ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
Policymakers have been slow to recognise or acknowledge that environmen-
tal problems might require special treatment. When new environmental
imperatives emerged during the 1960s, forcing policymakers to confront
the environment as a broad policy issue for the first time, all governments
adopted a technocentric perspective, which regarded environmental prob-
lems as the unfortunate side-effects of economic growth (see Box3.10). It was
assumed that most environmental problems had solutions and that there
wasnoneed to question the underlying commitment to economic growth
or to the political-institutional structures of the modern liberal democratic
state. The standard approach to environmental problems – here called the
‘traditional policy paradigm’ – was reactive, tactical, piecemeal and end-of-
pipe. This traditional paradigm has been found wanting, unable to stem
long-standing problems of pollution and resource depletion or to deal with
the new tranche of global problems that have emerged inrecentyears. Con-
sequently, the traditional paradigm has increasingly been challenged by the
alternative paradigm of sustainable development. Yet, despite the mount-
ing environmental crisis and the rhetorical commitment of policy elites to
sustainable development, many elements of the traditional model remain
firmly entrenched, even in those countries that have pioneered progressive
environmental policies (Andersen and Liefferink 19 97a). Why has this tradi-
tional paradigm proved so resilient? What does its persistence tell us about
theobstacles impeding the adoption of more progressive environmental
policies?
The opening section of this chapter identifies the core characteristics that
distinguish the environment as a policy problem and make it such a difficult
problem for policymakers. The next part of the chapter examines the process
of environmental policymaking by drawing on a range of theories of the
policy process. It is argued that the resilience of the traditional paradigm is
reinforced by the structural power of producer interests in capitalist society
and the institutional segmentation of the policy process. However, policy
change can and does occur, and in the second half of the chapter several
models are used to assess the potential for policy change, ending with a
case study of the nuclear power industry.◗ Core characteristics of the environment as a
policy problemThis section identifies seven core characteristics that distinguish the envi-
ronment as a policy problem.^1◗ Public goods
Many environmental resources can be described as ‘public goods’. By this
wemean that ‘each individual’s consumption leads to no subtraction from
any other individual’s consumption of that good’.^2 Public goods are both