Deregulation as regulatory reform: the case of environmental policy in the Netherlands

Abstract. Deregulation in the Netherlands has been associated with the perceived crisis of the welfare state. But in the area of environmental policy it has not meant dismantling those substantive regulations designed to promote improved environmental quality. Deregulation in environmental management has involved the retention of overall regulatory objectives while striving to simplify and streamline existing regulatory procedures, and developing alternatives to the more traditional instruments of regulation. Deregulation in this area is a prime example of 're-regulation'- of steps taken to make existing regulations more effective, or to replace rules with other instruments designed to achieve more effectively and efficiently the same behavioural changes sought with the original regulatory scheme.     

Command without control: The case of China's environmental target system

In the existing literature there is general agreement that the effectiveness and efficiency of command and control instruments versus market‐based instruments is highly context specific. A country's particular regulatory environment and state capacity, as well as the features of given environmental problems, play an important role in ascertaining what the “right” set of policy instruments for environmental management might be. This article examines how command and control instruments are used as an environmental enforcement mechanism in China's authoritarian state. Based on extensive fieldwork, this paper shows that the reliance on binding environmental targets as the main domestic policy instrument in China has generated numerous undesirable consequences. While China's target‐based approach to implementation has incentivized local officials to strictly enforce environmental mandates, there are numerous shortcomings in the system. In particular, target rigidity, cyclical behaviour, poor data quality, and the absence of an independent monitoring agency have generated adverse effects and contribute to a yawning gap between regulatory goals and outcomes. The paper concludes that binding environmental targets as the main command–control instrument in China can be more accurately described as “command without control” as the target‐setting central government does not exercise a high degree of control over implementation and monitoring processes. But command and control instruments can be suited for managing “first‐generation” environmental problems and addressing environmental issues that have easily identifiable pollution sources and which are easy to verify.     

Drivers of Policy Instrument Selection for Environmental Management by Local Governments

Local governments commonly pursue environmental objectives that exceed state and federal minimum requirements. Although research informs our understanding of factors that lead cities to adopt such policy goals, the underlying mechanisms employed to achieve them are not well understood. This article examines factors that drive the choice of policy instruments that cities use to pursue local environmental objectives. The literature links the structure of the local governing body, characteristics of the community and target populations, and the nature of the policy problem to instrument selection. Building on this, the authors model the dynamics shaping cities' use of regulations, financial incentives, or combination thereof, to pursue a variety of different environmental objectives. Results indicate that community racial composition and political leaning influence instrument choice when policy targets the public at large. Alternatively, when policy targets particular stakeholder groups, such as developers, the characteristics of the local governing body are of greater importance.     

Environmental protection and US–Asia relations: a policy of disconnect

Despite the post-September 11 focus on regional security and the continued emphasis on regional economic cooperation, environmental degradation should not be overlooked as an important issue for US policy in and relationship with the Asia-Pacific. It is an important issue in its own right, presenting the countries of the region with ecological, economic and social (human security) challenges. There are both ethical and instrumental impulses for the United States, as a rich indus­trialised country and as a disproportionate consumer of resources and polluter of global waste, to provide environmental assistance to the Asia-Pacific. Despite global demands that the ‘new’ new world (environmental) order should be based on solidarity and collective responsibility, neither US environmental policy towards the region nor the regional consequences of its international environmental policy more generally meet this test. The US is fundamentally self-regarding rather than other-regarding in the various dimensions of its environmental relationship with the region. The consequences for both the region and for the US may be substantial. Continued environmental degradation in the region has the potential to undermine other US policy goals, in terms of its reputation, it economic objectives and even its more orthodox geopolitical security objectives.     

Sustainable intensification and ecosystem services: new directions in agricultural governance

Reconciling environmental objectives for land use with the need to produce more food is a prominent concern of scientific and policy discourses on sustainable agriculture. The idea of sustainable intensification has emerged as one prominent framing of this challenge. In this paper we elaborate this idea from an ecosystem services perspective to natural resource management, with particular reference to developments in the UK. The paper considers the general origins and attributes of the perspective and how the challenge of sustainable intensification would be conceptualized and approached through it. While efforts to link analysis of ecosystem services to policy development and delivery in the UK are revealed as consistent with prevailing, and often long standing, approaches to sustainable agriculture, the marketization of environmental assets is highlighted as a distinguishing feature of current policy applications. The character and limitations of this facet of the ecosystem services agenda are discussed. The need to animate ecological issues of sustainable intensification through frames of reference other than those of economic valuation is emphasized.     

