Jenny Fairbrass

Governance for sustainability: towards a 'thick' analysis of environmental decisionmaking

Environmental decisions made by individuals, civil society, and the state involve questions of economic efficiency, environmental effectiveness, equity, and political legitimacy. These four criteria are constitutive of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, which has become the dominant rhetorical device of environmental governance. We discuss the tendency for disciplinary research to focus on particular subsets of the four criteria, and argue that such a practice promotes solutions that do not acknowledge the dynamics of scale and the heterogeneity of institutional contexts. We advocate an interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of environmental decisionmaking that seeks to identify legitimate and context-sensitive institutional solutions producing equitable, efficient, and effective outcomes. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by using it to examine decisions concerning contested nature conservation and multiple-use commons in the management of Hickling Broad in Norfolk in the United Kingdom. We conclude that interdisciplinary approaches enable the generalisation and transfer of lessons in a way that respects the specifics and context of the issue at hand.

Protecting biodiversity in the European Union: national barriers and European opportunities?

The European Union (EU) is an evolving system of multi-level governance (MLG). For scholars of the EU, a critical question is which level of governance has the most decisive influence on the integration process? Some studies of EU regional policy claim that subnational actors, using channels of interest representation that bypass national officials, interact directly with EU policy-makers generating outcomes that are neither desired nor intended by national executives. This article examines the development of EU biodiversity policy over a thirty-year period (c. 1970-2000) and finds that environmental groups, who were generally marginalized at the national level in Britain, have learnt to use EU opportunities to outflank the government, resulting in policy outcomes that they would be unlikely to secure through national channels of representation. However, the evidence presented suggests that supranational actors were the major cause of these unintended consequences, not environmental groups.

Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility Policy in the European Union: A Discursive Institutionalist Analysis

Using a discursive institutionalist framework, this article analyses and assesses the recent development of EU CSR (corporate social responsibility) policy, focusing particularly on its evolution during the past decade. In so doing, the article scrutinizes the interactive processes associated with the policy construction at the EU level and explores the main sets of ideas that competed for acceptance. The analysis exposes the degree to which the ‘voluntary’ approach prevails over the ‘regulated’ mode of policy implementation. The data captured trigger a re‐examination of some persistent, broader questions about the merits and deficiencies in EU policy‐making.

European Union Environmental Policy and the UK Government: A Passive Observer or a Strategic Manager?

What role do individual member states play in the continuing development of European Union (EU) environmental policy? Are they capable of successful intervention in the process of joint rule making to maintain their preferred national policies? On the basis of a detailed analysis of EU environmental pollution control measures adopted in the period 1972-86, some observers have argued forcefully that the United Kingdom (UK) Government successfully defended its sovereignty by systematically manipulating national and European political arenas in order to maintain its pre-existing policies. However, when other aspects of EU environmental policy are analysed over the full policy cycle, the extent of national control appears much more circumscribed. A comparison of UK Government aims with long-term political outcomes in the sphere of EU biodiversity policy (c.1970-2000) reveals evidence of firm state control in the short-term, but significant unintended consequences in the medium to long-term. These findings raise doubts about the explanatory power of intergovernmental accounts of EU environmental policy making.

Influence and Interests in the European Union: The New Politics of Persuasion and Advocacy

Key themes focus on interest representation as a necessary activity for participants in EU decision-making Europeanization and current issues in the field of interest representation, such as EU enlargement Chapters are contributed by a variety of leading practitioners, academics, researchers and other experts in the field Discusses and explains the politics of Interest representation EU institutions and interest representation and new issues, including EU expansion, NGOs and civil society.

Introduction and Context

This chapter surveys the historical development of climate and energy policy in the EU and the attendant scholarly attention paid to environmental and climate policy and politics. The significance of the 2030 framework for the future direction of EU climate mitigation efforts is set out, the authors arguing that the policy represents a distinct shift towards technology neutrality. Following an overview of the literature on EU interest groups and socio-technical transitions, the chapter concludes by identifying the impact of interest groups on the policy agenda as the focus of the study.

Conclusions and Discussion

This chapter lays out the principal findings that flow from the preceding analysis and reflects on them in the light of the original objectives of the research. A range of findings is presented which largely complement existing explanations, although they also emphasise the potential for the idea of ‘technology neutrality’ to drive both cohesion and division in the policy community. This complicating factor is offered as an additional explanation for the nature of the 2030 EU climate and energy targets. Finally, the chapter assesses the book’s contribution to existing theoretical and empirical literature.

The Problem Stream

This chapter describes what Kingdon calls the ‘problem stream’. The chapter sets out the debate surrounding the connected issues of ‘energy’ and ‘climate’ topics and outline the issues vying for European policymakers’ attention in the year or so leading up to the European Commission’s 2014 Communication on the Energy and Climate Framework for 2030. The conceivable list of potential problems relevant to the policy area may be extremely large but the list that actually receives attention is necessarily much shorter. The chapter focusses on problems of energy supply, environmental sustainability and the cost of energy.

The Politics Stream

The politics stream represents the large-scale political trends in which the policy process is embedded. This chapter provides an account of the politics stream, tracing important national and European political trends such as the rise of populist sentiment, as reflected in the 2014 European Parliamentary elections and the decline of public concern for climate issues following the 2009 international climate conference. The member state positions ahead of the October 2014 EU summit which decided the 2030 targets are analysed, concluding that consensus around climate and energy priorities was in short supply.

The Policy Stream

John Kingdon expresses the significance of ideas in his vision of the policy process by paraphrasing Victor Hugo: ‘Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come’. The policy stream is where ideas are born and developed, combined and recombined, polished and prepared for their moment in the sun. This chapter follows the Brussels climate and energy policy community concerned as it trials tests and contests ideas about the 2030 targets in the several years leading up to 2014. The significant divisions within the policy community wrought by ideas are explored towards the end of the chapter.