Mark Pennington

Public Participation and Local Environmental Planning: The collective action problem and the potential of social capital

Expanding the opportunities for public participation in environmental planning is not always the best option. Starting from an institutional public choice analysis of public participation in terms of the collective action problem, this paper emphasises the roots of participatory activities in the incentive structures facing potential participants. It then goes on to consider the strategies that may be adopted for encouraging greater public involvement and looks particularly to the social capital literature for suggestions of how institutional redesign may alter these incentive structures. The paper concludes by distinguishing three different modes of environmental planning, in terms of the rationale for participation, the severity of the collective action problem and the associated participatory strategy that can be adopted.

Hayekian Political Economy and the Limits of Deliberative Democracy

Inspired by Habermasian critiques of liberalism, supporters of deliberative democracy seek an extension of social democratic institutions to further a reinvigorated communicative rationality against the ‘atomism’ of market processes. This paper offers a critique of deliberative democratic theory from a Hayekian perspective. For Hayek, the case against the social democratic state rests with the superior capacity of markets to extend communicative rationality beyond the realm of verbal discourse.

Free market environmentalism and the limits of land use planning

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of an approach which questions the view that market institutions are inferior substitutes for government planning in the environmental sphere. Often known as free market environmentalism, this approach argues against the assumption that governments can ‘correct’ for various imperfections within the market system and puts forward a positive case for relying on ‘imperfect’ market processes in order to improve environmental quality. The paper outlines the principal components of free market environmentalism in order to develop a critique of arguments advanced in favour of enhancing the role of statutory land use planning. The analysis suggests that whilst markets are far from perfect institutions, free market environmentalism presents a powerful case for relying to a much greater extent on competitive market processes as an alternative to the regulatory state. Copyright

Robust Political Economy

This important book offers a comprehensive defence of classical liberalism against contemporary challenges. It sets out an analytical framework of ‘robust political economy’ that explores the economic and political problems that arise from the phenomena of imperfect knowledge and imperfect incentives.

Elinor Ostrom and the robust political economy of common-pool resources

This paper situates Elinor Ostroms work on common-pool resource management in the tradition of ‘robust political economy’. Ostroms analysis of bottom-up governance institutions is shown to recognise that such arrangements though imperfect are better placed to cope with bounded rationality and incentive compatibility problems in the management of smaller- and medium-scale common-pool resources. While Ostroms work provides an analytical framework to explain the success of these arrangements, however, the paper argues that it lacks a robust account of when, if ever, top-down governance arrangements are to be preferred.

DEMOCRACY AND THE DELIBERATIVE CONCEIT

Abstract Over recent years support for deliberative democracy as a regulative ideal against which political and economic institutions should be judged has become the dominant tradition within political theory. Deliberative democrats such as Amy Guttman and Dennis Thompson argue that deliberative public decision making would bring with it important epistemological and ethical gains. Closer inspection of these claims, however, suggests that deliberative democratic arrangements are not only impractical but are fundamentally at odds with the epistemic and ethical goals that their supporters seek to advance. Arrangements based on “exit” rather than “voice” may be better placed to meet these challenges in a world characterized by complexity and conflicting moral values.

Public Choice Theory and the Politics of Urban Containment: Voter-Centred versus Special-Interest Explanations

The policy of urban containment has lain at the heart of British land-use planning for over fifty years. The author examines the political dynamics underlying the commitment to this policy through the lens of public choice theory. The analysis suggests that macroelectoral shifts in favour of environmental protection have provided a push towards restrictive land-use planning and an emphasis on urban containment in recent years. Evidence of a ‘voluntary’ approach to regulation in other areas of environmental concern, however, suggests that the peculiar focus on containment is attributable to the political power exerted by a coalition of special interests and public sector bureaucrats who benefit most from this core of the British planning system.

Classical liberalism and ecological rationality: The case for polycentric environmental law

Drawing on the perspective of classical liberalism, and developing a comparative institutions framework through which to evaluate alternative proposals for environmental improvement, the case is made for a system of polycentric environmental law. Within this context, contemporary theories that favour an extension of state regulation in order to address the trans-boundary nature of environmental goods are challenged. Problems arising from the complexity of social and ecological processes, the collective nature of environmental goods and the distributive consequences of environmental protection are unlikely to be met by a framework that emphasises greater unity in decisions. On the contrary, the principle of ecological rationality is more likely to be met within a classical liberal framework that facilitates market-like processes of competitive spontaneous order at multiple levels.

Budgets, Bureaucrats and the Containment of Urban England

Following the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, a persistent policy of urban containment has been pursued throughout rural England. In spite of growing evidence of the significant external costs resulting from this policy, there is little sign that government agencies are considering the possibility of a serious policy re‐think. This article provides a public choice analysis of bureaucratic incentives within the British land use planning system and their relationship to urban containment. The empirical evidence presented suggests that incentives within planning agencies are heavily skewed towards budget maximisation and that the continued emphasis on urban containment owes more to bureaucratic expansionism than it does to selfless public concern.

Realistic Idealism and Classical Liberalism: Evaluating Free Market Fairness

ABSTRACT In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi defends classical-liberal principles not because of real-world considerations but on ideal-theoretic grounds. However, what constitutes a sufficiently “ideal” ideal theory is debatable since, as Tomasi shows, regimes that range from laissez faire to heavily interventionist can all be classified as legitimate from the perspective of ideal theory. Conversely, if ideal theory can allow for realistic constraints, as Rawls does, then we should recognize that even under ideal-theoretic conditions, political actors face logistical, epistemic, and motivational challenges that only intensify in the real world, where questions of feasibility become paramount.