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Recent research has demonstrated that positive and negative feedback can occur simultaneously within environmental policy. This tends to occur when policy has multiple purposes. We engage with the concept of mixed feedback to highlight aspects of the phenomenon that have hitherto not been explored in detail and thus add more nuance to the feedback argument to improve our understanding of environmental policy evolution. Our first argument is that single-purpose policies may generate mixed feedback. Each instrument generates distinct feedback. Secondly, we challenge the assumption that negative feedback undermine policy and suggest that negative feedback may indeed contribute to maintaining policy. For policy to endure over longer periods, it needs to respond to feedback. Thirdly, we argue that mixed instrument feedback can result in a substantial reshuffling of an environmental policy mix through the recalibration of instruments. We use the trajectory of Danish regulation aimed at nitrogen run-offs to coastal waters over almost three decades to illustrate the three arguments.

An increasing amount of cities are invested in developing innovative policies to make the food system more sustainable. This article investigates whether combinations of governance practices can explain why some of these cities develop highly innovative food policies across multiple dimensions of the food system – such as health and waste – while others are only limited in their innovativeness. Therefore, we apply fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to identify combinations of necessary and sufficient governance conditions to explain food system innovativeness across 26 European cities participating in the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact. Results show that the absence of specific practices, such as mapping local food initiatives, food-related government integration, developing integrated food strategies and monitoring and evaluation, prevents cities from being more innovative.

This paper employs the Institutional Analysis and Development framework across six ecosystem delivery measures in the European Union to develop a configurational explanation of (un)successful outcomes. By undertaking comparative institutional analysis, we systematically examine the effect of variation across rule types and generate insights on how different institutional configurations result in varying degrees of successful implementation of ecosystem delivery measures. We apply explanatory typology methods to identify the institutional features that best explain variation in implementation success across a number of cases. We argue that institutional rules shape outcomes in conjunction rather than in isolation. The findings show that differences in implementation success across cases can be explained by the interplay of differences in knowledge exchange, flexibility in implementation, and participation in the policy design process.

In response to the challenges posed by the fragmentation of habitats and loss of native biodiversity, climate change adaptation and mitigation, diverse agri-environmental measures have been initiated across the European Union (EU) with the aim of fostering agricultural ecosystem service delivery. Previous studies adopting a governance perspective have identified various determinants of successful agri-environmental measures. However, the explanatory value of these studies is limited as the causal processes through which context and scheme design affect implementation success remain grey -boxed. This article uses a mechanism-based approach to uncover the causal processes that underlie actions and interactions within agri-environmental governance arrangements and provides insights into the role the interplay between context and scheme design plays in the successful implementation of agri-environmental measures. The empirical focus is the governance of a successful collective agri-environmental scheme in the Netherlands. In opening the grey box of the causal mechanisms that link contextual and scheme design with their results, the paper applies theory building process tracing methods. Results show that implementation success in the case is explained by the interplay between social learning and trust-building mechanisms. We argue that EU and domestic decision-makers aiming to improve the contribution of agri-environmental measures to climate change adaptation and mitigation must consider the contextual conditions that facilitate increased cooperation between stakeholders and, ultimately, successful implementation of measures.

With the adoption of the Energy Union Governance Regulation Framework, the European Commission called for better-integrated approaches to govern energy transition and climate policies across member states (MSs). Whether these aspirations for strengthened policy integration resulted into better-integrated domestic policies remains to be established. This article addresses two intertwined questions: first, whether and to what extent the MSs adopted better-integrated energy and climate policy, through adequate governance arrangements in their national energy and climate plans (NECPs). Second, whether a sound policy governance integration approach is related with better domestic energy and climate policy performances. We address these questions by applying the policy integration framework, comprising four integration dimensions: policy frame, subsystem involvement, policy goals, and policy instruments. To assess policy integration, we conduct a comparative qualitative content analysis of the NECPs of seven MSs (Italy, Finland, France, Romania, Hungary, Portugal, and Germany). We find that significant differences exist between the NECPs under scrutiny and that higher degrees of integration are related with higher degrees of energy and climate policy performance. Contrariwise, lower degrees of integration are related with lower degrees of energy and climate policy performance. We conclude with some advice for policymakers and reflect on implications for follow-up research.

