Voluntary Environmental Governance Arrangements

Voluntary environmental governance arrangements have focal attention in studies on environmental policy, regulation and governance. The four major debates in the contemporary literature on voluntary environmental governance arrangements are studied. The literature falls short of sufficiently specifying whether or not voluntary environmental governance arrangements are successful in addressing environmental risks. This is due to the narrow focus of many contemporary studies and a tendency to study the form and content of voluntary environmental governance arrangements in isolation from their contextual settings. In order to gain a better understanding of voluntary environmental governance arrangements, scholars are challenged to study differently structured voluntary environmental governance arrangements in different contextual settings, to move beyond single country or single voluntary environmental governance arrangements studies, and to combine quantitative and qualitative data in studying these arrangements

Different but equally plausible narratives of policy transformation: A plea for theoretical pluralism

Theories of institutional change help us to understand policy transformation, and provide us with a framework for presenting transformation narratives retrospectively. By telling the transformation narrative of a single case through the lenses of three different institutional change theories, this article highlights the potential shortcomings of a single lens, and the value of using complementary lenses. It argues for a pluralist approach to provide a richer understanding of policy transformation

Experimentation in policy design: Insights from the building sector

The current article questions how experimentation in policy design plays out in practice. In particular, it is interested in understanding how the content and process of policy-design experiments affect their outcomes. The article does so by building on an original study into 31 real-world examples of experimentation in policy design in the building sector in Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States. All examples aim to improve the environmental sustainability of the building sector. The article finds that these 31 examples have attracted moderate to substantial numbers of participants (policy outcome HO.i), but have not achieved substantial numbers of buildings built or retrofitted with high levels of sustainability (policy outcome HO.ii). By carefully unpacking these policy designs into a number of key characteristics, it finds that this mismatch between the two outcomes may partly be explained by flawed policy-design processes. The article concludes with the main lessons learnt and provides some suggestions on how to improve experimentation in policy design

Smart Privatization: Lessons from Private Sector Involvement in Australian and Canadian Building Regulatory Enforcement Regimes

Various scholars stress that traditional regulatory regimes will benefit from greater private sector involvement. There has been little empirical study, however, on the impact of the "amount" of privatization on certain policy goals. This paper aims at filling that knowledge gap. Based on an analysis of private sector involvement in the enforcement of Australian and Canadian building codes, it argues that a certain threshold exists after which more privatization no longer results in effectiveness and efficiency gains. It furthermore discovers that the relationship between the public and private sector within a regime matters in reaching certain policy goals

Is New Governance the Silver Bullet? Insights from the Australian Buildings Sector

New governance is gaining momentum in the addressing of environmental risks. It is often expected that new governance arrangements will achieve higher levels of effectiveness than traditional forms of environmental policy. The current research questions

Regulating sustainable construction in Europe: An inquiry into the European Commission's harmonization attempts

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is first, to gain insight into how the European member states have addressed the concept of sustainability in their building regulatory frameworks; and second, to gain insight in the effects of harmonization attempts o

Institutional Layering: A Review of the Use of the Concept

Over the years layering has gained increasing attention in studies of institutional change. Notably, the concept has been subject to the exact mechanism it tries to explain: incremental change. This article reviews the use of the concept over a 60-year time span in order to elucidate its value for studying institutional change. The article especially looks at the use of the concept by one of the leading authors in the field: Kathleen Thelen. It concludes that layering provides a bridge between - seemingly conflicting - ideas on incremental change and punctuated equilibrium

Regulatory failures, split-incentives, conflicting interests and a vicious circle of blame: the New Environmental Governance to the rescue?

This paper addresses a current trend of New Environmental Governance (NEG). It examines whether NEG is able to overcome a series of complex regulatory barriers and market shortfalls that stand in the way of carbon emissions reductions in the building sector. Building on an evaluation of 20 NEG arrangements from Australia and the Netherlands, it discusses the limits of the effective implementation and use of NEG in this sector. The paper concludes by suggesting three strategies to improve the performance of NEG arrangements in the building sector

Voluntary Environmental Governance Arrangements in the Australian Building Sector

Voluntary environmental governance arrangements (VEGAs) are designed to minimise negative outcomes through the use of collectively agreed arrangements. They have attracted a large literature, but issues remain unresolved, especially regarding their effec