Energy and Environmental Governance under Ecological Modernization: a Comparative Analysis of Nordic Countries

In this study of energy and environmental governance in four Nordic countries, we aim to shed further light on the question of organization of political governance under transition to ecological modernization. Our findings are that, in spite of a number of similarities, the Nordic countries seem to be pursuing programmes of ecological modernization under rather different regimes of political governance. However, we do not find the diversity of national energy-environmental governance regimes by reference to national policy-making styles. Instead, our analysis indicates that a more plausible explanation of the variety may lie in differences in their industrial and resource-based structure. Given diverse industrial structures, similar policy measures may have very different effects on national economies, and hence, motivate distinct governance measures. The paper concludes that a lock into a standardized 'first-best' mode of environmental governance may prove detrimental to environmental modernization in practice, since it might expose economies to unacceptable consequences and then to a fallback to traditional industrial strategies.