This article departs from the assumption that the challenge of putting the Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F) into action stems from the broader challenge of attaining cross-sectoral policy integration. Policy integration has been part of the EU's policy approach for a long time and has predominantly been achieved in the form of environmental policy integration (EPI). However, the scope of the F2F extends beyond EPI, as it includes the integration of climate-related concerns into sectoral policies, for instance. Consequently, we contend that attaining policy integration in the case of the F2F is particularly challenging and calls for an innovative approach to policymaking.

This paper employs the Institutional Analysis and Development framework across six ecosystem delivery measures in the European Union to develop a configurational explanation of (un)successful outcomes. By undertaking comparative institutional analysis, we systematically examine the effect of variation across rule types and generate insights on how different institutional configurations result in varying degrees of successful implementation of ecosystem delivery measures. We apply explanatory typology methods to identify the institutional features that best explain variation in implementation success across a number of cases. We argue that institutional rules shape outcomes in conjunction rather than in isolation. The findings show that differences in implementation success across cases can be explained by the interplay of differences in knowledge exchange, flexibility in implementation, and participation in the policy design process.

Although the policy performance field acknowledges the importance of adopting a long-term decision making perspective to attain more sustainable policy outcomes, it overlooks the way in which sustainable governance conditions and policy performance relate to each other. We address this gap by investigating why some countries succeed in terms of policy performance while others do not. Applying a fuzzy-set QCA to 41 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and European Union countries of the Sustainable Governance Indicators data, we find out that successful economic and social policy performance is mainly driven by executive accountability conditions combined with effective implementation, while the high-quality of media plays a key role in successful environmental policy performance. Considering the multiple paths that practitioners can follow toward sustainable development benefits, they can also learn how to shift from short-term to long-term thinking by identifying “what works and why,” formulating good practices and guidelines for better policy performance in the respective national contexts.

Although the policy performance field acknowledges the importance of adopting a long-term decision making perspective to attain more sustainable policy outcomes, it overlooks the way in which sustainable governance conditions and policy performance relate to each other. We address this gap by investigating why some countries succeed in terms of policy performance while others do not. Applying a fuzzy-set QCA to 41 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and European Union countries of the Sustainable Governance Indicators data, we find out that successful economic and social policy performance is mainly driven by executive accountability conditions combined with effective implementation, while the high-quality of media plays a key role in successful environmental policy performance. Considering the multiple paths that practitioners can follow toward sustainable development benefits, they can also learn how to shift from short-term to long-term thinking by identifying “what works and why,” formulating good practices and guidelines for better policy performance in the respective national contexts.

This book provides insights on regulatory effectiveness in the field of food safety, by focusing on the variety of institutional factors affecting regulatory outcomes. Drawing upon the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, it investigates differences in effectiveness of food safety regulation and explains them by differences in domestic governance designs, by applying Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The empirical focus of the book is the food safety governance designs of 15 EU Member States, which are investigated through the collection of an original dataset inclusive of measures of independence and accountability of the domestic food safety agencies, of policy capacity and of food safety delivered. The results show the prominent role of the institutional dimension of policy capacity in producing regulatory effectiveness, in conjunction with an integrated model of distribution of the regulatory tasks. As to ineffective governance, the conjunction of low independence or low accountability with low institutional capacity produce ineffective responses.

With the growing politicisation of European Union (EU) integration, the European Commission is increasingly facing a tension between technocratic and responsive decision-making. How does this tension play out in the process of supranational implementation under comitology rules? We argue that the tension between the Commission´s role as a technocrat and as a responsive bureaucrat takes place during the implementation process when the issue at stake becomes politicised. We test our argument through the analysis of the Glyphosate renewal procedure (2015-2017). We process-trace the case by means of semi-structured interviews, media and document analysis. We find that with the increase of issue visibility and subsequent politicisation, the Commission progressively abandons a purely technocratic behaviour. First, it puts in place political strategies such as delays and blame-shifting to release itself from the burden of unpopular decisions. Secondly, it seeks to respond to concerns expressed by consumers by proposing compromise-based measures closer to public interest. Ultimately, we show how the outcome of the policy process is mediated by politicisation and characterised by a shift from technocratic to responsive decision making.