Environmental Federalism Revisited: Second‐Order Devolution in Air Quality Regulation

In this paper we examine states' use of local clean air agencies and provide a preliminary assessment of what causes states to devolve air quality policy authority to the local level. Data from a unique comparative state survey shows that states vary widely in the number of local clean air agencies they employ and the amount of authority these agencies have to set standards, monitor air quality, and enforce regulations. Multivariate analyses suggest that second‐order devolution is partly driven by a general propensity to decentralize policy authority, but that policy‐specific factors relating to the problem and interest group environment affect devolution as well. These findings indicate that local agencies play an important role in U.S. air quality regulation, and that the dynamics of state devolution to local agencies deserve further study.     

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.     

Front‐line Regulators and their Approach to Environmental Regulation in Southwest Ohio

Regulatory approaches and strategies are frequently the subject of study in various literatures, but that examination focuses on practices rather than looking more deeply at the nature of regulatory interactions. Also missing is a more thorough look at what it is front‐line regulators—in this case, environmental inspectors and site coordinators—desire in their interactions and how they perceive their regulatory counterparts. Interviews with regulators in Southwest Ohio reveal that 82 percent of them think the regulated community intends to comply with regulations. Additionally, 71 percent of regulators say that their interactions are positive with the regulated community with three‐quarters indicating that trust plays a role in these interactions. Only 36 percent of interviewees prefer a clear cut and consistent approach while the rest favor a collaborative approach or some combination thereof. These findings should impact discussions concerning regulatory approaches in environmental policy, particularly conversations concerning next‐generation policies.     

Fixed‐Term Parliaments and the Challenges for Governments and the Civil Service: A Comparative Perspective

The Fixed‐term Parliaments Act significantly reduces the powers of the Prime Minister to manage the risk of government termination and to time elections to his or her party's advantage. In this paper we ask how the Act is likely to change the way in which governments terminate, their durability and opportunities for planning in government and departments. In answering these questions we draw on quantitative comparative evidence from other European countries that operate with fixed‐term parliaments. Our analysis suggests that fixing the parliamentary term can be expected to convert some opportunistically called elections into regular elections and to stabilise governments toward the end of the parliamentary term. But the Act is also likely to have unanticipated consequences in increasing governments’ vulnerability to failure before they reach the final sessions of Parliament. We explore these unanticipated consequences and outline their implications for governing style and Civil Service planning.     

Environmental Policy as Democratic Proclamation and Corporatist Implementation: A Comparative Study of Environmental Taxation in the Electricity Sector in the Nordic Countries as of 1994

The Nordic countries generally rank as one of the forerunners of environmental policies and figure in the front line with the most ambitious policy goals in international fora. However, since effective environmental action, for instance through environmental taxation, generally puts a burden on industry, a unilateral introduction of environmental measures by one or a few nations may seriously affect their industrial competitiveness, given an open and competitive economy. Given their persistent and often unilateral avant-garde environmental engagement, the paper discusses how the Nordic countries deal with this dilemma. Theoretically, the paper seeks an answer by recursion to Rokkan's famous distinction between functional and electoral/numerical politics. Empirically the paper finds support for the Rokkan perspective through a systematic analysis of Nordic environmental taxation policies, documenting that the two channels of policy making do indeed produce different results that are compatible with a dual-policy solution to the prisoners' dilemma of avant-garde environmental politics.     

Community‐Based Participatory Research as a Tool for Policy Change: A Case Study of the Southern California Environmental Justice Collaborative

In 2000, a regional rule governing maximum individual cancer risk from stationary facilities in Southern California was dramatically altered, reducing allowable risk levels by 75%. This article uses a case study approach to explore the role of a community‐based participatory research (CBPR) partnership, the Southern California Environmental Justice Collaborative, in producing research and helping spearhead policy advocacy leading to this policy change. It also highlights the role of the collaborative in helping to change the framing of the issue from individual to cumulative risk assessment, so that the regulatory agencies began to reflect this broader thinking in their policymaking. The collaborative's structure and methodology, regional focus, relationships with key decision makers, and its reputation as an important source of both credible science and “people power” were seen as contributing to its effectiveness. The role of contextual factors including a recovering and more regulation‐friendly economy also is highlighted, as are key barriers faced. Implications for other community–academic partnerships working to address regional and statewide public policy are discussed.     

