Can We Talk Ourselves into Sustainability? The Role of Discourse in the Environmental Policy Process

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Rydin
Author(s):  
Gökhan Orhan

Although perceptions about expertise in the policy process and its legitimacy has changed over time, environmental policy is a contested policy area with a variety of policy disputes between experts who inform competing policy positions. The distinguished position of experts in the policy process faces a new challenge as lay people and a new breed of embedded experts take dominant interest policy positions in a number of policy disputes. In post-truth situations, it is not expertise but the way one articulates a position that matters. Re-centralisation of policy processes and the predominance of particular economic interests in policy processes sideline experts who are supposed to enlighten the process in the name of common good. The continual sidelining of expert opinions, including that of professional chambers and predominance of developmentalist discourses characterize environmental policy processes in Turkey. Experts from a variety of public authorities are bypassed to enable environmentally risky development projects without much deliberation, despite experts’ opposition on the grounds of environmental, ecological, economic and social infeasibility of such projects. Embedded experts have been available for most of the occasions and use of environmental discourses has been a common feature of legitimization process.


2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent Steel ◽  
Peter List ◽  
Denise Lach ◽  
Bruce Shindler

Author(s):  
Arwanto Arwanto ◽  
Wike Anggraini

ABSTRACT Understanding policy process involves many distinctive approaches. The most common are institutional, groups or networks, exogenous factors, rational actors, and idea-based approach. This paper discussed the idea-based approach to explain policy process, in this case policy change. It aims to analyse how ideas could assist people to understand policy change. What role do they play and why are they considered as fundamental element? It considers that ideas are belong to every policy actor, whether it is individual or institution. In order to answer these questions, this paper adopts Kingdon’s multi streams approach to analyse academic literatures. Through this approach, the relationship between ideas and policy change can be seen clearer. Ideas only can affect in policy change if it is agreed and accepted by policy makers. Therefore the receptivity of ideas plays significant role and it emerges policy entrepreneurs. They promote ideas (through problem framing, timing, and narrative construction) and manipulate in order to ensure the receptivity of ideas. Although policy entrepreneurs play significant role, political aspects remains the most important element in the policy process. Keywords: policy change, ideas, idea-based approach, Kingdon’s multiple streams, policy entrepreneurs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Elizabeth C. Lopardo ◽  
Clare M. Ryan

Four dams on the lower Snake River in Washington State generate hydropower and allow for regional agriculture and barge shipping to Portland OR. However, the dams impede the migration of local salmon populations (Oncorhynchus spp.), which are in steep decline, and drastically impact the populations of salmon and orca whales, for whom salmon are a primary food source. For years, environmental groups have argued for breaching the dams; other interests counter that the dams are too critical to the economy of the region to lose; and federal agencies assert that the dams can remain and salmon populations will recover with mitigation techniques. Scientific and economic analyses, litigation, and elected officials’ efforts have not been able to move the issue towards a solution. Readers will examine the interests of primary actors in the issue, how they influence the policy process, the role of scientific and economic analyses, and possible approaches for resolving the issue.


Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
John C. Morris

The role of the policy entrepreneur in the policy process forms an integral part of our understanding of the formulation and implementation of policy in the United States. For all its theoretical importance, however, little work has been done to develop or test the propositions of entrepreneurship offered by Kingdon (1984). By examining the life of Ansel Adams (1902-1984), this paper explores more fully the concept of policy entrepreneurship and seeks to develop a more robust concept that accounts for the long-term, diffuse series of activities that precede Kingdon’s “stream coupling” in the policy process. The analysis suggests that such an approach offers some promise for capturing a broader spectrum of policy activity.


2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 613-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Gómez-Baggethun ◽  
Manuel Ruiz-Pérez

In the last decade a growing number of environmental scientists have advocated economic valuation of ecosystem services as a pragmatic short-term strategy to communicate the value of biodiversity in a language that reflects dominant political and economic views. This paper revisits the controversy on economic valuation of ecosystem services in the light of two aspects that are often neglected in ongoing debates. First, the role of the particular institutional setup in which environmental policy and governance is currently embedded in shaping valuation outcomes. Second, the broader economic and sociopolitical processes that have governed the expansion of pricing into previously non-marketed areas of the environment. Our analysis suggests that within the institutional setup and broader sociopolitical processes that have become prominent since the late 1980s economic valuation is likely to pave the way for the commodification of ecosystem services with potentially counterproductive effects in the long term for biodiversity conservation and equity of access to ecosystem services benefits.


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