Paradigms in Austrian Environmental Policy, 1970-2000

Since Austrian environmental politics and policy became institutionalized in the 1970s it went through three major phases. A policy orientated on diluting immissions (e.g. building higher chimneys) was followed up by a phase of end-of-pipe-strategies in the 1980s. At the end of the eighties and framed by the discourse on sustainability there was a shift to a third phase. First approaches of a precaution- and input-orientated policy (on dangerous substances) that attempts to integrate environmental policy into other policies have been developed (e.g. clean technology, sustainable development, etc.). The planning of environmental policy for some time became a major goal (National Environmental Plan - NUP). Simultaneous with the goals there is typically also a shift in the instruments of environmental policy. This project will cover the development of the Austrian environmental politics and policy over a period of three decades from a modern perspective in policy analysis to analyze path dependencies and strategies of adaptations in environmental policy subsystems. Leaning on earlier work of Kingdon, Rhodes, Hall, Sabatier and others the main patterns of the Austrian environmental politics and policy will be analyzed according to the dimensions of world views/paradigms, policy networks/policy goals, implementation, instruments, policy evaluation and reformulation. Methods refer to theories of modern international policy analysis, the policy network concept, evaluation and implementation theories and theories of political control. This project will build on a research project financed by the Jubiläumsfonds of the Österreichische Nationalbank that is carried out in the Department of Political Science at the University of Salzburg and which serves as a foundation and first phase. Empirically this first phase consisted of a content analysis of documents and literature about environmental politics and policy and an analysis of media reports. The current project should supplement and combine the results of the previous project with the help of qualitative interviews. In doing so the goal is to supplement or correct the findings from the Jubiläumsfondsprojekt about political patterns, decision styles, policy formulation, policy implementation, policy impact and output. This will permit general statements about policy learning in environmental politics and policy on the part of its major actors and will allow to assess the evolution of patterns of ecological modernization in public policy. Until now for Austria there exists no comparable work. This will be a major contribution to social science research in this area. The results - the pattern of ecological modernization in Austria - will be published in form of a book.

Since the late 1980s the paradigm of a sustainable development (Sustainability) was established as a new paradigm in environmental and developmental politics and policy on a world scale. Measured against that paradigm, the traditional environmental politics and policy, developed in all western industrial societies since the late 1960s in order to overcome the environmental crises, has proven to be insufficient. Since the beginning of modern environmental policy, the general environmental quality as a whole did not been improved as a whole. So called persistent environmental problems (problems for which no significant change in the general trend occurred despite public policies addressed them over a long -time period) still endanger the survival of mankind. Today`s problems like food safety, the potential dangers of biotechnology, biodiversity, depletion of natural resources or climate change demonstrate the global challenge for comprehensive system change. After a weak start-up in the early 1970s, Austria finally became an "ecological country" and an international accepted environmental pioneer in the subsequent decade. In 1995, when Austria became a member state of the European Union, it was recognized as a country supporting environmental positions in EU-policies and strengthening the "green" coalition inside the EU. At the end of the 1990s Austria was placed in top positions in international sustainability indexes. Just before the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg 2002, the Austrian Council of Ministers passed a National Strategy for Sustainable Development in time. That strategy should guarantee Austrian`s future top position. The overall goal of the project "Paradigms in Austrian Environmental Politics and Policy" was the identification of the most important developments starting with the early environmental policy-making and ending with first approaches to implement a policy for a sustainable development by concentrating on the existence and rivalry of certain patterns of societal problem formulation that lead to typical problem-solving answers (paradigms). In order to improve our understanding of political processes and "learning" processes in those policies we analysed world views/paradigms, discourses, policy networks/policy goals, implementation, institutional arrangements, instruments, policy evaluation and reformulation of the general environmental politics and policy and of certain specific sectoral policies (clean air policy, greening agricultural policy, water protection, chemicals policy, waste management, energy policy, climate protection). The result shows path dependencies, capacities and difficulties for developing environmental politics and policy into a policy for sustainability for a country that presents itself officially as a "pioneer" and "motor" with regard to that challenge but which is more and more criticised domestically by environmental actors internally that Austria has already for having lost its role as an environmental pioneer. We especially focus in particular on the growing complexity (problems, problem-solutions, policy networks, globalisation, Europeanization ) and its consequences on policy-making processes. The results of that project will be published as a book on Austrian environmental politics and policy since 1970 (under preparation).