The four faces of the environmental state: environmental governance regimes in 28 countries

The primary task for the environmental state is to address problems related to the market’s externalisation of environmental costs. It has four main resources at its disposal: regulation, redistribution, organisation, and knowledge generation. The way these four resources are deployed make up a state’s environmental governance arrangements. Using data on environmental regulation, taxes, public administrations, and knowledge production from 28 countries, and a hierarchical cluster analysis, four different types of environmental states are identified: established, emerging, partial, and weak. This is followed by some suggestions for further research on the environmental state in a comparative perspective.     

Climate citizenship in the European union: environmental citizenship as an analytical concept

The concept of environmental citizenship is employed as an analytical tool to determine what kind of climate citizenship(s) the citizen-directed material in the European Commission’s climate change campaign is constructing. The research material is read, analysed and interpreted through elements attached to environmental citizenship: the realm of activity, political space, depth of activity, level of activity, citizen virtues, citizen rights and responsibilities and conception of the environment. The results suggest that climate citizenship is considered mainly as a private sphere activity performed by individuals and consists mainly in small adjustments in daily life. Climate citizens are motivated to everyday-life mitigation by personal benefit, greenhouse gas emissions and preserving natural resources.     

The power of environmental norms: marine plastic pollution and the politics of microbeads

Emerging environmental norms gain strength and diffuse more quickly when scientific evidence of harm is consolidating, when activism is intensifying, and when political and corporate resistance is relatively weak. The anti-microbead norm – that plastic microbeads should be removed from personal care products – has been gaining global influence since 2012; witness the upsurge in anti-microbead activism, public concern, voluntary corporate phasedowns and governmental bans. By 2018, the world was on track to eliminate microbeads from ‘rinse-off’ products within a decade, reducing microplastics flowing into oceans by 1–2%. This confirms the power of environmental norms, but how and why this phaseout is occurring – unequally across jurisdictions, with firms creating loopholes, missing deadlines and limiting the scope of reforms – also reveals innate weaknesses of bottom-up, ad hoc norm diffusion as a way of improving marine governance. These weaknesses are heightened when economic stakes are high, solutions are complex and costly, authority is fragmented across jurisdictions and corporate resistance is strong.     

Welfare states and environmental states: a comparative analysis

A framework is presented for thinking about state intervention in developed capitalist economies in two domains: social policy and environmental policy (and, within that, climate-change policy). Five drivers of welfare state development are identified, the ‘five Is’ of Industrialisation: Interests, Institutions, Ideas/Ideologies, and International Influences. Research applying this framework to the postwar development of welfare states in the OECD is summarised, distinguishing two periods: up to 1980, and from 1980 to 2008. How far this framework can contribute to understanding the rise and differential patterns of environmental governance and intervention across advanced capitalist states since 1970 is explored, before briefly comparing and contrasting the determinants of welfare states and environmental states, identifying common drivers in both domains and regime-specific drivers in each. The same framework is then applied to developments since 2008 and into the near future, sketching two potential configurations and speculating on the conditions for closer, more integrated ‘eco-welfare states’.     

Greener governments: partisan ideologies,executive institutions,and environmental policies

Why do some governments have more environmentally friendly policies than others? Part of the answer involves governing parties’ ideological positions on environmentalism and the constraints imposed by executive institutions. Here, this party-based explanation is elaborated and tested with uniquely comparable indicators of national environmental policies for governments in 27 countries in the European Union (EU). The findings show that governments with parties that emphasized environmental protection in their manifestos are more likely to propose pro-environment policies during EU-level negotiations. However, the effect of ideology is mediated by the centralization of the national executive branch. In centralized national executives, the environmental positions of prime ministers’ parties affect policies, while in decentralized national executives, the positions of environment ministers’ parties are relevant. The findings have implications for understanding the impact of parties’ environmental positions on government policies, as well as for policy making in coalitions more generally.     

