Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

As a political institution, open deliberation on public policy can enhance legitimacy and procedural justice. As a science, decision-aiding deliberative procedures can help overcome bounded rationality of individuals. Integrating the two modes of inquiry would be perfect for capturing the plural values of the environment. However, the analytic requirements seem to point in a different direction from the political ideals. Legitimacy problems arise when the supposedly unconstrained process is professionally ‘guided’. But rigorous decision aids fail to work without some degree of cognitive guidance. A trend in ecosystems valuation research is the use of analytic techniques in the deliberative processes of value articulation. In this paper an analytic – deliberative approach is assessed against a deliberative democracy theory. This approach seeks to facilitate deliberation within individuals and to engineer preference towards instrumental rationality. The evaluative framework allows predetermination of the range of outcomes. Little room has been made for value debates, thus the moral need for actual discussion is weak. Being expert centred, the framework provides constricted spaces for empowerment. Alternative expressions unintelligible to the science may be put at a disadvantage. The scope for a reflexive democratic institution appears limited. A promising deliberative valuation approach should be integrative, including analytic and political elements as complementary to each other, and should be democratic in its production.

In this paper I examine the governance of Hong Kong through heritage conservation. The economic approach to governance, a legacy of British colonialism in Hong Kong, has been challenged by the Hong Kong people's attempt to reconstruct a new identity from the bottom up. This attempt has been translated into a public campaign against current heritage preservation policies, including plans to demolish or redevelop heritage buildings—the material bases of identity. Partly as a response to the public's growing awareness of local identity and culture, and partly to avoid an imminent governing crisis, the Hong Kong government has initiated the ‘Revitalising Historic Buildings through Partnership’ Scheme. Focusing on this scheme, I investigate how the Hong Kong government has attempted to tap into heritage resources to develop a new governing approach. Has a more inclusive governing system been developed? Addressing the strength and constraints of the scheme, I provide an initial evaluation of the scheme and its implications for governance.

The concept of governance increasingly dominates the discourse on environmental management. The traditional hierarchical mode of governance has, in many locations, been replaced by other modes of governance in which the market, network, or community are dominant (without substituting the role of the state). In this paper we examine the shifts in the relative prominence of governance modes for the management of two wetlands in the city of Bogotá. In both cases the hierarchical mode of governance was prominent until the 1990s, when nonstate actors became involved in the management of the two wetlands. One wetland is characterized by a mix in which the community mode of governance is prominent, whilst in the other wetland the network mode of governance appears prominent. With the shift in predominant governance mode, the sources of legitimacy on which the predominant mode is based also change. In the case of community governance, legitimacy is linked to identity and shared values, whilst in the network mode aspects such as technical expertise and credentials form the basis for legitimacy. We suggest that the difference in the governance trajectories of the two wetlands can be linked to the different characteristics of the neighborhoods surrounding the wetland and the initial nature of their involvement in wetland management. The cases also highlight the importance of the relative power of the actors, which underlie the shift from one predominant mode of governance to another mode, as it impacts their ability to influence decision making. The cases illustrate the changing nature of this relative power in wetland management in Bogotá.

Australia came very close to legislating an emissions trading scheme as part of a climate policy package in 2009. This climate policy was driven by a new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who had made addressing climate change his signature policy commitment both before and after the 2007 election that brought the Australian Labor Party to power. His climate policy was underpinned by two main interrelated narratives: ecological modernisation and climate justice. In this paper I consider the story of the Rudd government's climate policy experience through an ecological modernisation lens. In the end, it was the seeming disjuncture between political rhetoric and policy outcomes that brought the Rudd prime ministership down. The telling of the Rudd climate story through these narratives reveals some of the limitations of (mainstream) ecological modernisation as a major environmental management approach, as well as highlighting the vagaries of political leadership.

We examine enterprise policy development in Albania, a neglected postcommunist context. Using a policy transfer approach, we explore whether the Albanian government has adopted, or adapted, enterprise policies originating elsewhere, what this has meant in practice, and how and why such processes have occurred. Enterprise policy development in Albania can be conceptualised as a process of indirect coercive transfer through transnational communication mechanisms—policy discourses, target setting, monitoring, evaluation, and ‘best practice’—that disguise the power relations in which they are embedded. The transition from adoption at the level of discourse (soft transfer) to implementation of programmes, actions, and tools (hard transfer) is shaped by knowledge, finance and legitimacy ‘deficits’, and communist-era legacies. The paper develops a deeper understanding of enterprise policy processes, their drivers, and constraints in postcommunist contexts, addressing a gap in the transition literature, by investigating these processes as complex and crowded policy spaces from design through to implementation.

