Conference Agenda

The building sector is a major source for greenhouse gas emissions and thus requires the crafting of successful policies to catalyze its transformation to decarbonization. Several instruments have proven effective, for example subsidies, carbon pricing, and building codes, but context matters and new disruptions such as the energy crisis might have impacted their effectiveness. Further, when it comes to implementing those, success of the policy process and politics is also crucial. In this paper we will therefore conduct a more holistic evaluation of the success of building policies, adding analysis on the process and political success to the widespread programmatic evaluations. We adopt a qualitative, comparative case study design and examine the success of the implementation of building codes and standards from the European Union's recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EU/2010/31) in the Netherlands and Germany, which covers a period before and during the energy crisis. Evidence is gathered through a combination of policy documents, secondary literature, news articles and interviews. Based on this material, we assess the programmatic, process and political success over time for these policies and contrast both cases to understand better the factors that lead to different success outcomes, considering changes over time and disruptions. We will also compare our evaluation with ex-ante assessments where available and derive lessons for how to better anticipate policy consequences and lessons for improved future policy design in the building sector.

While transparency laws have been widely adopted globally, ensuring their effective implementation continues to pose a significant challenge. In spite of a burgeoning literature on how endogenous and exogenous institutional factors influence the implementation of transparency policies, there is still a lack of tools designed to study the processes of institutional reproduction and change in transparency policy implementation within municipalities. Additionally, the connection to institutionalist findings remains underexplored. Drawing on institutionalist literature, this working paper proposes a novel tool for assessing the level of institutionalization in the implementation of transparency policies at the municipal level. To illustrate its applicability, we apply it to two Spanish municipalities, selected for their contrasting levels of implementation, using data on their transparency compliance, organizational changes, and their implementation trajectories obtained via mixed methods.