Navigating the dilemmas of climate policy in Europe: evidence from policy evaluation studies
Haug, Constanze ; Rayner, Tim ; Jordan, Andrew ; Hildingsson, Roger LU
; Stripple, Johannes
LU
; Monni, Suvi
; Huitema, Dave
; Massey, Eric
; van Asselt, Harro
and Berkhout, Frans
(2010)
In Climatic Change
101(3-4).
p.427-445
- Abstract
- Climate change is widely recognised as a 'wicked' policy problem. Agreeing and implementing governance responses is proving extremely difficult. Policy makers in many jurisdictions now emphasise their ambition to govern using the best available evidence. One obvious source of such evidence is the evaluations of the performance of existing policies. But to what extent do these evaluations provide insights into the difficult dilemmas that governors typically encounter? We address this question by reviewing the content of 262 evaluation studies of European climate policies in the light of six kinds of dilemma found in the governance literature. We are interested in what these studies say about the performance of European climate policies and... (More)
- Climate change is widely recognised as a 'wicked' policy problem. Agreeing and implementing governance responses is proving extremely difficult. Policy makers in many jurisdictions now emphasise their ambition to govern using the best available evidence. One obvious source of such evidence is the evaluations of the performance of existing policies. But to what extent do these evaluations provide insights into the difficult dilemmas that governors typically encounter? We address this question by reviewing the content of 262 evaluation studies of European climate policies in the light of six kinds of dilemma found in the governance literature. We are interested in what these studies say about the performance of European climate policies and in their capacity to inform evidence-based policy-making. We find that the evaluations do arrive at common findings: that climate change is framed as a problem of market and/or state failure; that voluntary measures tend to be ineffective; that market-based instruments tend to be regressive; that EU-level policies have driven climate policies in the latecomer EU Member States; and that lack of monitoring and weak enforcement are major obstacles to effective policy implementation. However, we also conclude that the evidence base these studies represent is surprisingly weak for such a high profile area. There is too little systematic climate policy evaluation work in the EU to support systematic evidence-based policy making. This reduces the scope for sound policy making in the short run and is a constraint to policy learning in the longer term. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/1654506
- author
- Haug, Constanze
; Rayner, Tim
; Jordan, Andrew
; Hildingsson, Roger
LU
; Stripple, Johannes
LU
; Monni, Suvi
; Huitema, Dave
; Massey, Eric
; van Asselt, Harro
and Berkhout, Frans
- organization
- publishing date
- 2010
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Climatic Change
- volume
- 101
- issue
- 3-4
- pages
- 427 - 445
- publisher
- Springer
- external identifiers
-
- wos:000280377700008
- scopus:77955058625
- ISSN
- 0165-0009
- DOI
- 10.1007/s10584-009-9682-3
- project
- ADAM - ADaptation And Mitigation Strategies supporting European climate policy
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 953bdf88-5cf9-4e03-9424-2df6b604a2d0 (old id 1654506)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-01 10:39:42
- date last changed
- 2022-11-09 01:56:36
@article{953bdf88-5cf9-4e03-9424-2df6b604a2d0,
abstract = {{Climate change is widely recognised as a 'wicked' policy problem. Agreeing and implementing governance responses is proving extremely difficult. Policy makers in many jurisdictions now emphasise their ambition to govern using the best available evidence. One obvious source of such evidence is the evaluations of the performance of existing policies. But to what extent do these evaluations provide insights into the difficult dilemmas that governors typically encounter? We address this question by reviewing the content of 262 evaluation studies of European climate policies in the light of six kinds of dilemma found in the governance literature. We are interested in what these studies say about the performance of European climate policies and in their capacity to inform evidence-based policy-making. We find that the evaluations do arrive at common findings: that climate change is framed as a problem of market and/or state failure; that voluntary measures tend to be ineffective; that market-based instruments tend to be regressive; that EU-level policies have driven climate policies in the latecomer EU Member States; and that lack of monitoring and weak enforcement are major obstacles to effective policy implementation. However, we also conclude that the evidence base these studies represent is surprisingly weak for such a high profile area. There is too little systematic climate policy evaluation work in the EU to support systematic evidence-based policy making. This reduces the scope for sound policy making in the short run and is a constraint to policy learning in the longer term.}},
author = {{Haug, Constanze and Rayner, Tim and Jordan, Andrew and Hildingsson, Roger and Stripple, Johannes and Monni, Suvi and Huitema, Dave and Massey, Eric and van Asselt, Harro and Berkhout, Frans}},
issn = {{0165-0009}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{3-4}},
pages = {{427--445}},
publisher = {{Springer}},
series = {{Climatic Change}},
title = {{Navigating the dilemmas of climate policy in Europe: evidence from policy evaluation studies}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-009-9682-3}},
doi = {{10.1007/s10584-009-9682-3}},
volume = {{101}},
year = {{2010}},
}