The impact of participatory policy formulation on regulatory legitimacy: the case of Great Britain’s Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem)

Energy markets policy in Great Britain has been largely delegated from elected representatives to a market regulator: the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem). Regulatory legitimacy requires due process and appropriate expertise to expose the regulator to democratic influence. As the legitimacy of regulatory participation processes start to be discussed more intensively in the European context, this timely article examines the relationship between the use of policy formulation tools and the resulting legitimacy gained by an independent market regulator. It employs a detailed case study analysing how participatory policy formulation tools – deliberative focus groups with members of the public, and stakeholder consultations – were used in energy markets policy formulation in Ofgem between 2007 and 2016. Through assessing the actors, venues, capacities and effects associated with selection and use of the tools, it finds there were inequalities of influence between different policy actors which posed a significant challenge to legitimacy

Embedding ecosystem services ideas into policy processes: an institutional analysis

What helps or limits the use of ecosystem services ideas in practice? In this paper we develop and test a new institutionalistbased analytical scheme to explore how ecosystem services as a “new” policy idea might interact with established policy regimes, processes, and norms. The scheme is based on three different decision-making levels: micro, meso, and macro. To test the plausibility of the scheme, it is applied to the case of the UK where a specific ecosystem services framework (ESF) was prioritized as a new way of doing environmental policy after 2011. Drawing on findings from 32 elite interviews, the paper shows how dynamics at all three levels intersect with differing institutional explanations. It helps explain important factors for embedding, or restricting embedding, of the ESF in policy making. The scheme provides a useful way to link analysis of the “lived experience” of policy actors implementing the ESF with the institutional landscape they occupy, and allows for a nuanced and integrated analysis of the potential barriers faced by ecosystem services ideas generally

Knowledge Brokerage at the Science-Policy Interface: case studies of tools and policy impact assessment

The swift rise of policy appraisal in recent years – to the status of legal requirement in many countries - has been mirrored by development of many support tools such as environmental models. However, there is a widely- observed gap between extensive supply of such tools, and patchy demand for them; their use is influenced by many technical, procedural, conceptual and political factors. How and to what extent can the relationship between appraisal tools and policy-making be developed, particularly the type of expertise required for addressing complex policy problems such as climate change? This paper addresses this question within the wider concept of science-policy interaction as a fluid and porous interface, and also as a shared, multi-actor process of addressing policy problems. The paper employs a knowledge-brokerage (KB) approach, where the linear model of ‘speaking truth to power’ is challenged by a more reflexive approach to the interaction. To do this, and to reflect the many context-specific forms of the science-policy interface, we focus on case studies of six different policy problems at different decision making levels and jurisdictions. We assess the most appropriate KB strategy in each case, and critically evaluate the KB approach – how it worked, what factors influenced it and how effective it was. Using the preliminary case study results, we describe a preliminary typology for different 'modes' of SPI operation, and discuss how institutional setting affects the process, governance and success of knowledge brokerage. Work is ongoing, but initial results show that the 'test case' concept acts as a flexible conceptual and practical guidance for researchers in science policy interactions in policy appraisal processes, and can help facilitate the relationship between scientists and policy makers. The approach yields conceptual learning about the science-policy interface, and reveals different actors' conceptual models of knowledge production and application