On the Political Economy of Environmental Policy

In the past there was hardly any use of economic instrumentsin environmental policy, mainly command and control measureswere used. More recently, ecological taxes as well as tradablepermits became more popular and voluntary agreements have beenimplemented. Using the Public Choice approach we ask for thereasons of this wider acceptance of economic instruments. Weconclude that the use of market based instruments inenvironmental policy has not increased very much and theirimpact on the actual situation is still rather low, but thereis hope of a at least some increase in the future.     

Civil Service Reforms: learning from Commonwealth experiences

This article illustrates the degree to which new areas of consensus are emerging in the implementation of civil service reforms. A crucial development in Commonwealth countries has been the change in the strategies being pursued by most governments in achieving economic growth and developmental objectives. The need to change the role of the State for improved economic efficiency is finding greater acceptance in most countries. The article highlights several common themes emerging in the introduction of civil service reform programmes with remarkable similarity about the concerns and changes taking place in very different settings. The article also identifies a set of key strategies that have emerged as major instruments for the implementation of the reform process, such as securing leadership for change, enhancing policy development capacity, improved human resource and financial management systems, establishing efficiency and quality management programmes, harnessing information technology and mobilizing external and internal advice. The article concludes that there is no unique solution and each country would need to identify key strategies drawing on experiences of other countries and keeping in view national priorities. The article hence provides a useful framework for sharing of experiences and cooperation among Commonwealth countries.     

Blurring or Shifting of Policy Frames?: Institutionalization of the Economic-Environmental Policy Linkage in the European Community

This article investigates how "policy frames" have shaped the way European Community actors perceive the policy linkage between market integration and environmental policy. The article contends that there are three Community policy frames: conditional, classic, and sustainability. They form alternative "packages" of policy ideas defining the relationship between economic and environmental policy. The article provides an analysis of how actors embed these frames in the Community's institutional framework.To illustrate the general impact of policy frames on the environmental arena, the article explores two cases: waste management policy, and the integration of environmental concerns into the Community's agricultural policy. The article concludes by highlighting the different factors that promote and undermine the formation of "thick" institutional structures likely to integrate environmental and economic policy objectives.     

Revisiting the governance of privacy: Contemporary policy instruments in global perspective

The repertoire of policy instruments within a particular policy sector varies by jurisdiction; some “tools of government” are associated with particular administrative and regulatory traditions and political cultures. It is less clear how the instruments associated with a particular policy sector may change over time, as economic, social, and technological conditions evolve. In the early 2000s, we surveyed and analyzed the global repertoire of policy instruments deployed to protect personal data. In this article, we explore how those instruments have changed as a result of 15 years of social, economic and technological transformations, during which the issue has assumed a far higher global profile, as one of the central policy questions associated with modern networked communications. We review the contemporary range of transnational, regulatory, self‐regulatory, and technical instruments according to the same framework, and conclude that the types of policy instrument have remained relatively stable, even though they are now deployed on a global scale. While the labels remain the same, however, the conceptual foundations for their legitimation and justification are shifting as greater emphases on accountability, risk, ethics, and the social/political value of privacy have gained purchase. Our analysis demonstrates both continuity and change within the governance of privacy, and displays how we would have tackled the same research project today. As a broader case study of regulation, it highlights the importance of going beyond technical and instrumental labels. Change or stability of policy instruments does not take place in isolation from the wider conceptualizations that shape their meaning, purpose, and effect.     

The use of EU soft law by national courts and bureaucrats: how relation to hard law and policy maturity matter

Abstract

Soft law instruments account for a sizable share of EU legal acts, with growing importance over time. Yet, while the implementation of hard EU law has been widely studied, little is known about the use of EU soft law at the national level. In the article, it is firstly argued that the type of soft law instrument will affect national usage. Administrators and judges may welcome interpretative guidelines to complicated pieces of legislation, while more open-ended instruments may be ignored. It is further argued that the maturity of the policy field matters. National actors in mature policy fields will be routinely exposed to EU rules and they are socialized into responding to impulses from Brussels. The article probes the plausibility of these expectations in case studies on the use of EU soft law instruments by German administrations and courts in four policy fields: financial market regulation, competition, environmental protection and social policy.     

