Can Japan Lead? Understanding Climate Change Policies by Unravelling the Integration of Scientific Advice in Environmental Policy Networks

Purpose statement: Scientific advisers to the government are key for decisionmakers to legitimize their policies. Hence, science is a policy discourse defining factor – and more subjective than one might expect. Neither evidence nor scientists are free of ideology; they are shaped by pre-defined world-views, values, interests and goals. Evidence is used to legitimize policies ever since the emergence of democracy. And nowadays, there is an increasing demand of scientists to participate more in policymaking, that is known to take place in informal networks, and the “power of an actor depends (partly) on whether that actor can produce, shape and propagate discourses that other actors accept as legitimate”1. Thus, scientific advisers are influential actors in the policy network. However, their role in environmental policymaking is empirically insufficiently researched. For that, this study argues for the importance to unravel the integration of scientific advice in environmental policy networks by proposing the science-intermediary-policy triangulation, because it is essential to understand not only policymaking processes and their outcomes, but also the nations’ role in the international framework for climate change where science is used as basis for treaty negotiations. Research Design: A mixed methods approach is used in which elite interviews of such advisers is incorporated in purposively sampled survey data of environmental policy actors’ network to investigate how science and their so-called knowledge broker are integrated in environmental policymaking. Findings: Not only inter-ministerial conflicts are an obstacle for efficient and effective environmental policymaking that questions the ability of Japan to lead the international environmental regime that is being asked of it. The for Japan typical centralization of policy institutions, vertical and rigid boundaries between them, and interest-based research weakens the integration of science in policymaking. Research limitations: Challenged with opening the black box of policy (un)change in Japan empirically, this study proposes a policy network discourse coalition approach to shed new light on environmental policymaking. Originality/Value: The innovative research design and its data set will add valuable insights to the field and offers a new approach for how to empirically investigate interminable issues.