P. Leroy

Institutional Dynamics in Environmental Governance

About the Authors. List of tables. List of figures.- 1. Institutional Dynamics in Environmental Governance Pieter Leroy and Bas Arts.- 2. Political Modernisation Bas Arts and Jan van Tatenhove.- 3. The Dynamics of Policy Arrangements: Turning Round the Tetrahedron Duncan Liefferink.-4. The Governance Capacity of (new) Policy Arrangements: a Reflexive Approach Bas Arts and Henri Goverde.- 5. The Institutional Dynamics of Water Management in the Low Countries Mark Wiering and Ann Crabbe.-6. High Noon in the Low Countries: Recent Nature Policy Dynamics in the Netherlands and in Flanders Dirk Bogaert and Jaap Gersie.- 7. Dynamics in Nature Policy Practices across the European Union Marielle van der Zouwen.- 8. Diffusion or Diversity in Cultural Heritage Preservation? Comparing Policy Arrangements in Norway, Arizona and the Netherlands Sara de Boer.- 9. Dutch Rural Policies at a Turning Point Froukje Boonstra.- 10. Regional Environmental Planning in the Netherlands: an Unstable Settlement of Policy Arrangements Frans J.G. Padt.- 11. Corporate Environmental Management in the Netherlands and in the Czech Republic Jacques Klaver and Emiel Ypma.- 12. A Target Group Approach in Flemish Environmental Policy: Establishing New Government-Industry Relations? Bruno Verbeeck and Pieter Leroy.- 13. Institutional Processes in Environmental Governance: Lots of Dynamics, not Much Change? Bas Arts and Pieter Leroy. Index.

Partnerships for sustainable development: a review of current literature

Abstract Academic interest in intersectoral partnerships took off in the mid-1990s and the number of publications on this topic has increased rapidly since. This article reviews current academic knowledge on partnerships for sustainable development. This review defines intersectoral partnerships as ‘collaborative arrangements in which actors from two or more spheres of society (state, market and civil society) are involved in a non-hierarchical process, and through which these actors strive for a sustainability goal’. We observe two major perspectives in the partnership literature, focusing on different aspects of the partnership phenomenon and addressing quite distinct questions. The first, the institutional perspective, looks at partnerships as new arrangements in the environmental governance regime. The second, the actor perspective, frames partnerships as possible strategic instruments for the goal achievement and problem solving of individual actors. Our review is organized around these perspectives. We identify the research questions that are being addressed in partnership literature, assess the type of knowledge that has been acquired and identify prevailing knowledge gaps. Important conclusions are, firstly, that research on partnerships has delivered many insights in their functioning and their role in contemporary society. Secondly, the concepts of partnerships and sustainable development are more clearly linked discursively than empirically. The current knowledge base mostly lacks clear definitions of success and therefore criteria for the evaluation of partnerships. Therefore, future research should, on empirical instead of reasoned grounds, pay more attention to the link between intersectoral partnerships and sustainable development. Preferably this should be done in a way that combines the actor and the institutional perspective.

Environment and Participation in a Context of Political Modernisation

To understand the changing discourses on political participation and the different ways of organising participation practices in environmental policy over time, we developed the concepts of political modernisation and policy arrangements

Power, politics and environmental inequality: A theoretical and empirical analysis of the process of ‘peripheralisation’

Environmental inequality is an outcome of social inequality. This article deals with the processes of location of environmentally hazardous activities. These processes illustrate the ‘peripheralisation’ of certain, already backward, regions. The political, economic and social characteristics of these peripheries and their relation to the core areas of the state seem to reproduce the pattern of social, spatial and environmental inequality. Evidence from case studies of the location of brickmaking and nuclear waste in the UK and of the location of hazardous industry in Belgium can be used to identify the process of peripheralisation and its consequences. Some political issues, including mechanisms of centralisation and measures of compensation that emerge from these findings are of considerable analytical importance.

Challenges for NGOs Partnering with Corporations: WWF Netherlands and the Environmental Defense Fund

As the market and civil society sectors reflect different core logics, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that partner with companies need strategies to cope with these differences. This paper seeks to provide insight into the coping strategies of environmental NGOs that partner with corporations. We present an assessment framework to analyse the strategies of the Environmental Defense Fund and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature Netherlands as case studies. The analysis demonstrates that the strategic options for a partnering NGO are guided and constrained by the choices the NGO makes with regard to its action strategy towards companies. Although individual NGOs manage to cope adequately with the challenges that the partnership trend poses to their organisations, we argue that the partnering trend also creates challenges for the NGO field as a whole.

The institutionalisation of Environmental Politics

In this chapter we focus on the institutionalisation of environmental politics as this domain emerged in Western European countries from the early 1970s. Institutionalisation is used here in its sociological meaning, referring to the construction and the preservation of day-to-day activities and interactions of actors in institutions, within a context of processes of societal and political change. More specifically, institutionalisation is regarded as the process leading to the formation, deformation and reformation of policy arrangements.

