Environmental Federalism in the European Union and the United States

The United States (US) and the European Union (EU) are federal systems in which the responsibility for environmental policy-making is divided or shared between the central government and the (member) states. The attribution of decision-making power has important policy implications. This chapter compares the role of central and local authorities in the US and the EU in formulating environmental regulations in three areas: automotive emissions for health related (criteria) pollutants, packaging waste, and global climate change. Automotive emissions are relatively centralised in both political systems. In the cases of packaging waste and global climate change, regulatory policy-making is shared in the EU, but is primarily the responsibility of local governments in the US. Thus, in some important areas, regulatory policy-making is more centralised in the EU. The most important role local governments play in the regulatory process is to help diffuse stringent local standards through more centralised regulations, a dynamic which has become recently become more important in the EU than in the US.

Diffusion of International Food Safety Standards: Developing Country Experiences

States have regulated public health for centuries by providing public goods such as clean air, water, and food to their citizens. Governments mandate levels of quality in food to prevent poisoning and deception of their people. In the United States, public health regulation has been one of the few areas where the courts have recognized a subjugation of individual rights to the common good, beginning in 1905 in a case which found that the state has a right to vaccinate a child against his parents' wishes (Gostin 2000). Thus the study of public health regulation, and within that food safety and quality, is an important one to understanding the state. Unlike efforts in some areas to de-regulate and/or move from command-and-control to market-based regulatory instruments -- such as the areas of telecommunications and environmental issues --the trend in food safety regulation is increased regulatory attention in countries all around the world. The European Union is in the process of creating a new Food Safety Agency as part of an effort to avoid some of its recent food safety scares. The United States Department of Agriculture is under increasing pressure to conduct more microbiological inspections at food processing plants as well as to obtain statutory authority to recall tainted food, rather than the voluntary process that currently exists. And in countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, strengthening food regulatory systems is of deep interest for countries that want to increase their trade in food. Moreover, regional integration organizations and trade agreements such as the European Union, Mercosur, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas all have a component of food standards. This paper asks whether international standards for food safety and quality affect domestic policies, and if so, how. The paper is organized as follows. The first section describes the Codex Alimentarius Commission and its role in international food safety and quality standards. The second section outlines the theoretical model for thinking about diffusion of these standards and the different ways they might influence domestic policies. The next three sections briefly describe how Argentina and the Dominican Republic relate to the Codex Commission, assess the level of influence of international standards in those countries, and outline some factors that contribute to the influence of standards. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the mechanisms by which diffusion of standards occurs

Science and public participation in regulating genetically-engineered food : French and American experiences

This paper describes three cases of government-led efforts in France and the United States to bring stakeholders into the regulatory process for genetically-modified food. We analyze how government regulators, scientists, and members of the public interacted in these three different settings, and conclude that public participation is not linked with a regulatory outcome ; in other words, for various reasons which we consider, public participation did not have a substantive impact on government policies in this area. We consider how these processes could be improved, by drawing on two distinct literatures — social studies of science and organization theory. A more conscious cross-fertilization of the two literatures would shed some insights broadly on science and public organizations, and particularly on the problem of regulating a complex and uncertain area of technology.Science et participation publique dans la réglementation des aliments génétiquement modifiés : les expériences françaises et américaines Cet article analyse trois expériences menées par le décideur public pour intégrer les différents acteurs concernés dans le processus d'élaboration des politiques publiques en matière d'aliments génétiquement modifiés. Nous étudions les interactions entre les scientifiques, les citoyens et les décideurs publics dans le cadre de ces trois initiatives, ainsi que la manière dont ces derniers ont traité la question complexe des aliments génétiquement modifiés. Ces processus nous apparaissent déficients dans la mesure où la participation publique semble ne pas avoir d'impact substantiel sur la définition des réglementations et des politiques publiques. Nous examinons comment ces processus pourraient être améliorés, en nous appuyant sur les apports de l'analyse sociale des sciences et sur la théorie des organisations. Une meilleure combinaison de ces deux disciplines ouvrirait de nouvelles perspectives à l'étude des sciences et des organisations publiques, spécialement en matière de régulation de systèmes technologiques complexes et incertains.Post Diahanna L., Da Ros Jérôme. Science and public participation in regulating genetically-engineered food : French and American experiences. In: Cahiers d'Economie et sociologie rurales, N°68-69, 3e et 4e trimestres 2003. La réglementation des OGM. Le débat Europe-Etats-Unis. pp. 75-101