William M. Lafferty

Environmental Policy Integration: Towards an Analytical Framework

Environmental policy integration (EPI) is a key defining feature of sustainable development. Despite the fact that EPI has been the subject of much debate both in academic and policy-making circles, conceptual issues relating to EPI have received relatively little treatment. The conceptual work that has been completed on EPI generally fails to place the concept in an appropriate environmental policy context, and this in turn appears to betray the fact that the concept clearly implies a relatively strong revision of the traditional hierarchy of policy objectives. In this article the authors discuss the origins of the concept and provide conceptual clarification regarding its definition and context. Further, the article derives a simple analytical framework consisting of vertical and horizontal dimensions of EPI, which can serve as a useful point of departure for further empirical work on the implementation of EPI.

Governance for Sustainable Development

This book is an original study of the challenge of implementing sustainable development in Western democracies. It highlights the obstacles which sustainable development presents for strategic governance and critically examines how these problems can best be overcome in a variety of different political contexts.

Implementing Sustainable Development

1. Introduction 2. Australia: Ecological Sustainable Development in the National Interest 3. Canada: From Early Front-runner to Flagging Anchorman 4. Germany: Regulation and the Precautionary Principle 5. Japan: Law, Technology, and Aid 6. The Netherlands: Ambitious on Goals - Ambivalent on Action 7. Norway: Reluctantly Carrying the Torch 8. Sweden: Progression Despite Recession 9. The United Kingdom: Political Change and Promising Rhetoric 10. The United States: Sorry - Not Our Problem 11. The European Union: Integration, Competition, Growth and Sustainability 12. Patterns of Government Engagement 13. Concluding Perspectives

The politics of sustainable development: Global norms for national implementation

The idea of sustainable development has survived nearly a decade of rhetorical excess and academic criticism. From the Brundtland report to Agenda 21, it has remained the central goal and guiding norm of environment‐and‐development politics. Though an essentially contested concept, it retains a widespread moral appeal. This is possibly due to the concepts dual ethical foundation. By giving expression to both ‘realist’ (natural‐law) and ‘consensualist’ (democratic) norms, it can claim support with respect to a broad spectrum of moral imperatives. The potential of the idea as a mobilising force for domestic political change lies in a combination of scientifically‐based moral urgency and a near‐unanimous global acclamation. In addition, the politics of the UNCED process provide new and effective arenas for an emerging global civil society at a time of declining influence for national interest groups. The potential for change is illustrated by a descriptive analysis of the follow‐up to the Rio Summit in the ...

Introduction: form and function in governance for sustainable development

The relationship between form and function is an ongoing theme of the ancient discourse on political steering. Governments are never established in a theoretical vacuum. They reflect the exigencies of their time and place, as well as the conflicting interests and power bases of their major actors, both individual and collective. They also reflect the basic values and goals inherent in the interdependent social and economic systems that government is designed to ‘steer’. The ‘form’ of government tends, in other words, to reflect the dominant ‘functions’ of the different systems and actors that are to be governed. Political analysts have, for example, long debated the functional interdependence between the Western model of liberal–pluralist democracy and the dominant values and tasks of free market societies. American, Canadian and British theorists in particular have identified the Western model as ‘competitive democracy’, with ‘competition’ understood as a basic feature of politics viewed as a market analogy. From Schumpeter, through Dahl and Macpherson to Held – with continuous input from scores of comparative democratic empiricists – Western democracy has increasingly been portrayed as having taken on the distinct form and symbolism of ‘market democracy’. 1 The established position of the model has also been strong enough to generate scores of alternative theorists. Debates between ‘realists’ and ‘idealists’ have been a dominant feature of academic political science throughout the latter half of the past century. The models of the realists have been criticized as being overly dependent on the exigencies of the capitalist–pluralist system; and the models of the idealists as being abstract, naive and even dangerous (‘destabilizing’). The debates have generated considerable heat, and – for the purpose of the present volume – at least some light. They have served to illustrate the major theme of the book: that basic principles of instrumental efficiency require that the overall form of governance in a society reflect and serve the dominant functions of the system(s) to be governed. Further, the debates provide an alternative profile to the type of discourse aimed at here. While the discourse

Postmaterialism in a Social Democratic State An Analysis of the Distinctness and Congruity of the Inglehart Value Syndrome in Norway

The purpose of this article is to establish empirically the status of Ronald Ingleharts postmaterialist syndrome in Norway. As a prototypical social democratic state, and one of the only European countries yet to be adequately tested for postmaterialism, Norway represents a particularly interesting case for the Inglehart thesis. On the basis of a national sample survey carried out in 1981 (N = 1, 170), the analysis focuses on two major questions: the distinctness of postmaterialism in a left-right context, and the congruity between different value domains. Of particular importance is the finding that there exists a postmaterialist profile for democratic values that is much more distinct than the literature has allowed for up to now.

Leftist and Rightist Ideology in a Social Democratic State: An Analysis of Norway in the Midst of the Conservative Resurgence

The re-emergence and political re-establishment of conservatism in a number of leading western welfare states has provided the empirical dots on the ‘is’ of the ideology-is-not-dead-argument. Political issues have clearly become more technical, but their resolution has become anything but consensual. The current political dialogue may be tortuously symbolic, masking more than it reveals and more than technicians feel is good for us all, but this is perhaps more an indication of the balance of power between politicians and technicians than a sign of ideological deflation. We are not concerned in the present paper, therefore, with whether ideology is alive and kicking, but rather with who is kicking for what.

Sustainable Development as Concept and Norm

The idea of sustainable development has survived nearly a decade of rhetorical excess and academic criticism. From the Brundtland Report Our Common Future to Agenda 21, it has remained the central goal and guiding norm of environment-and-development politics. Though an ‘essentially contested concept’, it retains a widespread moral appeal. This is possibly due to the concept’s dual ethical foundation. By giving expression to both ‘realist’ (natural-law) and ‘consensualist’ (democratic) norms, it can claim support with respect to a broad spectrum of moral imperatives. The potential of the idea as a mobilising force for domestic political change lies in a combination of scientifically based moral urgency and a near-unanimous global acclamation. In addition, the politics of the UNCED process provide new and effective arenas for an emerging global civil society at a time of declining influence for national interest groups.

Future Challenges of Sustainable Development

The purpose of the present volume has been to probe the meaning and import of the concept of sustainable development as first put forth by the Brundtland Commission and later pursued through the UNCED process. In concluding our collection of studies, we wish to first present an overall ‘meta-perspective’ on the concept, and then try to illustrate the implications of our interpretation with reference to climate policy.

Standards for Green Innovation Applying a Proposed Framework to Governmental Initiatives in Norway

Efforts to promote ‘sustainable development’ underline a need for policy integration. Applying benchmarks on ‘environmental policy integration’ (EPI) developed by Lafferty, the article illustrates the challenge with reference to Norwegian governmental initiatives to promote a national innovation policy. The case is analysed with respect to four stylized modes (standards) for promoting EPI: environmental protection, ecological modernization, ecological communalism and sustainable development. Despite a strong mandate for policy integration for sustainable development, and efforts to promote innovation within the European Union, public policy efforts in the direction of green innovation are practically non-existent in Norway. This does not necessarily mean that green innovations are not being promoted. Whatever integration effects that are being realized with respect to the four types of standards are, however, not the result of an active and goal-directed policy by the Norwegian government. The evaluation provides a differentiated platform for more specific initiatives in the area.