Regulatory Commitment to Negotiated Agreements: Evidence from the United States, Germany, The Netherlands, and France

Negotiated Agreements (NAs) are arrangements between firms and regulators in which firms voluntarily agree to reduce their pollution. This article analyzes the institutional features that facilitate or hamper the implementation of NAs. We illustrate the analysis with case studies on the implementation of NAs in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. We find that NAs are implemented when regulators are able to commit credibly to the objectives of NAs. Institutional environments marked by fragmentation of power and open access in policymaking reduce regulatory credibility and thus hamper the implementation of NAs.     

Government Credible Commitment to the French and American Nuclear Power Industries

Backlash against nuclear power, although widespread, affected nuclear power programs differently in the United States than in France owing to their differing institutional setups. This article uses a transaction costs economics approach to examine government credible commitment to the French and American nuclear power industries. Positive political theory sheds light on the comparative institutional environment in each industry. The American combination of fragmented power, little reliance on bureaucratic expertise, an independent judiciary, and opposing interest groups greatly undermines the ability of the U.S. government to credibly commit to the nuclear power industry. In France, despite substantial anti‐nuclear interest groups, the impermeability of the institutional setup—no division of power, weak judiciary, and reliance on bureaucratic expertise—effectively prevents activists from influencing policy outcomes. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The diffusion of environmental management standards in Europe and in the United States: An institutional perspective

ISO 14001, released in 1996, provides the basic framework for the establishment of an Environmental Management System (EMS) that can be audited and certified. ISO is not only an acronym for the International Organization for Standardization, but is also a term that refers to its Greek meaning: equal. The main rationale for the creation of ISO 14001 was that its worldwide acceptance should facilitate international trade by harmonizing otherwise diffuse environmental management standards and by providing an internationally accepted blueprint for sustainable development, pollution prevention, and compliance assurance.However, the implementation of ISO 14001 varies significantly across the globe. A significant number of firms have adopted ISO 14001 in Western Europe and Asia. In December 1999, 52% of the 14,106 ISO 14001 certified facilities were located in Western Europe and 36% in Asia. On the contrary, very few American companies have adopted this voluntary standard. U.S. certified facilities accounted for only 4.5% of the total of ISO 14001 certified facilities in the world in December 1999.The U.S. institutional environment seems acting as a deterrent to ISO 14000 adoption as U.S. companies are fearful of the certification process which lays their performance open to public scrutiny. The opposite is true in Europe, where governments have encouraged the adoption of environmental management standards by setting up a trusted certification system and providing technical assistance to potential adopters.This paper offers a conceptual framework to analyze this variation in adoption rates. It is proposed that the regulatory, normative and cognitive aspects of a country's institutional environment greatly impact the costs and potential benefits of ISO 14001 adoption and therefore explain the differences in adoption across countries. The analysis is supported by data collected from a phone questionnaire to 140 firms in Europe and a questionnaire mailed to 152 firms in the U.S.     

Free riding in voluntary environmental programs: The case of the U.S. EPA WasteWise program

Voluntary Environmental Programs (VPs) involving industry and regulatory agencies have emerged as the promise of the future in environmental policy circles. Although the number of these agreements is increasing in OECD countries, there are still concerns about their effectiveness; in particular that “free-riding” behavior may be difficult to avoid within VPs. Free riding occurs when one firm benefits from the actions of another without sharing the costs. Free-riding behavior may undermine the credibility of VPs and therefore their viability. Our paper focuses on understanding the factors that favor or hamper free-riding behavior in VPs. Our analysis is based on the case of the WasteWise program that was established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce municipal solid waste.     

Political Resistance: A Matter of Fairness

In this paper, I argue that the principle of fairness can license both a duty of fair play, which is used to ground a moral duty to obey the law in just or nearly just societies, and a duty of resistance to unfair and unjust social schemes. The first part of the paper analyzes fairness’ demands on participants in mutually beneficial schemes of coordination, and its implications in the face of injustice. Not only fairness does not require complying with unfair and unjust social schemes, but it also prohibits benefiting from such schemes. I use the case of racial segregation in the U.S. to illustrate this latter argument, and consider some objections to my investigation, given the availability and straightforwardness of justice. The second part of the paper elaborates the argument for the duty to resist. The Radical Reform argument first establishes, by elimination of the alternatives (exit and restitution), that the principal way for citizens to cease benefiting from an unfair and unjust social scheme is to radically reform it. The Resistance Argument then shows that resistance is crucial to bring about reform, so that one ought to resist unfair and unjust schemes from which one benefits. Next, I offer two arguments for collective resistance and political solidarity, one based on empirical considerations and the other based on fairness. Finally, I consider the costs of the resistance efforts which fairness may require.