Philip Catney

Big society, little justice? Community renewable energy and the politics of localism

This paper challenges “Big Society (BS) Localism”, seeing it as an example of impoverished localist thinking which neglects social justice considerations. We do this through a critical examination of recent turns in the localist discourse in the UK which emphasise self-reliant communities and envisage a diminished role for the state. We establish a heuristic distinction between positive and negative approaches to localism. We argue that the Coalition Governments BS programme fits with a negative localist frame as it starts from an ideological assumption that the state acts as a barrier to community-level associational activity and that it should play a minimal role. “BS localism” (as we call it) has been influential over the making of social policy, but it also has implications for the achievement of environmental goals. We argue that this latest incarnation of localism is largely ineffective in solving problems requiring collective action because it neglects the important role that inequalities play in inhibiting the development of associational society. Drawing upon preliminary research being undertaken at the community scale, we argue that staking environmental policy success on the ability of local civil society to fill the gap left after state retrenchment runs the risk of no activity at all.

Risk-based management of contaminated land in the UK: Lessons for China?

The management of contaminated land is now assuming greater attention in Chinese debates on environmental governance. However, the existing management system appears ineffective as it lacks a clear policy framework and technical basis. In the United Kingdom (UK), contaminated land issues are dealt with through a risk-based approach. This approach emphasizes the application of risk approaches in both technical and integrated management systems. Conceptually, this paper outlines generic issues related to transferring programmes from one place to another. We argue that too much emphasis has been placed on the barriers to effective transfer, rather than focusing on methods of abstracting lessons for application in foreign settings. We then examine the Chinese system and its problems in managing contaminated land before turning to the UK risk-based approach to see what lessons can be learned from it. Four aspects are analyzed and compared: legislative and policy framework; administrative structure and capacity; technical approaches; and incentive strategy. Based on the experience of the UK in practice, some suggestions are then proposed for China in order to improve its management of contaminated land. We suggest that this should include: a focus on the problem sites; development of a risk-based technical approach and integrated management system; the introduction of financial incentives; and the use of planning control as a management strategy. It is believed that a risk-based integrated management approach may be helpful for China to achieve sustainable solutions for contaminated land.

Community knowledge networks: an action-orientated approach to energy research

The Climate Change Act 2008 commits the UK to reducing carbon emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050. With household emissions constituting more than a quarter of current total energy use in the UK, energy practices in the home have taken on increased policy attention. In this paper, we argue that the UK governments approach is founded upon a variant of methodological individualism that assumes that providing greater energy information to individuals will effect behaviour change in relation to energy use. Such an approach is potentially limited in its effectiveness and does not afford appropriate recognition to all those affected by energy policy. In contrast to this approach, we set out an alternative perspective, a community knowledge networks approach to energy and justice which recognises the contexts and relationships in which people live and use energy. Such an approach emphasises situated knowledge and practices in order to gain a greater understanding of how individuals and communities use energy, but, importantly, offers a means for affording greater recognitional justice to different social groups.

The welfare of now and the green (post) politics of the future

This paper examines how key differences in the very manner in which the environment/welfare nexus is experienced and understood in both the global North and the global South are managed in favour of the former over the latter. We show how in the case of the global North — the more affluent world, such as Britain — environmental issues have been usually construed as post-materialist and/or post-industrialist. We argue that predominantly Northern-based post-materialists see environmental welfare (largely through the rhetoric of sustainable development and ecological modernization) as either something separate from humans (for the welfare of the ‘rest of nature’) or for the welfare of unborn, future generations. We use the concept of the ‘post-political’ to interpret how the global North dominates debates on the environment and how it can be quite dismissive, and even negligent, of welfare issues in the global South. In the case of the majority world, green welfare policy agendas are littered with the consequences of environmental devastation incurred through centuries of Northern oppression and resource exploitation. In the global South green welfare goals concentrate on the alleviation of those more basic needs of survival — provision of shelter, water availability, air quality, food sovereignty, and energy security — for those humans actually living on the planet; rather than those who may at some time in the future. In short, issues of environmental debt are writ large, rather than those of an imagined environmental future.