Policy coherence versus regulatory governance. Electricity reforms in Algeria and Morocco

The diffusion of independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in utilities sectors in developing countries is underpinned by the idea that IRAs are highly effective institutional devices to signal policy credibility to private investors. But is it really so? Institutional economists tend to confirm the effectiveness of IRAs, while also highlighting the many factors that condition its positive impact on investments. Acknowledging the importance of interaction effects, this paper proposes to shift the level of analysis, moving away from IRAs to look at the overall complementarity between policy objectives, instruments, and the wider political context. In sum, it argues that IRAs are, as such, irrelevant. What matters instead is policy coherence. A comparison between two case studies on electricity policy reforms in Algeria and Morocco lends credit to the policy coherence approach. It shows that policy incoherence may deprive IRAs from any impact on sectoral evolution and that there are effective alternatives to IRA to signal policy credibility and attract investors. The paper concludes by suggesting practitioners to relax the focus on preconceived policy solutions, to be open to alternative policy approaches and to focus on helping developing countries designing coherent policies.     

Explaining the formation of business-environmentalist collaborations: Collaborative windows and the Paper Task Force

Building on the agenda setting theory of Kingdon (1984), this paper develops a collaboration forming model to explain the creation of multi-party initiatives as an addition to Gray's (1985 and 1989) explanation for collaborations as a response to environmental turbulence, crisis, or complexity. It tests this model by examining the Paper Task Force, a collaboration of five multi-national companies, an environmental group, and a university intended to determine environmentally sound guidelines for paper procurement. The study finds that multi-stakeholder collaborations can require collaborative windows for their formation. These windows occur when four process streams – problem, policy, organizational, and social/political/economic – converge. In the case of the Paper Task Force, the problem stream was an increasing recognition of the environmental burdens throughout the lifecycle of paper production. The policy stream included new governmental initiatives to make paper-making processes cleaner and use paper with more recycled content. The organizational stream consisted of an increasing willingness among corporations to improve their environmental performance combined with their development of paper making technology with lower environmental impacts. The social/political/economic stream included strong public support for the environment in the United States and demand for chlorine free paper in Europe. A collaborative entrepreneur, the Environmental Defense Fund, working with the other Task Force members, was able to join solutions to problems. Implications for other collaborative ventures are developed.     

Governing sustainable palm oil supply: Disconnects,complementarities, and antagonisms between state regulations and private standards

The global palm oil value chain has grown in complexity; stakeholder relationships and linkages are increasingly shaped by new public and private standards that aim to ameliorate social and environmental costs while harnessing economic gains. Regulatory initiatives in the emerging policy regime complex struggle to resolve sector‐wide structural performance issues: pervasive land conflicts, yield differences between companies and smallholders, and carbon emissions arising from deforestation and peatland conversion. Identifying opportunities for more effective governance of the palm oil value chain and supply landscapes, this paper explores disconnects, complementarities, and antagonisms between public regulations and private standards, looking at the global, national, and subnational policy domains shaping chain actors’ conduct. Greater complementarities have emerged among transnational instruments, but state regulation disconnects persist and antagonisms prevail between national state regulations and transnational private standards. Emerging experimental approaches, particularly at subnational level, aim to improve coordination to both enhance complementarities and resolve disconnects.     

“Donate your organs,donate life!” Explicitness in policy instruments

Behavioural research suggests that the intensity with which policy instruments indicate a direction of desired behavioural change affects how target populations respond to them. However, comparative research on policy instruments focuses on their calibration, restrictiveness, density and formal intensity, but does not account for the degree to which they specify the particular policy goal. Moving beyond nudging and “command and control” approaches, this paper adds the dimension of explicitness to existing taxonomies of policy instruments. The explicitness of an instrument results from two questions: first, does the instrument specify a direction of behavioural change? Second, does the instrument attach valence to this behaviour? The paper proposes a stepwise measurement procedure and links explicitness with policy outcomes. A comparative case study of organ donor policy in Switzerland and Spain illustrates how accounting for the explicitness dimension can improve our understanding of policy instruments and their effectiveness.     

Substitution and Supplementation Between Co‐Functional Policy Instruments: Evidence from State Budget Stabilization Practices

Governments often use multiple policy instruments for pursuing policy goals with mutually reinforcing effects. These effects include supplementation and substitution. This article examines both effects by studying two instruments of state budget stabilization policy: general fund balances and budget stabilization funds. States normally maintain budget surpluses in the general fund. In recent decades, many also created separate budget stabilization funds to guard against economic downturns. Empirical results show that substitution occurs between these instruments. In other words, the influence of the first instrument is partially offset by the second. The second instrument also produces some independent impacts—called supplementation—that increase the overall influence of both instruments. Such self‐reinforcement decreases over time, suggesting that multiple policy instruments are most effective in the initial stage of application.     

