Sequencing Instruments in a Policy Mix: The Case of Energy Efficiency in Buildings in Switzerland

The building sector is one of the main contributors to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (IEA, 2017), and its decarbonization requires a transition to more energy-efficient technologies. Existing research focuses mostly on the techno-economic and behavioral barriers of such transitions and how policies should address them (Noailly, 2012; Yeatts et al., 2017), underemphasizing the political processes behind changes in energy efficiency policies (Meadowcroft, 2011; Rosenow, 2013). This paper addresses this gap by exploring how the interplay between voluntary and mandatory forms of governance and their temporal sequencing (Howlett, 2009; Meckling et al., 2017; Pahle et al., 2018) affects energy efficiency policymaking. Drawing on policy mix literature (Flanagan et al., 2011; Rogge and Reichardt, 2016; Rosenow et al., 2017) and policy feedback literature (Béland, 2010; Pierson, 1993), we conceptualize the policymaking process as a dynamic process, in which policy instruments at time t1 affect subsequent instruments at time t2. Empirically, we analyze the case of Switzerland, comparing the changes of building efficiency standards on two key technologies across all 23 sub-national jurisdictions (cantons) and over more than 30 years. In a first step, we construct a novel dataset on efficiency standards in the building sector in an attempt to better understand their temporal, spatial and technological patterns. In a second step, we examine whether changes in efficiency standards (mandatory governance) can be explained as a result of previous changes in efficiency labelling (voluntary governance). We analyze how these earlier forms of voluntary governance feed back into the policymaking process through their impact on technological change, mediated by technology-inherent characteristics. Our results indicate a form of “reactive” sequencing (Daugbjerg, 2009), where voluntary governance at t1 triggers technological change which, in turn, increases the political feasibility for implementing more stringent efficiency standards, at t2. We discuss the relevance of these findings for the broader literature on policy feedback, the literature on politics in sustainability transitions (Meadowcroft, 2009) and policy mixes (Flanagan et al., 2011), as well as the role of agency therein.