implementing global norms through cross-national imitation and learning

Implementing international norms is a core aspect of global governance. It raises the question of whether, and through which mechanisms, developments at the international level can influence domestic policymaking. While students of global governance have placed much emphasis on processes of bargaining within international regimes and hegemonic coercion by individual states or international organizations to explain how international agendas reach the domestic level, this paper argues that diffusion constitutes a third and distinct mode of global governance which has not received due attention so far. The paper first outlines the concept of policy diffusion and distinguishes it from other mechanisms of global governance. It draws on theories on the domestic effects of international norms and institutions developed within the field of international relations as well as theories of policy diffusion and policy transfer developed within comparative public policy. Based on an empirical analysis of the international spread of national environmental policy plans and sustainable development strategies, the paper then demonstrates how cross-national imitation and learning matters as a mechanism of implementing the global norm of sustainable development and how these processes of policy diffusion interact with other, more institutionalized, forms of international governance such as unilateral imposition and multilateral harmonization. The paper concludes with general perspectives on the theoretical as well as practical consequences of conceptualizing policy diffusion as a crucial component of global governance and on its potential as a mechanism for implementing sustainable development

Eine Forschungsagenda für ein erwachsen gewordenes Politikfeld

Seit sich der Umweltschutz Ende der 1960er Jahre als eigenständiges Politikfeld etabliert hat, sind mehr als 40 Jahre vergangen. Die Umweltpolitik ist also längst kein neuer Politik-bereich mehr. Dennoch hat sich in der Politikwissenschaft ein Bild vom Umweltschutz als relativ jungem Politikfeld festgesetzt, das sich nur sehr langsam verändert und das – bewusst oder unbewusst – auch heute noch die politikwissenschaftliche Forschungsperspektive prägt. Ausgangspunkt dieses Beitrags ist die Beobachtung, dass es die Umweltpolitologie bis heute versäumt hat, das Erwachsenwerden ihres Untersuchungsgegenstands systematisch zu re-flektieren. Was passiert wenn ein Politikfeld in die Jahre kommt? Wie verändert sich das Aufgabenspektrum staatlicher, gesellschaftlicher und privater Akteure? Wie ihre Strategien und Handlungsressourcen? Wie beeinflussen vergangene Entscheidungen die Chancen künftigen Politikwandels? Sind die umweltpolitischen Erfolgsbedingungen von Gestern auch in Zukunft noch von Bedeutung? Diesen Fragen hat die Umweltpolitikanalyse bislang zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet. In ihnen liegt der Schlüssel für ihre künftige thematische Ausrichtung. Vor diesem Hintergrund reflektiert der vorliegende Beitrag den Wandel der Umweltpolitik von einem neuen zu einem etablierten Politikfeld und identifiziert blinde Flecken der Umweltpolitikanalyse. In Form von 25 Thesen werden potentielle Forschungsperspektiven aufgezeigt, mit denen die Umweltpolitikanalyse einen Beitrag zum besseren Verständnis umweltpolitischer Dynamiken leisten und letztlich auch praktische Politikempfehlungen entwickeln kann

The case of the new source review

While processes of policy change have received great scholarly attention, policy dismantling as a specific type of change has not yet been thoroughly studied. This might be due to low empirical visibility. Although policy dismantling has been rare in environmental policy, it is getting more relevant as environmental legislation tightens and places increasing burdens on polluting industries. This got obvious in the United States during the Bush Presidency where several attempts to dismantle environmental programs occurred. In order to improve our understanding about the circumstances under which environmental policies get dismantled, we analyze the case of the New Source Review (NSR). The NSR requires industries to install modern pollution control technologies in stationary sources of air pollution like coal fired power plants and refineries. NSR regulatory provisions require these sources to install pollution control when they expand capacities and increase emission levels. Between 2001 and 2007 several attempts to weaken the regulatory stringency of this program occurred. The Bush Administration proposed both legislative and as rule changes which dismantled the regulatory stringency of the Clean Air Act. The analysis of actors’ motivations to dismantle environmental regulations as well as institutional constraints limiting and/or impeding dismantling will improve our theoretical and empirical understanding of dismantling processes. By looking at NSR dismantling pressures and processes we examine under which conditions political actors engage in the dismantling of environmental policies and what factors influence the success of dismantling attempts

Contested energy transition? Europeanization and authority turns in EU renewable energy policy

In a context of multiple crises, the European Union’s climate and energy policies have become highly politicized and contested. Based on a comparative study of renewable energy policies in ten EU member states, and adopting a circular view of policy change and Europeanization to account for overlapping sovereignty claims between the national and the European level, this article unravels the authority debates over successive rounds of negotiation, adoption, and implementation along three EU directives. Following an exploratory process-tracing method, we investigate how policymaking authority originally delegated to the EU becomes contested by the member states and how these authority conflicts are managed. We find that the Europeanization of renewable energy policy is accompanied by an issue-specific renegotiation of authority between the EU and its member states which, in times of crises, can trigger instances of de-Europeanization and even a partial weakening of European integration in this policy domain.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

German interests and priorities in European environmental policy

This fourth paper in the German European Policy Series studies the typical interests which shape Germany’s environmental foreign policy in Europe: victim, polluter and third-party interests as well as the state's interest in a stronger role in international politics and its interest in shaping policy within the European Union. It demonstrates that Germany’s interests are diverse and characterised by interactions between the national and European policy levels , and how the country plays a particularly active role in European and international environmental policy when different types of foreign policy interests are combined. The paper concludes that Germany will likely extend its international activities in this area, both within the European Union and beyond in global negotiations, in the medium to long term

The Cases of Education for Sustainable Development and Climate Change Education

While there is little doubt that social networks are essential for processes of implementing social innovations in community education such as Climate Change Education (CCE) or Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), scholars have neglected to analyze these processes in the multilevel governance system using Social Network Analysis. In this article, we contribute to closing this research gap by exploring the implementation of CCE and ESD in education at the regional and global levels. We compare the way CCE is negotiated and implemented within and through the global conferences of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with the way the UN Decade of ESD is put into practice through networks in five different German municipalities. We argue that the role of social networks is particularly strong in policy areas like CCE and ESD, which are best characterized as multi-level and multi-actor governance. Based on data derived from standardized surveys and from Twitter we analyze the complex interactions of public and private actors at different levels of governance in the two selected policy areas. We find, amongst others, that the implementation of CCE and ESD in community education depends in part on actors that had not been assumed to be influential at the outset. Furthermore, our analyses suggest the different levels of governance are not well integrated throughout the phases of the policy innovation cycle