Environmental Policy As Learning: A New View of an Old Landscape

Environmental policy in the United States has always been characterized by high levels of political conflict. At the same time, however, policy makers have shown a capacity to learn from their own and others' experience. This article examines U.S. environmental policy since 1970 as a learning process and, more specifically, as an effort to develop three kinds of capacities for policy learning. The first decade and a half may be seen in terms of technical learning, characterized by a high degree of technical and legal proficiency, but also narrow problem definitions, institutional fragmentation, and adversarial relations among actors. In the 1980s, growing recognition of deficiencies in technical learning led to a search for new goals, strategies, and policy instruments, in what may be termed conceptual learning . By the early 1990s, policy makers also recognized a need for a new set of capacities at social learning, reflecting trends in European environmental policy, international interest in the concept of sustainability, and dissatisfaction with the U.S. experience. Social learning stresses communication and interaction among actors. Most industrial nations, including the United States, are working to develop and integrate capacities for all three kinds of learning. Efforts to integrate capacities for conceptual and social learning in the United States have had mixed success, however, because the institutional and legal framework for environmental policy still is founded on technical learning.     

Public Support for Environmental Policy in Finland: Cultural Interpretations of Survey Results

This article studies what the Finnish people think about environmental policy and the policy instruments in use. It describes the main features of the public legitimacy of the environmental policy. The survey results are interpreted using a cultural approach, a concept of 'veil of insignificance' and some ideas of risk society theory. The Inglehartian theory of postmaterialist values is also discussed. The Finns actively support environmental policy when it concerns industry, businesses and landowners, but when the policy instruments interfere with people's own lives their support decreases radically. The article argues that the reasons for these contradictory attitudes are more complex than the freerider theory supposes. According to international surveys made during the 1990s, the Finns are less concerned about environmental problems than are people in other European countries. The article argues, for cultural and historical reasons, the Finns have a strong ecological self-identity which can in some conditions hinder the development of more ecological attitudes.     

Values and value tradeoffs in higher education policy

Public policies represent tradeoffs between values. Policy analysts should see one of their main tasks as identifying the nature of such tradeoffs, both as a general phenomenon and as they vary between specific policy areas. In this article five basic values of higher education are identified: equality, excellence, autonomy, accountability and efficiency. Their occurrence in Swedish higher education is analyzed, as well as the specific tradeoffs arrived at within the framework of that policy.I am grateful to Professor Burton Clark of the University of California at Los Angeles for providing me with the opportunity to write this article.     

Connecting social and environmental policy in Australia: Collateral gains or collateral damage?

Climate change research relating to “co‐benefits” suggests that the facilitation of social‐welfare outcomes through environmental policy offers a powerful means of incentivising climate change action. Concerns about social‐welfare, however, are often used to undermine climate change policies, typically through political claims that low‐to‐middle‐income households should not shoulder the costs of greater policy alignment between social and environmental objectives. Integrating the social into the environmental can therefore, on the one hand, lead to “co‐benefits” as each agenda promotes the other in political discourse, or alternatively to collateral damage if the policy objectives are framed as incompatible. This article explores both scenarios through two case studies of energy policy in Australia. The findings show that social‐welfare concerns can be a powerful discursive tool with the potential to facilitate political consensus, but also that this potential is not being fully realised, primarily because environmental concerns suffer when attempts are made to integrate the two areas discursively.     

Politics of the precautionary principle: assessing actors’ preferences in water protection policy

This paper analyzes the prospects for introducing the precautionary principle in water protection policy. In situations where a problem enters the political agenda and scientific uncertainties remain about causes or effects, political actors can justify state intervention based on the precautionary principle. It allows for public action even if risks related to the problem remain unclear. While the precautionary principle is widely applied in health and environmental policy fields all over the world, the mechanisms leading to its adoption are not fully understood. To close this gap, the paper investigates decision-makers preferences for the precautionary principle and further asks: Which factors promote political actors’ preferences for precautionary policy measures? In order to answer this question we study the case of emerging micropollutants—a water quality issue that recently entered political agendas, where many uncertainties remain about sources and effects. We rely on data gathered through a standardized survey among the political elite in Switzerland, which represents one of the first countries that adopted policy measures to reduce micropollutants in water bodies, despite the uncertainties that remain. Results analyzed through a temporal network autocorrelation model reveal that actors embedded in collaborative governance arrangements have the tendency to prefer precautionary action. Certain aspects of policy design, such as problem prioritization and target group membership, also impact the prospects for introducing the precautionary principle.