The Politics of Low Salience Issues: Policy Mixes for Mitigating Water Contaminants of Emerging Concern

Despite the growing evidence that water contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) such as pharmaceuticals or pesticides represent a threat to water resources, public attention to this issue remains low. Nonetheless, the issue has entered the agenda of elected politicians and public bureaucracy and has resulted in a stable communication and collaboration arrangement with experts. The latter include both scientific experts as well as the operators of wastewater treatment plants. These cooperative arrangements are reasonable when considering that the mitigation of the entry of CECs into waters is difficult as these stem from activities of a variety of sectors including agriculture, industry, and health. Effective solutions, therefore, necessitate a coordinated response by well-designed policy-mixes. This study, in a first step, maps the policy mixes that have been adopted so far to address the mitigation of CECs in the German Länder. In a second step, it sheds light on how exactly the cooperative arrangement between elected politicians, bureaucrats and experts resulted in the policy mixes observed. By adopting this analytical perspective, this study connects the literature on cross-sectoral policy integration with research on policy mixes and the importance of issue salience for policy-making.