The devil is in the details: How policy bureaucracies design extended producer responsibility schemes

In the transformation towards a circular economy, extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes are considered important financial instruments to incentivize more eco-friendly product-design and consumption through the internalization of external (environmental, health, and social) costs in product markets. The design of EPR schemes is a regulatory challenge: From a market perspective, a market-oriented design strengthens the financial incentive and innovative potential of EPR schemes. From a regulatory perspective, however, problems of free-riding and fraud can be better addressed in a state-oriented design. Consequently, the organizational design of EPR schemes varies between countries and product markets, even in the context of the EU Waste Framework Directive as a shared regulatory framework. In a comparative case study of the EPR schemes on household packaging and single-use plastics in France and Germany, this draft paper seeks to explain the variation in market- or state-oriented organizational setup of EPR schemes. The analysis is based on qualitative content analysis of policy documents and semi-structured expert interviews. Focusing on bureaucratic preferences, this paper argues that bureaucratic politics can prevail over political factors in the design of technical policy instruments and in the absence of direct political intervention.