Dealing with Contaminated Land in the UK through ‘Development Managerialism’

Abstract The paper examines the historical evolution of the UK approach to contaminated land. It is argued that the rationale and character of the current policy regime are structured by the dominant discourse dealing with the problem. Successive British governments have pursued a ‘development managerialist’ approach to contaminated land, rather than treating it primarily as an issue of environmental quality or public health. Cost effectiveness has been a recurrent theme in the discourse. It has been made manifest through five key features of the emergent system: (i) the way that contaminated land is defined; (ii) the distinctive liability regime; (iii) the notion of ‘suitable for use’; (iv) its ‘risk-assessment-based’ aspects; and (v) its decentralized, bifurcated structure. A preliminary analysis of the regime suggests that, so far, it has succeeded in containing costs but may leave a toxic debt for future generations to address. In addition, a hitherto un-noted aspect of the contaminated land policy regime is identified; that is, that the differing natures of its two elements—the planning system and Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (‘Part IIA’)—have produced operational tensions that affect policy implementation.

(Not) Exercising Discretion: Environmental Planning and the Politics of Blame-Avoidance

This paper uses Lipskys classic formulation of “street-level bureaucracy” to explore the exercise of discretion by local policy practitioners in relation to a contaminated site in England. The policy literature generally assumes that practitioners seek to expand their discretion because this allows them to shape policy responses through the application of initiative and judgement. However, discretion is linked both to the degree of organisational and task complexity and to the level of uncertainty involved with making and implementing policy decisions. Such uncertainty affects practitioners’ behaviour. They may develop rules to manage uncertainty, thereby tempering discretion. And where policy options offer little prospect for claiming credit and ample opportunity for being subject to blame, policy implementers often adopt a cautious approach to decisions or avoid taking them. The paper illustrates how practitioners use non-decision-making tactics—such as diversion of responsibility and bureaucratic inertia—to minimise the potential for blame. This offers an extended interpretation of the uses of discretion by street-level bureaucrats.

Public entrepreneurship and the politics of regeneration in multi-level governance:

The paper uses a case study of urban regeneration policy in Sheffield, UK, to explore local public entrepreneurship in a system of multi-level governance. Recent analyses of public entrepreneurs have directed attention to the macro-political structural and institutional conditions that enable and constrain these actors, and to their individual characteristics and attributes. The stress has been on the national level and on individual action at the expense of the agency of local networks of entrepreneurs. In order to address this lacuna, we consider how local policy entrepreneurs work across governance levels and develop ideas, institutional structures and support in pursuit of their goals, using Kingdons notion of policy streams as a vehicle for our analysis. We highlight the contingent and path-dependent nature of such entrepreneurship. In particular, we identify the temporal sequencing of agenda shifts and entrepreneurial actions as a crucial aspect of the policy process.

Democratic Dilemmas of Multilevel Governance: Legitimacy, Representation and Accountability in the European Union

levels of European identity of EU citizens over time, thus reaching radically different conclusions to those of the author who talks of ‘little change at all’ (p. 66) during the same period. Green does not refer to either of these rival accounts, and it is therefore not clear how he would account for these different results. My guess, however, would be that the different results stem from the fact that, as Green explains, he tries to look at the evolution of a variable that is measured in four completely different ways over time, some of which have been severely criticised by the existing literature. By contrast, both Citrin and Sydes’ study and my book use (two different types of) homogenised measures, which could be repeated throughout their period of investigation without any discrepancy in measurement. I think that the use of the four different measures is far too problematic to derive any robust conclusion from it. Despite these methodological questions, this is an interesting book which bravely and intelligently attempts to answer some complex questions, which, as social scientists, we have not fully managed to come to terms with. The progress achieved over the past ten years in the field of the study of European identity have been highly significant if insufficient, and this book will come to add its insight to our fast changing understanding of one of the most interesting puzzles of contemporary social science research.