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New Policy Instruments: a Test for Multi-Level Governance?

Environmental Policy
European Union
Local Government
Policy Implementation
Member States
Andrea Lenschow
Osnabrück University
Andrea Lenschow
Osnabrück University
Elena Bondarouk
Departments of Political Science and Public Administration, Universiteit Leiden

Abstract

This paper traces if and how local implementation of the European Ambient Air Quality (AAQ) directive induces change in the political interaction at the vertical and horizontal levels of governance in the Netherlands and Germany. The AAQ directive requires member states to make air quality management plans for agglomerations where certain levels of pollution are not up to standard. The directive stipulates that in the development of these AAQ management plans all relevant stakeholders must be consulted. This consultation in the development of AAQ plans is an exemplary case of new policy instruments the EU Commission uses to stimulate participation in policy making and implementation in order to improve EU implementation deficit. The rationale is that through participatory instruments the EU policy becomes less top-down imposed, enjoying higher levels of socio-political support. Consequently when more groups are to be involved in the development of policies, the authority is likely to diffuse into a less hierarchical and more network-like structure of EU policy making at local level. Hence new policy instruments are likely to strengthen the multi-level governance nature of EU policy implementation, which would presuppose increased continuous negotiation between different levels of government (Type 1 multi-level governance) and among different task-specific actors (Type 2 multi-level governance) in the policy implementation. Whether these new policy instruments indeed induce authority shifts and continuous negotiation is an empirical question that this paper aims to answer. To this end, it builds on a comparative case study analysis of eight municipalities in Germany and the Netherlands. The paper reveals that the procedural obligations of AAQ directive tend to empower administrations at the expense of local parliaments. With regard to public participation, it uncovers the inability of EU policy to initiate local mobilization and participation. On the whole, we find that the extent of authority diffusion tends to follow path-dependent lines pre-structured by national constitutional, administrative and judicial patterns. The extent of stakeholder involvement appears to be mitigated by inter-level rivalry, varying local capacities and subjective problem pressure.