Florence Metz

Governing Water with Market-Based Instruments: Preferences and Skepticism in Switzerland

With an increasing awareness of newly detected but unregulated pollutants in waterbodies, the question arises as to how these emerging issues concerning water quality should be politically addressed. Environmental economists have advocated market-based instruments because of their effectiveness, cost-efficiency, and flexibility. However, lessons from past experiences where market forces were used to solve public problems indicate that issues related to administrative complexities, legitimacy, or uncertainty can arise. Turning the academic debate into an empirical one, this chapter takes an actor perspective and assesses the potential for introducing market-based instruments through the example of Switzerland, a forerunner in developing water policy to control emerging pollutants. Findings show that Swiss policy actors have a preference for command-and-control or voluntary instruments ahead of market-based approaches for reducing emerging pollutants in water.

Interdependent policy instrument preferences: a two-mode network approach

In policymaking, actors are likely to take the preferences of others into account when strategically positioning themselves. However, there is a lack of research that conceives of policy preferences as an interdependent system. In order to analyse interdependencies, we link actors to their policy preferences in water protection, which results in an actor-instrument network. As actors exhibit multiple preferences, a complex two-mode network between actors and policies emerges. We analyse whether actors exhibit interdependent preference profiles given shared policy objectives or social interactions among them. By fitting an exponential random graph model to the actor-instrument network, we find considerable clustering, meaning that actors tend to exhibit preferences for multiple policy instruments in common. Actors tend to exhibit interdependent policy preferences when they are interconnected, that is, they collaborate with each other. By contrast, actors are less likely to share policy preferences when a conflict line divides them.

Water Policy Networks—The Structural Perspective

This chapter uncovers the social mechanisms behind policymaking by analyzing water policy networks from a structural perspective. It elaborates on the patterns of ties that form during policymaking processes and impact collective decision making. Policy process research discerned as crucial features of policy networks the combination of interconnected actors exhibiting belief cohesion and uniting into coalitions, brokerage, and entrepreneurship. Network analysis is employed to exhibit variations in social structure of water policy networks for the reduction of micropollutants in Switzerland, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. This chapter provides an introduction to the quantitative analysis of social relations by means of social network analysis. It explains how the interactions between water policy actors are analyzed based on empirical data gathered for the purpose of this study. Results reveal significant differences in the ways water policy networks are structured in the four countries included in this study with regard to the diversity of actors’ policy beliefs, together with their degree of coordination, coalition structures, brokerage, and entrepreneurship.

A Network Approach to Policy Design

This chapter explores the question: Can policy networks aid us in understanding the variance of policy design? Since networks of policy actors create their own governing structures, the goal of this study is to better understand which patterns of interactions facilitate or inhibit the realization of collective gains. Past research has repeatedly highlighted the relevance of the network approach in explaining policy outputs, but has thus far failed in establishing systematic hypotheses and empirical tests beyond simple attestations that ‘networks matter.’ To assess the relevance of the network approach, this study examines whether specific structural network properties are conducive to comprehensive problem solving in public policymaking. Hypotheses are formulated in order to evaluate which combination and level of network configurations, i.e., interconnectedness, belief cohesion, brokerage, entrepreneurship, and coalition structure, promote or inhibit networks’ ability to design comprehensive policies. Findings from this study provide first indications that the relational structures between policy actors represent an important element in achieving comprehensive policy designs and in promoting problem solving. The exploratory research results suggest that a combination of several structural network properties impacts networks’ ability to design comprehensive policies.

Comparing Policy Designs in Water Protection: Micropollutants Policies in the Rhine River Riparian States

This chapter compares water policies for the reduction of micropollutants in the four Rhine riparian states: Switzerland, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. To evaluate the performance of policies from a problem-solving perspective, the policy comprehensiveness index is introduced here as a new analytical tool. Based on lessons from existing policy instrument literature, six indicators feed into the proposed index. This chapter addresses the methodological questions of index construction and thereby explains how the index can be employed to assess the performance of policies. Finally, micropollutants policies of the four Rhine River riparian states are evaluated and compared by means of the introduced index. Toward this goal, this chapter highlights the broader context: the degree to which micropollutants are of particular concern in the Rhine River, the EU legislative framework on water protection, and the policy processes that led to the adoption of the micropollutants policies in the four countries. The final assessment of policies for the reduction of micropollutants in water reveals that Germany, France, and the Netherlands lag behind the policy innovator of Switzerland. This dichotomy represents a reflection of Swiss policy design effectively contributing to the reduction of micropollutants in surface waters, and therefore, the country’s policy can be considered comprehensive.

Das politisch Machbare ausloten

Die Politik gestaltet Losungen fur Umweltprobleme stark mit. Durch die Analyse von Entscheidungsfindungsprozessen lassen sich politische Beschlusse erklaren und Faktoren identifizieren, die wirkungsvolle Losungen fordern. Untersuchungen im Bereich Mikroverunreinigungen zeigen, dass sich Akteure, die an der Entscheidungsfindung beteiligt sind starker fur praventive Massnahmen aussprachen. Akteure mit internationaler Einbindung setzten eher auf End-of-pipe-Losungen.