Scholars of environmental regulation have speculated that decentralization of policy authority may induce subnational governments to lower their regulatory stringency in pursuit of an economic advantage over other jurisdictions. I examine whether there is an environmental race to the bottom among local governments and to what extent local policy networks can offset this tendency in the nascent decentralized system of South Korea. The results of an empirical analysis of local enforcement activities show that, although positive regulatory gaps lack any significant influence, industrial decline leads local agencies to decrease their enforcement actions. Yet, I also find that local policy networks not only directly affect the regulatory behavior of local governments but also counterbalance the influence of industry, thereby mitigating the race to the bottom. Together, these findings suggest that decentralization may not always engender the interjurisdictional competition that leads to the suboptimal production of social policies.

Enterprise policy in England has focused extensively on funding and training aspiring entrepreneurs residing in deprived areas. These policy initiatives have been directed at increasing the capabilities of entrepreneurs residing in deprived areas without knowing about their social capital and access to resources. This study is based on a survey of entrepreneurs that have completed the New Entrepreneurship Scholarship training programme across the nine regions of England. The findings suggest that social capital helps explain the acquisition of resources entrepreneurs residing in deprived areas need to develop a new venture. However, there seems to be an overreliance on bonding ties for resource acquisition. Too much bonding can lead to redundant resources and ‘getting by’ and may limit growth. In light of these findings several recommendations are developed for the coalition government's Local Enterprise Partnerships policy and the future funding of entrepreneurship initiatives in deprived areas.

Despite trends toward decentralized disaster management inclusive of local governments, civil organizations, and the private sector, we see centralized management and strong government involvement in the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage and the International Oil Pollution Compensation's compensation for large oil spills around the world including the Hebei Spirit oil spill in Korea. Why does the government inevitably become involved and provide a portion of the compensation when the settlement is to occur between the insured company and the affected groups and individuals? To answer this question I examine government's role in disaster management, broadly, and the role of government in disaster compensation, specifically, examining the case of the Hebei Spirit oil spill that occurred off the coast of Korea in December 2007. We witness some structural constraints as well as local-specific reasons for centralization in the Korean case. The slow progress of compensation was a major structural constraint that prompted central government involvement. Moreover, the lack of skills and knowledge on the part of affected individuals and groups regarding compensation procedures, a culture of dependence on the central government, and the negative impact of geographic proximity in the distribution of relief funds further increased the role of central government in oil spill compensation. The case of the Hebei Spirit oil spill emphasizes the advantages of a nuanced approach to disaster management—one that recognizes that decentralized management may not be feasible or successful in every aspect of the response. Further research is necessary to understand why disaster compensations including oil spill cases are more centralized than other types of disaster management.

In many countries macroeconomic policy making and land administration operate independently. A review of the literature from both disciplines supports this view. The failure to include authoritative land information generated by a country's land administration system in macroeconomic policy making can result in suboptimal governmental fiscal and monetary decisions. This is demonstrated through two case studies of the Australian context, with a focus on managing land taxes and administering interest on debt financing. A simplified empirical model is derived from the study results. The model aims to articulate and promote the important role of government land information in policy and decision making. Practical implementation will require determination of the legal, institutional, and technical requirements of the model.

We present findings on the determinants of enrolment for Ghana's National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). With this study we contribute to the literature by providing one of the few quantitative analyses on a nationwide survey. Using data from the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we find that those from the poorest households remain significantly less likely to enrol in the NHIS compared with respondents from wealthy households, even after controlling for theoretically relevant variables. However, our analysis also shows that respondents in Northern Ghana, considered the poorest part of the country, are more likely to be enroled than those in Southern Ghana. The findings present a clear challenge to the original mandate of the NHIS as a propoor policy and suggest that health policy makers should consider expanding and clarifying the criteria for declaring a person as indigent and that the scheme be further evaluated for obstacles that may be hindering enrolment.

Over the last few years a fast-growing literature has developed around the notion of sociotechnical transitions and the possibilities for governing ‘system innovations’ towards sustainability. Government policies are assumed to play an important role in such processes. However, an important critique has suggested not to see these transition processes as politically neutral but to pay more attention to the politics of these processes. With this paper I make a contribution towards this debate by analysing the underlying political processes and their institutional contexts which led to two quite different approaches aimed at promoting system innovations in the UK and the Netherlands. The main question I answer is why the two governments engage with the same challenge in such different ways. Building on a discursive – institutionalist perspective based on the work of Hajer and Schmidt, I highlight the interplay of discourses, institutional contexts, and interests in shaping policy initiatives to promote system innovations. I conclude by suggesting a typology of possible relationships between these variables and expected policy outputs which helps to explain the two case studies and is believed to be applicable more widely.