Transnational environmental policy:reconstructing ozone

Transnational Environmental Policy analyses a surprising success story in the field of international environmental policy making: the threat to the ozone layer posed by industrial chemicals, and how it has been averted. The book also raises the more general question about the problem-solving capacities of industrialised countries and the world society as a whole. Reiner Grundmann investigates the regulations which have been put in place at an international level, and how the process evolved over twenty years in the US and Germany.

Divergent traditions, converging responses: immigration and integration policy in the UK and Germany

This contribution argues that although the UK and Germany have different historical traditions of immigration and integration, which continue to define policy responses in specific areas, recent developments show a distinct convergence in each country's policy goals and adopted policy instruments in this sector. It contends that both endogenous (demographic and skills shortages, integration deficits) and exogenous (influx of asylum seekers, terrorism) variables can be identified for this convergence. It also pinpoints the European Union as a growing source both of convergence and policy coordination in this field.

Development of science and technology policy for Kuwait

The status of Science and Technology in KUWAIT has been analysed in order to assess the extent of the application of Science and Technology needed for the Country's development. The design and implementation of a Science and Technology Policy has been examined to identify the appropriate technology necessary to improve KUWAIT's socio-economic-industrial structures. Following a general and critical review of the role of Science and Technology in the developing countries, the author has reviewed the past and contemporary employment of Science and Technology for development.of various sectors and the existence, if any, of any form (explicit, implicit, or both) of a Science and Technology Policy in KUWAIT. The thesis is structured to evaluate almost all of the sectors in KUWAIT which utilise Science and/or Technology, the effectiveness of such practices, their policymaking process, the channels by which policies were transformed into sources of influence through Governmental action and the impact that various policy instruments at the disposal of the the Government had on the development of S & T capabilities. The author has studied the implications of the absence of a Science and Technology Policy in Kuwait by examining some specific case studies, eg, the absence of a Technology Assessment Process and the negative impacts resulting from this; the ad-hoc allocation of the research and development budget instead of its being based on a percentage of GNP; the limitations imposed on the development of indigenous contracting companies and consultancy and engineering design offices; the impacts of the absence of Technology Transfer Centre, and so forth. As a consequence of the implications of the above studies, together with the negative results from the absence of an explicit Science and Technology Policy, eg, research and development activities do not relate to the national development plans, the author suggests that a Science and Technology Policy-Making Body should be established to formulate, develop, monitor and correlate the Science and Technology Activities in KUWAIT.

Institutions, policies, and arguments:context and strategy in EU policy framing

Studies of framing in the EU political system are still a rarity and they suffer from a lack of systematic empirical analysis. Addressing this gap, we ask if institutional and policy contexts intertwined with the strategic side of framing can explain the number and types of frames employed by different stakeholders. We use a computer-assisted manual content analysis and develop a fourfold typology of frames to study the frames that were prevalent in the debates on four EU policy proposals within financial market regulation and environmental policy at the EU level and in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The main empirical finding is that both contexts and strategies exert a significant impact on the number and types of frames in EU policy debates. In conceptual terms, the article contributes to developing more fine-grained tools for studying frames and their underlying dimensions.

Environmental governance in a contested state:the influence of European Union and other external actors on energy sector regulation in Kosovo

This article examines environmental governance in Kosovo, with a particular focus on the energy sector. The article considers the degree to which the emerging model of environmental governance is characterised by hierarchical and non-hierarchical modes of coordination. We examine the roles of a number of domestic institutions and actors – ministries, agencies, and regulatory bodies– and the influence of external actors, including the EU, the US, and Serbia. The EU is building Kosovo’s own hierarchical governance capacity by strengthening domestic institutions, whilst the US focuses primarily on market liberalization, whilst simultaneously supporting EU efforts. Moreover, environmental policy change is not wholly or predominantly driven by domestic actors, which can partly be attributed to Kosovo’s limited domestic sovereignty. We conclude that the emerging model of environmental governance in Kosovo is characterized by a weak hierarchy, partly as a result of external actor involvement, which disincentivises the government from responding to domestic non-state actor pressure.

