European Union Environmental Policy-making Trajectories
Chair(s): Annica Kronsell (University of Gothenburg)
The making of EU environmental policy has clearly changed over the 40 to 50 years of its existence. This panel aims firstly to track this change as what needs to be explained: its dependent variable. Secondly, the panel will focus upon how this change can be exchanged through the proposal of independent variables. Linkages to, and discussioins of, major theories of European integratioin will of course be revisited. But scope will also be left for drawing upon other robust social science theories.
Presentations of the Symposium
How is the EU Multi-level Governance Addressed in the Local Level Waste Policy anagement Practices: a comparative case study of Austria, Sweden, Latvia and Spain
Anna Broka
: Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences
Since almost three decades the policy makers on global and regional levels are prioritizing and introducing the policy instruments effecting waste management in different ways. In line with the EU Waste Framework Directive (WFD 2008/98/EC) environmentally sustainable growth or the green growth is seemed to be a high priority of the national and local governments across the Europe. In the most countries the local governments are responsible for the waste management, which is an issue of bottom-up policy approaches and practices. The findings confirms that there are marked differences among the EU-28 members states regarding their performance in municipal policy waste management practices. Policy analysis distinguishes four types of country clusters or regimes in respect to the waste management. The first distinction is between individualised and collective waste management systems that is represented by different levels governing practices. The second distinction is between waste preventive and treatment-oriented policies that on local level can be more flexible allowing diverse individual initiatives or more centralised/ controlled by the national or regional policy governance structures.
No longer an Ever-increasing Acquis? The Expansion, Stasis, Dismantling, and Termination of European environmental policies
Paul Tobin1, Ebba Minas2
1University of Manchester, 2Stockholm University
If the European Union (EU) is a global environmental superpower, then policy tools are the source of its strength. Indeed, the EU has been labelled a ‘regulatory state’ because of the importance of regulation and policy to securing its goals. During the 1990s, there had been a widespread expectation that the body of EU environmental legislation – the acquis – would steadily expand over time to match growing European competencies and environmental challenges. However, the 2008/09 Global Financial Crisis saw a shift in narratives around environmental protection, and scholarship began to explore additional directions of policy change. Here, we explain the development and nuances of each direction of policy change, namely expansion, stasis, dismantling, and termination, and map these directions against the EU’s environmental policy trajectories since the 1990s. In particular, we analyse policy dismantling, which has been a focal area of EU environmental politics research since the early 2010s. We examine the dominant conceptualisations of policy dismantling, which emphasise the ‘visibility’ and ‘deliberateness’ of dismantling, and we reflect upon the challenges faced by scholars in demonstrating such characteristics. Turning to future research, we discuss the growing possibilities of large-n policy analysis via advanced computational methods, which can identify previously hidden patterns of policy change within the vast body of EU legislation. This paper holds important implications for scholars and practitioners of EU environmental policy change who wish to understand the easily-overlooked realities of environmental protection at the European level.
Rising from the Depths: Mapping the Emergence of Coalitions across EU Environmental Policymaking Processes
Christopher Crellin
FNRS / UCLouvain, Belgium
Coordination between diverse policy actors leads to the emergence of coalitions and helps address complex environmental problems by incorporating varying perspectives and resources, generating policy change. Hence, coalitions can facilitate policy progress by aggregating policy actors’ preferences and simplifying the overall process. This same variance, however, can also spurn conflicts, blocking policy progress. To date, research on coalitions in EU (environmental) policymaking primarily identifies coalitions, either within EU institutions or in an ad-hoc manner and at a given moment in the policymaking process, to explain policy outcomes and change. Interestingly, these identified coalitions structurally differ along multiple dimensions, for example, by membership, resources, and coordination density. Yet, no systematic mapping or characterization has been conducted across the policymaking process to take stock of this variation. Doing so is necessary to start developing explanations for coalitions, which is currently sparse, and deepen our understandings of EU environmental policymaking processes. Consequently, this paper asks: what types of coalitions emerge in EU environmental policymaking processes? Scholars show that different structures of coalitions have varying consequences on the outcome of a policy process. Studying what different coalitions emerge, we can begin to infer whether and when policy progress or conflict may arise and the appetite and extent for policy change.
Focusing on five diverse cases (the European Climate Law, the Batteries Regulation, Renewable Energy Directive, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and the Just Transition Fund) this paper aims to first, systematically map and identify varying coalitions across the agenda-setting, policy formulation, and decision-making stages, through social network analysis. Then, coalitions will be characterized along a set of dimensions derived from the literature. To do so, semi-structured interviews and public documents, including specialized press reports, EU documents, and position papers are relied on.
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