by Christopher Galik
Times are changing. Rapidly. New, increasingly complex environmental problems continue to emerge. Yet, it would seem that the tools we have to manage that environment often lag behind the need.
In our recent article published in Policy & Politics, Institutional stability and change in environmental governance, we set out to better understand if, how, and why existing governing frameworks—or, as we call them, institutions—seem to persist.
Institutions can be defined as ‘integrated systems of rules that structure social interactions‘. We can think of these institutions as both the formal laws that govern management of a particular environmental problem or resource, but also the informal norms and understandings that influence the ways we interpret and implement those laws. There is a rich body of research that can help us how to understand how and why these institutions might change. On the flip side, much less attention has been paid to why these institutions might stay the same.
By combining existing understandings of institutional change with more recent work on institutional stability, we sought to better document the ways in which environmental policies—and the communities involved with those policies—have evolved over time.
To do so, we used an organising framework outlining five types of change—drift, layering, conversion, displacement, exhaustion—and four types of stability—passive stability, active stability, failed action, and intended inaction. Next, we developed narrative histories of three separate cases of environmental management—air quality governance in the US and China under the Clean Air Act and Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law, respectively, and climate governance in the European Union under the Emissions Trading System. Using the narrative for each case, we then tracked observed instances of institutional change and stability across decades of implementation.
We found that, as we thought they might, the systems we examined were dominated by stability rather than change. This is not in itself that interesting. What is interesting, as you can see below, is that we also found complex overlaps in the mechanisms contributing to that stability and, in rarer situations, change. Furthermore, patterns of stability and change were reflective of the broader social and political context in which each system operates and the maturity of the system itself. We found, for example, more complexity in the patterns of change and stability in the EU’s efforts to develop a first-of-kind system for regulating global greenhouse gases than in either the US or China’s efforts to regulate more traditional pollutants like lead or particulate matter.
From a research perspective, our work shows the benefit of simultaneously examining institutional change and stability using a combined framework. From an applied perspective, our work shows, visually, the complexity associated with the implementation of new environmental policies. Though our work is unable to solve the great puzzle of how to best design policies that are both resilient and adaptable, it may help to better understand whether and how this balancing has happened in the past and, in doing so, help to inform future policy design efforts.
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics:
Galik, C. S., Ba, Y., & Bobbitt, C. (2023). Institutional stability and change in environmental governance, Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2023) from https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16806127945591
The views and opinions expressed on this blog site are solely those of the original blog post authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of Policy & Politics, the Policy Press and/or any/all contributors to this site.
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Kagan, J. A., & Olofsson, K. L. (2023). Advocacy strategies of industry and environmental interest groups in oil and gas policy debates, Policy & Politics, 51(1), 180-202 from https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16631590760299
Osei-Kojo, A. (2023). Analysing the stability of advocacy coalitions and policy frames in Ghana’s oil and gas governance, Policy & Politics, 51(1), 71-90 from https://doi.org/10.1332/030557322X16651632139992
Turaga, R. M. R., & Mittal, H. (2023). The policy process of adopting environmental standards for coal plants in India: accommodating transnational politics in the Multiple Streams Framework, Policy & Politics, 51(2), 334-361. Retrieved Jun 20, 2023, from https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16744966486085
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