Conditions for successful environmental justice mobilizations: an analysis of 50 cases

ABSTRACT

The environmental justice (EJ) literature can benefit from comparative analysis that helps to identify conditions for more and less successful outcomes. A data set of 50 EJ cases in the U.S. was developed with high and low remediation as the outcome. Causal conditions were selected on theoretical grounds, and included five mobilizing strategies (local and state government coalitions, federal government attention, civil disobedience, litigation, and national NGO support) and three general conditions (absence of industry counter-mobilization, presence of water pollution, and proposed or new siting). Qualitative comparative analysis and other analyses indicated that all causal conditions were found in the high-remediation cases but that some conditions (water pollution and local–state coalitions) were more consistently associated with the high-remediation outcome. The analysis points to the value of systematic studies of the factors that affect local EJ outcomes and to the need for better case study collections.     

Clumsiness and elegance in environmental management: applying cultural theory to the history of whaling

The global whaling debate is one of the most well-known environmental disputes; despite the continued moratorium, both whaling and conflict continue. This endless discord has been criticised as deleterious to whale conservation and as imperialistic towards whaling communities. The history of the whaling debate is examined through the lens of cultural theory (CT). CT argues that there is productive potential in respectful interaction between different perspectives on an environmental issue. Using CT, modern whaling past and present is reconstructed, tracking how different actors have come to prominence, altering the nature of the policy landscape through their actions. Since the onset of modern whaling, whales and whaling practice have been conceived in narrow terms, depending on the dominance of particular actors on either side of the debate. Proposed solutions to the impasse are assessed according to the maxims of CT.     

Greening up: the effects of environmental standards in EU and US trade agreements

Can environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) foster an environmental race to the top? The ways in which different enforcement mechanisms in North–South PTAs affect the implementation of environmental standards in developing countries are examined. It is argued that environmental provisions in European Union (EU) and United States (US) PTAs will be effective in instigating policy change in partner countries, although the timing of the effect will vary significantly. Fines and sanctions in US PTAs incentivize partner countries to reform during the negotiation process. Reform in EU PTA partners is predicted to occur during agreement implementation as a result of the EU’s policy dialogue approach. Illustrative evidence is provided and the hypotheses are tested using statistical estimations of EU and US PTAs with environmental provisions on developing countries’ environmental policy reform.     

Greening the Congressional record: environmental social movements and expertise-based access to the policy process

ABSTRACT

A new dataset of organizational testimony at U.S. Congressional hearings on environmental protection is used to examine how social movement organizations use issue expertise to gain access to the policy process. Environmental movement organizations (EMOs) are shown to testify in greater numbers at hearings that consider proposed legislation, compared to hearings that are exploratory or investigatory in nature. The increased representation at legislative hearings is unique to EMOs; other kinds of organizations do not obtain similar increases in legislative access. These findings suggest that, due to their scientific expertise and perceived legitimacy, EMOs receive privileged access to the policy process relative to other organizations affected by environmental policy and at a later stage than has been proposed by prior work examining social movement access to the policy process.     

Environmental decision-making: the influence of policy information

ABSTRACT

The success of technological development depends on citizens’ social acceptance, whereas several challenges related to the understanding of citizens’ reactions to renewable energy and its policies are identifiable. Most importantly, the gap between general attitudes towards the environment and specific voting behaviour regarding environment-friendly policy proposals calls for an explanation of how a policy’s design causes citizens who might otherwise support environmental measures to express opposition in direct democratic votes. Therefore, how policy design and policy information impact opinion formation is investigated. Salient aspects are identified, and the different types of information or qualifications that may cause opposition are considered. This new approach reveals that citizens, in environmental decision-making, do indeed consider policy design and policy information, which they regard as conditions for support, and that the type of policy information matters since citizens do not consider all of the policy details when they make decisions.     

Explaining support for renewable energy: commitments to self-sufficiency and communion

ABSTRACT

Across the political spectrum, people favour renewable energy. For political liberals, this support has been attributed to concern for the environment; in contrast, the bases of conservatives’ support are less clear. Derived from interviews with a diverse sample of households in Washington State, USA, and a vignette experiment with a representative sample of American households, results show that Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) have different moral intuitions, with Democrats emphasizing communion and both Democrats and Republicans valuing self-sufficiency. These findings explain how politically polarized environmental attitudes can exist alongside a shared support for renewable energy. The study therefore contributes to the literature on environmental concern and behaviour, and has implications for policies aimed at increasing adoption of renewable energy as well as pro-environmental behaviour more broadly.     

