Mixed policy feedback in environmental regulation: Instrument recalibration and layering in Danish nitrogen pollution policy

While feedback can be the driver of major policy change, the concept also has mileage in explaining sequences of gradual policy changes, which essentially maintain the policy paradigm. Recent research has make substantial progress in understanding feedback processes but there are still gaps in our knowledge. The policy feedback literature distinguishes between positive and negative feedbacks. The former type of feedback can be self-reinforcing, referring to circumstances in which positive reactions to policy effects reinforce the existing policy trajectories. Negative feedbacks refer to reactions to policy effects which increasingly and gradually weakens support for policy. Recent research has demonstrated that positive and negative feedbacks can occur simultaneously within a policy. Such mixed policy feedbacks tend to occur when policy is composed of multiple objectives and a mixture of policy instruments. Such multi-dimensional policies engage different constituencies. These tend to react differently to policy effects and thus feed different messages back to policy makers. Using these recent research findings as the starting point, we engage with the concept of mixed feedbacks to highlight aspects of the phenomenon that have hitherto not been explored in detail and more nuance is added to the feedback argument. Our first argument of this paper is that single purpose policies may also generate mixed feedbacks. Each instrument of a policy using multiple instruments to achieve a single objective generates distinct feedbacks. Negative feedback is usually assumed to undermine policy, and indeed the policy paradigm. We challenge this assumption and our second argument suggests that negative feedback may indeed contribute to maintaining policy. For policy to endure over longer periods of time, it needs to respond to feedbacks. This can be done through recalibration of policy instruments or redesign of the policy mix. Our third argument is that mixed instrument feedbacks over a period of time can result in substantial reshuffling of a policy mix through recalibration of instruments, changing their role from minor to major and vice versa, and through gradual and cautious layering of new instruments on to the mix. Eventually, such changes can result in a rebalancing of the instrument package while remaining within the paradigm originally adopted. In this study, we use the policy trajectory of Danish nitrogen pollution regulation over almost three decades to illustrate the three theoretical arguments outlined above. The policy had a single purpose of reducing nitrogen leaching from agricultural production but generated mixed feedbacks. We demonstrate the role of positive and negative instrument feedbacks in significantly reshaping the policy mix within the regulatory paradigm set out in the early 1990s. One important insight is that though negative feedbacks played a significant role in reshaping the policy, they did not undermine the policy. Such feedback was mainly restricted to one particular major instrument but did not question the policy paradigm. Noteworthy, it did not result in abolishment of the instrument. Rather, it was downgraded and became a voluntary instrument. One of the other instrument was recalibrated and became the major measure.