulnerability, have more liberal citizenry, and where governments have crossed policy hurdles by previously passing mitigation plans. The intensity of policies and goal setting, moreover, is more likely to be driven by interest group politics and diffuse through policy learning or sharing information among neighboring states in Environmental Protection Agency regions. These findings support an emerging scholarship that uses more complex dependent variables in policy analysis. These variables have the potential to differentiate symbolic from substantive policies and capture finer information about predictors of importance.     

Local Renewable Energy Initiatives in Germany and Japan in a Changing National Policy Environment

Our article explores the contribution of local initiatives to the creation of path dependencies for energy transition in Germany and Japan in the face of resistance from entrenched incumbents at the national level. We use a process‐tracing methodology based partly on interviews with local participants. In particular, we explore the role of local initiatives in securing “socio‐political space” for the expansion of renewable energy (RE) and in embedding themselves in “ecosystems” of public and private institutions. German energy activists were more successful than their Japanese counterparts in expanding this space and creating positive feedback in part because they were able to build horizontal networks that anchored the energy transition firmly in local communities. Although problems with grid technology have led to retrenchment in both cases, Japanese activists' reliance on vertical networks has limited their ability to weather a backlash from national government and utility actors. Our study demonstrates the interaction of political, economic/technological, and legitimation paths to energy transition and highlights the importance of the latter two.