Participation under a spell of instrumentalization? Reflections on action research in an entrenched climate adaptation policy process

The article discusses action research in a Dutch intergovernmental project group DV2050. That group was to assess the effects of climate change and soil subsidence on the regional water system and to propose adaptive policies to increase regional water safety. In this study, we draw a parallel between the stakeholder participation trajectory of DV2050 and our collaborative learning trajectory within the DV2050 project. In the academic literature, both participatory policy-making and action research are advocated for instrumental, normative and quality reasons. In our case, both trajectories took place in an entrenched context, i.e. a strongly institutionalized environment in which the involved governments compete for competencies. Despite broader ambitions stated at the beginning of these trajectories, we explain that both became instrumentalized by actors involved, narrowing their scope. Instrumentalization was influenced by powerful interests, a strongly institutionalized science–policy interface and the pressure of imminent decision-making.

La sociologie de l'environment en Europe: Évolution, champs d'action et ambivalences

Abstract Environmental sociology in Europe: evolution, fields of action an ambivalences. No one will deny the environmental issues to be of utmost importance to contemporary society, and yet sociology has not contributed too much attention to it till very recently. This article sketches a state of the art of European environmental sociology, and draws some conclusions from it. For reasons that directly relate to its emancipation from the sciences and, more specifically from any physical determinism in social thinking, sociology for quite a long time more or less ignored the interaction between the social system and its surrounding physical environment. And yet human ecology and related approaches could provide inspiring theoretical assets for a sociology of the environment - and actually did, so, albeit rarely -. In the empirical research three main themes can be distinguished: the research into environmental attitudes, opinions and behaviour, the research into the environmental movement, its strategies and its impact, and the research into the design, the implementation and the effectiveness of environmental politics and policies. From the late 1980s onwards, one can see the environmental sociology being increasingly inspired by paradigms, concepts and issues debated in general sociology, such as social constructivism, the risk society and others. Although a lot of both theoretical and empirical work has been done, the sociology of the environment is still in its early stages and has yet to address a number of issues.

The undebated issue of justice: silent discourses in Dutch flood risk management

Flood risk of all types of flooding is projected to increase based on climate change projections and increases in damage potential. These challenges are likely to aggravate issues of justice in flood risk management (hereafter FRM). Based on a discursive institutionalist perspective, this paper explores justice in Dutch FRM: how do institutions allocate the responsibilities and costs for FRM for different types of flooding? What are the underlying conceptions of justice? What are the future challenges with regard to climate change? The research revealed that a dichotomy is visible in the Dutch approach to FRM: despite an abundance of rules, regulations and resources spent, flood risk or its management is only marginally discussed in terms of justice. Despite that, the current institutional arrangement has material outcomes that treat particular groups of citizens differently, depending on the type of flooding they are prone to, area they live in (unembanked/embanked) or category of user (e.g. household, industry, farmer). The paper argues that the debate on justice will (re)emerge, since the differences in distributional outcomes are likely to become increasingly uneven as a result of increasing flood risk. The Netherlands should be prepared for this debate by generating the relevant facts and figures. An inclusive debate on the distribution of burdens of FRM could contribute to more effective and legitimate FRM.

Sensitizing events as trigger for discursive renewal and institutional change in Flanders’ environmental health approach, 1970s-1990s

BackgroundSensitizing events may trigger and stimulate discursive renewal. From a discursive institutional perspective, changing discourses are the driving force behind the institutional dynamics of policy domains. Theoretically informed by discursive institutionalism, this article assesses the impact of a series of four sensitizing events that triggered serious environmental health concerns in Flanders between the 1970s till the 1990s, and led onto the gradual institutionalization of a Flemish environmental health arrangement.MethodsThe Policy Arrangement Approach is used as the analytical framework to structure the empirical results of the historical analysis based on document analysis and in-depth interviews.ResultsUntil the 1990s, environmental health was characterized as an ad hoc policy field in Flanders, where agenda setting was based on sensitizing events – also referred to as incident-driven. Each of these events contributed to a gradual rethinking of the epistemological discourses about environmental health risks and uncertainties. These new discourses were the driving forces behind institutional dynamics as they gradually resulted in an increased need for: 1) long-term, policy-oriented, interdisciplinary environmental health research; 2) policy coordination and integration between the environmental and public health policy fields; and 3) new forms of science-policy interactions based on mutual learning. These changes are desirable in order to detect environmental health problems as fast as possible, to react immediately and communicate appropriately.ConclusionsThe series of four events that triggered serious environmental health concerns in Flanders provided the opportunity to rethink and re-organize the current affairs concerning environmental health and gradually resulted into the institutionalization of a Flemish environmental health arrangement.