Dynamics in national agri-environmental policy implementation under changing EU policy priorities: Does one size fit all?

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelfagfællebedømt

Over the past 30 years, Agri-Environmental Policies (AEP) in the EU have developed with relative national
autonomy and according to the subsidiarity principle. The environmental directives represent an increase
in EU-level environmental ambitions and challenge the current implementation of EU AEP by creating
an increasingly demanding set of regulations with which each member state must comply. National AEP
implementation may, however, maintain original characteristics and fail to adopt or transform as EU
policy implementation proceeds or when EU policies develop. This creates a potential gap between EU
policies and national policy implementation resulting in the ensuing national policy dynamics and adaptations
becoming issues of interest. This raises a central question regarding the extent to which national
AEP implementation can help us predict whether AEP will be suitable to achieve environmental directive
objectives nationally in the future. In this paper, we first investigate the dynamics in the implementation
of national Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) through changes in (i) AES policy objectives over time,
(ii) administrative implementation structures, and (iii) administrative policy decision structures in the
Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Austria and Romania. Second, we examine the extent to which various
factors have influenced the development of national policies over time. The study identifies development
based on the theory of ‘process of institutional change’, i.e. we qualitatively estimate the costs of change
based on proposed factors including economic conditions in relation to AES implementation, political
institutional capacity, policy legacy, policy preferences, and current discourse. On this background, we
identify differences in implementation strategies or outcomes in terms of inertia, absorption and transformation,
which are characteristic of the national responses to changing AEP at the EU level. We discuss
AES dynamics; whether policy content or structures should be in focus for future policy design and the
implications of these findings for the future role of AEP in fulfilling environmental directives and argue
why a one size fits all rule does not adequately cover current AES development.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftLand Use Policy
Vol/bind57
Sider (fra-til)764-776
ISSN0264-8377
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 30 nov. 2016

ID: 167553530