Governance in contemporary Germany:the semisovereign State revisited

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, West Germany was considered to be one of the world’s most successful economic and political systems. In his seminal 1987 analysis of West Germany’s ‘semisovereign’ system of governance, Peter Katzenstein attributed this success to a combination of a fragmented polity, consensus politics and incremental policy changes. However, unification in 1990 has both changed Germany’s institutional configuration and created economic and social challenges on a huge scale. This volume therefore asks whether semisovereignty still exists in contemporary Germany and, crucially, whether it remains an asset in terms of addressing these challenges. By shadowing and building on the original study, an eminent team of British, German and American scholars analyses institutional changes and the resulting policy developments in key sectors, with Peter Katzenstein himself providing the conclusion. Together, the chapters provide a landmark assessment of the outcomes produced by one of the world’s most important countries. Contents: 1. Introduction: semisovereignty challenged Simon Green and William E. Paterson; 2. Institutional transfer: can semisovereignty be transferred? The political economy of Eastern Germany Wade Jacoby; 3. Political parties Thomas Saalfeld; 4. Federalism: the new territorialism Charlie Jeffery; 5. Shock-absorbers under stress. Parapublic institutions and the double challenges of German unification and European integration Andreas Busch; 6. Economic policy management: catastrophic equilibrium, tipping points and crisis interventions Kenneth Dyson; 7. Industrial relations: from state weakness as strength to state weakness as weakness. Welfare corporatism and the private use of the public interest Wolfgang Streeck; 8. Social policy: crisis and transformation Roland Czada; 9. Immigration and integration policy: between incrementalism and non-decisions Simon Green; 10. Environmental policy: the law of diminishing returns? Charles Lees; 11. Administrative reform Kluas H. Goetz; 12. European policy-making: between associated sovereignty and semisovereignty William E. Paterson; 13. Conclusion: semisovereignty in United Germany Peter J. Katzenstein.

Openness and economic growth

The themes of this thesis are that international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) are closely related and that they have varying impacts on economic growth in countries at different stages of development. The thesis consists of three empirical studies. The first one examines the causal relationship between FDI and trade in China. The empirical study is based on a panel of bilateral data for China and 19 home countries/regions over the period 1984-98. The specific feature of the study is that econometric techniques designed specially for panel data are applied to test for unit roots and causality. The results indicate a virtuous procedure of development for China. The growth of China’s imports causes growth in inward FDI from a home country/region, which in turn causes the growth of exports from China to the home country/region. The growth of exports causes the growth of imports. This virtuous procedure is the result of China’s policy of opening to the outside world. China has been encouraging export-oriented FDI and reducing trade barriers. Such policy instruments should be further encouraged in order to enhance economic growth. In the second study, an extended gravity model is constructed to identify the main causes of recent trade growth in OECD countries. The specific features include (a) the explicit introduction of R&D and FDI as two important explanatory variables into an augmented gravity equation; (b) the adoption of a panel data approach, and (c) the careful treatment of endogeneity. The main findings are that the levels and similarities of market size, domestic R&D stock and inward FDI stock are positively related to the volume of bilateral trade, while the geographical distance, exchange rate and relative factor endowments, has a negative impact. These findings lend support to new trade, FDI and economic growth theories. The third study evaluates the impact of openness on growth in different country groups. This research distinguishes itself from many existing studies in three aspects: first, both trade and FDI are included in the measurement of openness. Second, countries are divided' into three groups according to their development stages to compare the roles of FDI and trade in different groups. Third, the possible problems of endogeneity and multicollinearity of FDI and trade are carefully dealt with in a panel data setting. The main findings are that FDI and trade are both beneficial to a country's development. However, trade has positive effects on growth in all country groups but FDI has positive effects on growth only in the country groups which have had moderate development. The findings suggest FDI and trade may affect growth under different conditions.

The European Union and global governance:a handbook

The role of the European Union in global politics has been of growing interest over the past decade. The EU is a key player in global institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and NATO. It continues to construct an emerging identity and project its values and interests throughout contemporary international relations. The capacity of the EU to both formulate and realise its goals, however, remains contested. Some scholars claim the EU’s `soft power’ attitude rivals that of the USA’s `hard power’ approach to international relations. Others view the EU as insufficiently able to produce a co-ordinated position to project upon global politics. Regardless of the position taken within this debate, the EU’s relationship with its external partners has an increasingly important impact upon economic, political and security concerns on an international level. Trade negotiations, military interventions, democracy promotion, international development and responses to the global economic crisis have all witnessed the EU playing a central role. This has seen the EU become both a major force in contemporary institutions of global governance and a template for supranational governance that might influence other attempts to construct regional and global institutions. This volume brings together a collection of leading EU scholars to provide a state-of-the-art overview covering these and other debates relating to the EU’s role in contemporary global governance. The Handbook is divided into four main sections: Part I: European studies and global governance – provides an overview and critical assessment of the leading theoretical approaches through which the EU’s role in global governance has been addressed within the literature. Part II: Institutions – examines the role played by the key EU institutions in pursuing a role for the EU in contemporary international relations. Part III: Policy and issue areas – explores developments within particular policy sectors, assessing the different impact that the EU has had in different issue areas, including foreign and security policy, environmental policy, common commercial policy, the Common Agricultural Policy, development policy, accession policy, the Neighbourhood Policy and conflict transformation. Part IV: The global multilevel governance complex and the EU – focuses on the relationship between the EU and the institutions, regions and countries with which it forms a global multilevel governance complex, including chapters on the EU’s relationship with the WTO, United Nations, East Asia, Africa and the USA.