Community Privilege and Environmental Justice: An Agent‐Based Analysis

Several theories compete to explain observed race‐ and ethnicity‐based environmental injustice in society. This paper focuses on analyzing the extent to which firms' siting decisions based on community privilege can explain this outcome. A unique feature of this analysis is that we include analysis of both unwanted land uses (disamenity firms) and desired land uses (amenity firms). The environmental justice analysis of amenities other than green spaces is rare, but amenities are crucial components of urban areas to which environmental justice studies must attend. We use an agent‐based model to explore community outcomes when environmental disamenities choose locations based on low community privilege, and compare this with scenarios in which disamenities only seek to minimize the cost of land. We also assess differences in environmental justice outcomes when amenities choose locations in areas with high community privilege. While disamenities' focus on locating in areas with low community privilege indeed affects environmental equity, the effect of amenity location is also important, and there are powerful interaction effects. The importance of privilege‐based location is found in these simulations regardless of which social group—majority or minority—is assumed to be the privileged group. This study suggests a limitation of EJ policies and models that focus on the politics of disamenity siting without considering the politics of amenity siting.     

Local Government Innovation and Revealed Ideas of Political Legitimacy: a Comparative Study between the United States and China

This study constructs a typology of innovation from the winning nominations of local government innovation award programs in the US and China, two countries with histories of subnational policy innovation, to reveal what types of policy initiatives local officials believe will improve governance in each country. I argue that improving governance is important as it serves as a main source of modern political legitimacy, regardless of regime type. To analyze if ideas of good governance differ by regime type, I classify local government innovation into six thematic areas, and then examine how each of these are expected to improve governance and thus contribute to political legitimacy. In China, I find that the predominant local innovations are in the area of governance and management, which demonstrate that government officials believe that reforming the democratic governance process will solve governance problems and enhance political legitimacy. In the United States, however, economic, social, cultural, and environmental areas occupied a larger proportion of government innovation, illustrating that local officials pay more attention to enhancing political legitimacy through improving the performance and quality of government services. This analysis shows that ideas of good governance, as revealed by local government innovation awards, differ across these two regime types. Although government officials in both regimes desire improved governance as a way to enhance political legitimacy, what that means in each country differs.     

The Guardian State: A Comparative Analysis of Interest Group Regulation

This article discusses the regulation of interest groups by the state in four democracies: two liberal, namely Australia and Canada, and two nonliberal, namely Israel and Turkey. The analysis centers on five questions: the scope of regulation, its causes, public reaction to regulation, implementation of regulation, and its impact on state and society. The article suggests that the type of regime does make a difference regarding all parameters of regulation. Liberal democracies tend to regulate strategy of interest groups; regulation is caused by fear of undue associational pressure exerted on decision-makers. The public tends to be hostile to regulation; implementation is strict, but impact on both interest groups and society is modest. Nonliberal democracies tend to regulate interest groups' structure. Regulation is caused by fear of subversion and threats to the state's survival. The public is compliant disregarding regulation. Implementation is lax and impact may be potentially substantial. These hypotheses were largely confirmed in the four cases under consideration.     

The Cost‐Effectiveness of Welfare‐to‐Work Programs: A Meta‐Analysis

This article uses the tools of meta‐analysis to assess cost–benefit studies of 50 mandatory welfare‐to‐work programs that were targeted at Aid for Families with Dependent Children recipients and evaluated by random assignment. The findings suggest that the costs of a typical evaluated welfare‐to‐work program probably exceeded its benefits from the perspective of the government, but those assigned to the program, and possibly society as a whole, may reap small positive net benefits. However, there are individual programs that are very cost‐beneficial. Further analyses of the determinants of the cost‐benefits of welfare‐to‐work programs to government and society as a whole show that some services are cost‐neutral, but others entail net costs, which are sometimes substantial. The findings suggest that less successful programs might be made more cost‐beneficial by dropping vocational training and basic education as program components, leaving mainly lower cost components, such as mandated job search and sanctions, but also possibly the more costly financial incentives.     

