Jelle Behagel

Democratic Legitimacy in the Implementation of the Water Framework Directive in the Netherlands: Towards Participatory and Deliberative Norms?

The European Union (EU) increasingly shapes environmental policy in its member states. By including public participation requirements in environmental directives, the European Commission aims to open up the policy-making process and move from an administrative to a more participatory approach. Participation is considered to contribute to democratic governance, but has been associated with democratic problems as well, as the bases of democratic legitimacy do not automatically change when a participatory approach is implemented. This article uses a discourse-theoretical approach to analyze how participation in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive in the Netherlands took shape and what the implications were for the construction of democratic legitimacy. Our findings show how market and agricultural groups succeeded in dominating the debate by articulating a hegemonic discourse that marginalized environmental demands. Environmental groups did not succeed in turning the debate around, as the participatory and deliberative norms that they ascribed to were not taken up. The case study demonstrates that although the administrative policy-making process was opened up, political dynamics limited the scope for participation. The article concludes by reflecting on the potential of EU governance to promote democratic legitimacy and fulfil participatory and deliberative norms.

The construction of legitimacy in European nature policy: expertise and participation in the service of cost-effectiveness

In environmental governance, the European Union draws on norms of effectiveness, decentralisation, and participation to ensure that its policies and regulations are considered legitimate. This article analyses how the construction of legitimacy in European nature policy has changed over time. Although the norms of participation and decentralisation are increasingly evoked to address the needs of stakeholders and member states in the implementation and financing of Natura 2000, the norm of effectiveness continues to dominate the construction of legitimacy. Effectiveness first acquired its meaning in the context of a science-based approach to Natura 2000 to emphasise the importance of achieving its conservation objectives. More recently, it has become increasingly re-articulated as cost-effectiveness, which reflects a growing influence of neoliberal discourse. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for the legitimacy of European environmental governance.

Forest and Nature Governance

Problems such as deforestation, biodiversity loss and illegal logging have provoked various policy responses that are often referred to as forest and nature governance. In its broadest interpretation, governance is about the many ways in which public and private actors from the state, market and/or civil society govern public issues at multiple scales. Examples range from the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity to national forest programmes. In studies of forest and nature governance the dominant approaches are rational choice and neo-institutionalism. This book takes another perspective. Departing from ‘practice theory’, and building upon scholars like Giddens, Bourdieu, Reckwitz, Schatzki and Callon, it seeks to move beyond established understandings of institutions, actors, and knowledge. In so doing, the book not only presents an innovative conceptual and methodological framework for a practice based approach, but also rich case studies and ethnographies. Examples are participatory forest management in the tropics, REDD policy at global level, European water policy, forest certification and the construction of global biodiversity databases. Taking social practices as the key unit of analysis, this book describes how different practitioners, ranging from local forest managers on the ground to policy makers at the global level, work with trees, forests, biodiversity, wildlife, and so on, and act upon forest policies, environmental discourses, codes of conduct, or scientific insights. It is also about how communities, NGOs, stakeholders, and citizens get involved in forest and nature governance.

Prelude to Practice: Introducing a Practice Based Approach to Forest and Nature Governance

‘Forest and nature governance’ is a field that has recently emerged from forestry sciences. It analyses the governance of a diverse set of issues, including deforestation, biodiversity loss and illegal logging, producing insights useful for science and policy. Its main theoretical base consists of two mainstream social theories: rational choice and neo-institutionalism. However, since these models rest upon problematic conceptualisations of ‘the social’, this chapter proposes a practice based approach, which offers a comprehensive understanding of the social dynamics related to trees, forests and biodiversity. It goes beyond some of the old dualisms in social theory, such as subject and object, and agency and structure. Three sensitising concepts—situated agency, logic of practice and performativity—will be introduced. In addition, the chapter identifies a number of methodological guidelines for the practice based approach, based on a short review of the practice literature. These concepts and guidelines not only define the practice based approach, but also bind together the individual chapters. Finally, this chapter introduces the book’s contents.

Beyond argumentation: a practice-based approach to environmental policy

ABSTRACT We propose that a practice-based approach to environmental policy can help consolidate theoretical understanding of and empirical focus on practices in IPA. Doing so counteracts a tendency to privilege knowledge and discourse in IPA and environmental policy analysis. We draw on multiple strands of practice theory to inform three sensitising concepts: situated agency, logic of practice, and performativity. These concepts provide the analytical tools to investigate how social order and social change originate from the entanglement of meaning and action in practice. We illustrate these concepts by applying them to practices of community forest management in the countries of Ethiopia and Tanzania. Our analysis suggests that a practice-based approach is able to offer nuanced and empirically grounded accounts of political struggles and democratic practices. Its potential is especially strong in cases where policy-making and policy ideas and outcomes are less clearly linked to argumentative processes. We conclude by arguing for further inclusion and consolidation of practice-based approaches within the tradition of interpretive policy analysis.

The Promise of Practice: The Value of the Practice Based Approach for Forest and Nature Governance Studies

A practice based approach is new to studies of forest and nature governance and fairly new to governance studies in general. In this chapter, we outline the promise of such an approach for such studies. The chapter is in two parts. Firstly, a number of conclusions are drawn from the preceding individual chapters. They relate to: (1) the types of forest and nature governance practices that can be empirically distinguished; (2) the way the sensitising concepts of logic of practice, situated agency, and performativity have been used to move beyond mainstream governance approaches; and (3) the specific characteristics of a practice based approach to forest and nature governance. The second part of the chapter discusses the academic and societal value of the practice based approach as offered in this book, firstly by comparing this approach to an interpretative approach in governance studies and addressing similarities and differences, and then by discussing whether the practice based approach can contribute to policy making and steering social change. We conclude that a practice based approach can convincingly address some points that mainstream accounts of governance cannot, but only if certain long-held convictions about what governance really is are abandoned.

Infrastructures of expertise: policy convergence and the implementation of the EU Nitrates Directive in Poland

ABSTRACT Access to the EU leads to a process of policy convergence in which member states’ institutions and policy cultures become increasingly adapted to align with an EU governance system. Especially in EU environmental policy, knowledge and expertise are key aspects of the institutions and policy cultures that are adapted in this process, which ideally results in the alignment of EU policy and administrative arrangements of member states. This paper offers a historical analysis of the Nitrates Directives implementation in Poland and shows how increasing convergence of Polish institutions and cultures of expertise with EU policy occurred in response to the directives requirements. The results highlight that (1) knowledge and expertise are central to policy convergence processes and that (2) institutions and cultures of expertise are entwined in ‘infrastructures of expertise’. The paper concludes with a call for more consideration of the science–policy interface in policy convergence processes related to Europeanisation.