Monetary variability and monetary variables in the Franc zone

Failure to detect or account for structural changes in economic modelling can lead to misleading policy inferences, which can be perilous, especially for the more fragile economies of developing countries. Using three potential monetary policy instruments (Money Base, M0, and Reserve Money) for 13 member-states of the CFA Franc zone over the period 1989:11-2002:09, we investigate the magnitude of information extracted by employing data-driven techniques when analyzing breaks in time-series, rather than the simplifying practice of imposing policy implementation dates as break dates. The paper also tests Granger's (1980) aggregation theory and highlights some policy implications of the results.

The Greater London Authority:problems of strategy integration

The Act that established the Greater London Authority (GLA) incorporated many of New Labour's aspirations for modern governance. Among those aspirations was the notion of policy integration, or 'joining up'. The Mayor of Greater London was required to develop a number of strategies, broadly in the planning and environmental policy domains, and to ensure that those strategies meshed into a coherent overall strategy for promoting London's economic, social and environmental well-being. How would this work in practice, given the need for coordination between the GLA and a number of related functional bodies, and given the political imperative for the GLA to make an impact quickly? Through our analysis of the strategy development and integration efforts of the GLA in its first nine months, we have gleaned new insights into the highly complex and difficult process of policy integration. We argue that the high aspirations of the Act for policy integration have not been met, policy integration instead being narrowly interpreted as the coordination of strategies to the Mayor's political agenda. Finally,we reflect on the likelihood of the GLA, as currently constituted, evolving to meet the functional requirement of policy integration.

Profit, productivity and price performance changes in the water and sewerage industry:an empirical application for England and Wales

This paper aims to analyse the impact of regulation in the financial performance of the Water and Sewerage companies (WaSCs) in England and Wales over the period 1991–2008. In doing so, a panel index approach is applied across WaSCs over time to decompose unit-specific index number-based profitability growth as a function of the profitability, productivity and price performance growth achieved by benchmark firms, and the catch up to the benchmark firm achieved by less productive firms. The results indicated that after 2000 there is a steady decline in average price performance, while productivity improves resulting in a relatively stable economic profitability. It is suggested that the English and Welsh water regulator is now more focused on passing productivity benefits to consumers, and maintaining stable profitability than it was in earlier regulatory periods. This technique is of great interest for regulators to evaluate the effectiveness of regulation and companies to identify the determinants of profit change and improve future performance, even if sample sizes are limited.

Understanding the labour–environmental relationship in Britain, 1967–2011:a new narrative using political opportunity structure and coalition theory

Orthodox depictions of a fraught labour–environmental relationship privileging class, ideological and programmatic differences are problematised by newly quantified evidence of British unions' pro-environmental policy-making since 1967. The following narrative blends widely accepted accounts of the fortunes of both movements with an evaluation of Britain's shifting political opportunity structure and coalition theory to identify an alternative range of constraints and opportunities influencing the propensity and capacity of both movements to interact effectively, culminating recently in unions' emergence as environmental actors in their own right.

Identifying frames:a comparison of research methods

Framing plays an important role in public policy. Interest groups strategically highlight some aspects of a policy proposal while downplaying others in order to steer the policy debate in a favorable direction. Despite the importance of framing, we still know relatively little about the framing strategies of interest groups due to methodological difficulties that have prevented scholars from systematically studying interest group framing across a large number of interest groups and multiple policy debates. This article therefore provides an overview of three novel research methods that allow researchers to systematically measure interest group frames. More specifically, this article introduces a word-based quantitative text analysis technique, a manual, computer-assisted content analysis approach and face-to-face interviews designed to systematically identify interest group frames. The results generated by all three techniques are compared on the basis of a case study of interest group framing in an environmental policy debate in the European Union.

The UK obesity epidemic:new steering instruments for a new public policy problematic?

Since the 1980s UK government enthusiasm for market reforms has reconfigured the nature and scope of public services. Initially the marketisation of public services changed how public services were provided, increasingly market reforms and pro business policies have also modified the formation and understanding of public policy problematics and how they ought to be resolved. This is particularly noticeable when markets work imperfectly or even fail. UK governments have shown their reluctance to employ regulatory instruments to change the behaviour of companies preferring instead to make use of softer interventions, by focusing on providing advice for consumers and urging individuals to act responsibly. The dilemmas of this approach are explored by discussing the UK's former Labour government's (1997–2010) response to the increase in the incidence of obesity and related health complications.