Tasmania's Tamar Valley Pulp Mill: A Comparison of Planning Processes Using a Good Environmental Governance Framework

In November 2004, the Tasmanian government requested the state's planning body, the Resource Planning and Development Commission (RPDC), to undertake an evaluation of a proposal to establish a pulp mill at Long Reach near Bell Bay on Tasmania's Tamar Estuary. In early 2007, Gunns Limited, the project's proponent, pulled out of the RPDC process and the government established an alternative, ‘fast‐track’ process under the Pulp Mill Assessment Act (PMAA). This article evaluates the RPDC and the PMAA assessment processes using a ‘good environmental governance’ framework composed of eight criteria – transparency, accountability, openness, balance, deliberation, efficiency, science and risk. The comparison reveals that although the RPDC process fell short of the ideal, it was markedly superior to the PMAA process that replaced it. The case highlights how political economic power can be used to the detriment of public planning and the communities and environment that rely on it.     

The Effect of Transparency on Trust in Government: A Cross‐National Comparative Experiment

Transparency is considered a key value for trustworthy governments. However, the effect of transparency on citizens’ trust across national cultures is overlooked in current research. This article compares the effect of transparency on trust in government in the Netherlands and South Korea. The effect is investigated in two similar series of three experiments. The authors hypothesize that the effect of transparency differs because the countries have different cultural values regarding power distance and short‐ and long‐term orientation. Results reveal similar patterns in both countries: transparency has a subdued and sometimes negative effect on trust in government. However, the negative effect in South Korea is much stronger. The difference in the magnitude of transparency's effect suggests that national cultural values play a significant role in how people perceive and appreciate government transparency.     

中国、韩国、日本规制改革比较研究(下)

三、日本的规制改革 20世纪70年代末以来,日本政府一直不断推出规制改革计划.1981年-1983年的临时行政调查会、1984年-1986年的临时行政改革推进审议会、1991年第三次行政改革审议会,以及后来的一系列行政改革计划都将规制改革作为行政改革的核心任务对待.     

The Boomerang Effect: A Case Study of the Murray‐Darling Basin Plan

In the period from 1997 to 2009 Australia experienced a severe drought, which significantly affected the Murray‐Darling Basin. The drought has broken but state governments are still in conflict over water allocations. The establishment of the Murray‐Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) in 2007 was intended to address these issues but the management of the Basin remains complicated by constitutional ambiguity. This paper addresses the question of whether it is possible to implement effective policies for the health of the Murray‐Darling Basin without the present danger of a drought. We suggest that the MDBA has encountered what Beck refers to as the ‘boomerang effect’. The MDBA's plans seem to have produced new challenges and the Authority might find the Basin is exposed to risks it has created.     

Strategic Thinking,Shared Meaning‐Making and the Interpretive Turn in Policy ‐ A Case Study

Governments' demands for results in a complex and rapidly changing policy environment call for more strategic and nuanced ways of approaching policy. Drawing on the work of the British interpretive ‘turn’, evidenced in the network governance literature and the differentiated polity critique of Westminster narratives, and of Liedkta on strategy as design, this paper suggests that shared strategic narratives, more consciously applied to policy development and implementation, could deliver better results; that consensus from shared meaning‐making may have depth, and that it could emphasise the transformative over the conservative forces of individuals' traditions and beliefs. Data for the paper came from a micro‐study on the implementation of SmartGate automated border processing system in New Zealand.     

Punctuated Equilibrium and Agenda‐Setting: Bringing Parties Back in: Policy Change after the Dutroux Crisis in Belgium

The article analyzes how focusing events affect the public and political agenda and translate into policy change. Empirically, the study focuses on the policy changes initiated by paedophile Marc Dutroux's arrest in 1996 in Belgium. Theoretically, the article tests whether Baumgartner and Jones's (1993 ) U.S. punctuated equilibrium approach applies to a most different system case, Belgium being a consociational democracy and a partitocracy. Their approach turns out to be useful to explain this “critical case”: Policy change happens when “policy images” and “policy venues” shift. Yet, the Dutroux case shows also that political parties, as key actors in the Belgian policy process, should be integrated more explicitly in the punctuated equilibrium theory. Finally, the article argues that the quantitative analysis of longitudinal data sets on several agendas should be supplemented with qualitative case study evidence (e.g., interviews with key decision makers) to unravel the complex case of issue attention and policy change.