Social representations of governance for change towards sustainability: perspectives of sustainability advocates

There is a substantial body of literature on public understandings of large-scale ‘environmental’ phenomena such as climate change and resource degradation. At the same time, political science and economics analyse the governance arrangements to deal with such issues. These realms of research rarely meet: there has been little research into people’s understandings of the governance of environmental change. This study adds a psychological perspective to governance research by investigating social representations of governance that promotes societal change towards sustainability, and related practices. It examines data from qualitative interviews with sustainability-interested people in seven European countries (n = 105). The analysis identified building blocks of representations suitable as an analytical framework for future research on governance representations. The diversity of their content reflected a range of pathways to societal change. Representations often seemed to have a creative function as a guiding vision for individuals’ own practices, but their wider transformative potential was constrained.     

The legacy of lead pollution: (dis)trust in science and the debate over Superfund

Lead contamination is a significant health hazard in communities around the world, but this environmental toxin often remains unknown to residents living near hazardous sites. This research investigates a unique case where residents were informed of lead contamination but rejected official and scientific narratives regarding environmental risks. The case study involves a decommissioned smelter in Colorado. Drawing from data collected over three years, the researchers examine how officials and experts communicated the severity of environmental health hazards. Despite these efforts, residents opposed the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempts to place the site on the National Priorities List for federal cleanup. The government’s framing of science and environmental risk failed to resonate with homeowners, despite the known and significant scientific evidence confirming environmental health hazards, and residents’ perceptions of lead contamination were mitigated by material concerns, including property values and community stigma. Implications for future research on lead contamination, environmental risk, and trust in science are discussed.     

Legitimating the environmental injustices of war: toxic exposures and media silence in Iraq and Afghanistan

During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US Department of Defense burned the majority of its solid waste in open-air pits or trenches, producing large amounts of potentially hazardous emissions. While journalists have covered stories of US service members who link their illnesses to these fumes, they have almost entirely ignored potential civilian impacts. However, satellite images demonstrate that pollution from open-air trash burning on US bases could not have impacted US personnel without also harming Iraqi and Afghan civilians living near bases, indicating that burn-pit pollution is an important, if unacknowledged, environmental justice issue. Content analysis of news articles shows the extent to which civilian impacts have been left out of mainstream US media reporting on burn-pit pollution. This selective attention is symptomatic of the way military violence is legitimated, which involves a complicit news media that typically overlooks the humanitarian impacts of war.     

Frame alignment and environmental advocacy: the influence of NGO strategies on policy outcomes in China

ABSTRACT

The link between environmental frames and policy outcomes in China is explored. Environmental nongovernment organizations’ (ENGOs) issue interpretation and presentation affect environmental policy changes. The notion of ‘frame alignment’ is introduced, and it is argued that it can serve to link ENGOs’ advocacy needs and frame resonance among different stakeholders, thus successfully promoting advocacy. Based on in-depth interviews and analysis of news reports over a span of 10 years, it is found that where ENGOs are able to align their issue frames with those of the central state and media, the resulting frame resonance smooths policy change. In contrast, where ENGOs adopt conflict frames critical of state authorities, the absence of alignment leads to a slim chance of policy change. The findings shed light on why some ENGOs successfully create linkage and achieve their desired outcomes while others fail to do so.     

Climate policy support under political consensus: exploring the varying effect of partisanship and party cues

By creating attitudinal rifts among partisan voters, political polarization is expected to negatively affect chances of effectively mitigating climate change. While such expectations generally have found support, less attention has been paid to the opposite claim that political consensus should eliminate the partisan dimension in climate change politics. This study tests this claim by studying how party identification, and party cues specifically, affects public policy attitudes in a context defined by political consensus. Using data from a large online access panel in Sweden, party identification and party cues are shown to matter for policy attitudes even in a consensus context. This effect is not limited to certain issues but is found across a wide range of policies, and the effect of party cues, for a given issue, varies across parties. The implications of this study and areas for future work are discussed.     

Risk preference,trust, and willingness-to-accept subsidies for pro-environmental production: an investigation of hog farmers in China

Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - The objectives of this study are to investigate Chinese hog farmers’ minimum willingness-to-accept (WTA) subsidies for complying pro-environmental...