Potential impacts of climate change on the energy balance of UK livestock

The wide-ranging potential impacts of climate change on both ecology and human infrastructure have led to a large amount of research; however, studies of the projected impacts on agricultural systems have so far focussed mainly on crops. Given the proven adverse effects of extreme weather conditions on the productivity and welfare of livestock, this thesis assesses the potential impact of such a change on the thermal balance of livestock in the UK. A series of mathematical models was designed to predict the metabolic rate and occurrence of thermal stress in sheep and cattle outdoors, and pigs and broiler chickens indoors by solution of the energy balance equations. The models run on commonly-available hourly weather data, and as far as possible were based on the physics of heat and mass transfer rather than empirical relationships. The animals were modelled as systems of geometrical shapes, incorporating the underlying tissue, a coat and the external environment. Physiological responses to hot and cold conditions, including panting, sweating, vasomotor action and shivering were parameterised. Validation of the model output showed good agreement with measured data. The climate predictions for the year 2050 were reduced to synthetic hourly weather data using a stochastic weather generator and several simple downscaling techniques. The climate change impact assessment was made for an upland and a dry lowland site in the UK. There are two main conclusions to the work. First, climate change is predicted to have little effect on ruminants outdoors, or on the suitability of a site for grazing livestock. Second, animals indoors will experience significantly more heat stress under climate change, probably since indoor animals are at greater risk of heat stress in the current climate than those outdoors. In the next fifty years, pig and broiler chicken farms will have to introduce methods for alleviation of heat stress to avoid economic and welfare problems. Future work will need to focus more on collection of accurate heat balance data rather than on more mathematical modelling

Potential impacts of climate change on the energy balance of UK livestock

The wide-ranging potential impacts of climate change on both ecology and human infrastructure have led to a large amount of research; however, studies of the projected impacts on agricultural systems have so far focussed mainly on crops. Given the proven adverse effects of extreme weather conditions on the productivity and welfare of livestock, this thesis assesses the potential impact of such a change on the thermal balance of livestock in the UK. A series of mathematical models was designed to predict the metabolic rate and occurrence of thermal stress in sheep and cattle outdoors, and pigs and broiler chickens indoors by solution of the energy balance equations. The models run on commonly-available hourly weather data, and as far as possible were based on the physics of heat and mass transfer rather than empirical relationships. The animals were modelled as systems of geometrical shapes, incorporating the underlying tissue, a coat and the external environment. Physiological responses to hot and cold conditions, including panting, sweating, vasomotor action and shivering were parameterised. Validation of the model output showed good agreement with measured data. The climate predictions for the year 2050 were reduced to synthetic hourly weather data using a stochastic weather generator and several simple downscaling techniques. The climate change impact assessment was made for an upland and a dry lowland site in the UK. There are two main conclusions to the work. First, climate change is predicted to have little effect on ruminants outdoors, or on the suitability of a site for grazing livestock. Second, animals indoors will experience significantly more heat stress under climate change, probably since indoor animals are at greater risk of heat stress in the current climate than those outdoors. In the next fifty years, pig and broiler chicken farms will have to introduce methods for alleviation of heat stress to avoid economic and welfare problems. Future work will need to focus more on collection of accurate heat balance data rather than on more mathematical modelling

ex ante policy assessment and the utilisation of knowledge in the policy process

Procedures for the ex ante assessment of public policies are currently in vogue across the OECD. Their design is typically informed by an instrumentally rational model of problem solving, which assumes that knowledge is collected, evaluated and then trans-lated straightforwardly into 'better policies'. This model has, it seems, been little af-fected by more than three decades of academic research which has demonstrated thathe reality of every-day policy- making is far messier. This paper analyses whether the uptake of ex ante assessment of policies is nonetheless capable of providing new op-portunities for knowledge to inform processes of policy deliberation and learning. Drawing on an analysis of policy assessment procedures in three countries and the European Commission, it finds that there are several ways in which assessment knowl-edge is used in the policy process. Moreover, its argues that policy learning occurs de-spite, rather than because of the instrumental design of the new assessment proce-dures, which tends to act as a barrier to open deliberation and knowledge utilisation

European Research for Impact Assessment Tools

This is the 6th issue of the LIAISE ('Linking Impact Assessment Instruments to Sustainability Expertise') Innovation Report. The aim of this series is to shed light on the science-policy interface of policy Impact Assessment (IA). The application of analytical tools in policy IA is a means to include scientific knowledge in IA exercises and the policy process. Tools are used to capture the causal relationship between planned policies and its likely social, economic and environmental impacts and hence inform the analytical process of the assessment. The development of analytical tools which are readily applicable for IA is an emergent field of research. The European Commission, in its Framework Programmes (FP) on research funding, has also invested in research promoting those tools