Institutional dynamics in environmental governance

Abstract

This book is the third in a series that results from the research programme of the Department of Political Sciences of the Environment at Nijmegen University, the Netherlands. This research programme is entitled 'new arrangements in environmental policies'. The programme was initiated in the late 1990s, building upon a longstanding experience and expertise in environmental policy issues. It essentially deals with innovation and tradition in environmental policies, and aims at an interpretation thereof from an institutional dynamics' perspective. When launching this programme, we were driven by a variety of empirical observations on the one hand and inspired by a series of theoretical considerations on the other. We enumerate some of the thought provoking empirical observations in the first section, while the second section sets out our theoretical sources of inspiration. By then we will also have identified the starting points and the main ambitions of our research programme, while indicating its gradual development hitherto. We conclude by sketching the outline of this volume, which is to be considered yet another step in the research programme's further development. The main question in all chapters of this volume is how to interpret the institutional dynamics in recent environmental governance. The ultimate chapter summarises some answers to this and related questions, and indicates our further research endeavours. © 2006 Springer.