Final Report Summary - CONSENSUS (Confronting social and environmental sustainability with economic pressure: balancing trade-offs by policy dismantling?) Executive summary:The results of the CONSENSUS project (please see http://www.polver.uni-konstanz.de/knill/forschung-projekte/confronting-social-and-environmental-sustainability-with-economic-pressure-balancing-trade-offs-by-policy-dismantling-consensus/ online) can be summarised as follows. First, while a number of analyses suggest that policy-makers face considerable obstacles when trying to accomplish regulatory or policy change, the systematic tracing of policy decisions illustrates that policy change does indeed occur to a noticeable degree. In this context, policy expansion appears to be the preferred direction. Still, policy-makers also manage to cut back benefits in the social policy field to a substantial degree, which suggests that budget pressures do indeed create incentives to resort to unpopular policy decisions. In other words, social sustainability is contingent on economic sustainability and growth. While economic problem pressure has an immediate effect on the policy-makers' willingness to extend benefits, this relationship appears less straightforward for environmental policy-making. Our results suggest that policy change in this field is not particularly sensitive to economic shocks - at least not in the short or medium term.The general patterns also show a relatively stable development of continuous policy expansion being the rule rather than the exception in both policy fields (environmental and social politics) when considering the whole country sample (i.e. 24 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries). However, a closer look at the different countries and policy subfields (that is child, pension and unemployment policies and air, nature and water policies respectively) suggests considerable cross-country and cross-(sub)field variation. This finding illustrates that context matters. While patterns of change are relatively homogeneous over European Union (EU) countries, there is strong variation over countries when considering the entire sample (also including non-EU OECD countries).These accounts allow for the following conclusions: On the one hand, the EU appears to constitute a source of homogenisation for the policies of its member states. On the other hand, the comparison between EU- and non-EU OECD-countries shows that the EU is also an important driver of policy change and net expansion. Nevertheless, the continuously increasing number of social and environmental policies might also entail potential implementation deficits in the mid or long term if administrative resources are not adjusted accordingly on the national level. From this perspective, the growing number of policies - especially in the member states of the EU - represents one of the key administrative challenges in modern states.Second, EU-harmonisation not only in terms of policy outcomes seems to be strongest for the environmental policy field. Here, regulatory harmonisation appears to entail similarities also in the pace and direction of policy-making (i.e. the timing of policy decisions or outputs) of member states. The EU has, hence, the potential to promote sustainable policy-making and to shape entire policy-subfields despite increasing globalisation and competition pressures. Given the EU's strong role as a policy promoter for most environmental policy subfields, we expect that its involvement in and the harmonisation of social policy matters can still be intensified in the future.Third, even if we observe only few events of environmental and social policy dismantling, these typically do not occur in isolation. Most times, policy dismantling is accompanied by previous or simultaneous policy expansion. These patterns of compensation illustrate that compromise is a precondition for successful policy-making - especially as concerns policy dismantling. In this context, the qualitative case studies (Work package (WP) 3) give in-depth accounts of the obstacles for policy dismantling and the specific decision-making dynamics.Project context and objectives:In the context of the sustainable development concept, it is the general objective of the CONSENSUS project to improve our understanding of the trade-offs and synergies between economic, environmental and social objectives of sustainable development. In so doing, the project applies a selective focus in order to shed light on several issues that are of particular relevance in this respect - both in practical and analytical terms.First, the project offers a systematic analysis of the interlinkages between different levels of economic pressure (caused by globalisation and domestic macro-economic austerity) and social and environmental policy as well as the degree and causes social and environmental policy change.Second, the project applies an innovative perspective on policy change and sustainable development. The focus is not only on the development of new environmental and social regulations (i.e. expansion), but also on the extent to which economic pressures trigger the reduction of policies (i.e. dismantling).Third, the project provides a systematic and comprehensive cross-national assessment of the interlinkages between economic pressure on the one side, and environmental and social sustainability on the other, over time. More precisely, we compare the patterns of change in social and environmental policies in 24 OECD countries over a period of thirty years (1976-2005).Fourth, this perspective offers the opportunity for a comparison of regulatory adjustments across different policy areas. The focus on two 'crucial' policy fields - social and environmental policy - allows us to study whether regulatory responses to economic pressures differ between these areas.Project results:An integrated model for policy change was conceptualised, which advances the theoretical understanding of policy change in general and policy dismantling in particular. The latter is a neglected, highly under-researched aspect in political science studies of policy change and policy analysis. Policy change is conceptualised and measured on the basis of policy outputs. They capture governmental activities and responses more directly and reliably than outcome data, typically expenditure data, which has been usually used to measure and analyse policy change. Between the actual decisions to adopt a certain law, policy, or regulation, which are measured by policy outputs, and its actual consequences, which are measured by outcomes, a number of different factors may intervene. Thus, policy outcomes less appropriate to measure actions and decisions of governments than policy outputs are.Two dimensions of policy change are distinguished: regulatory density, including policy and instrument density, and regulatory stringency, including substantial and formal stringency. The first dimension describes the extent to which a certain policy area is covered by governmental activities. The second dimension grasps the intensity or strictness of the adopted measures. Both dimensions and their indicators allow measuring the absence or occurrence of change, but also the direction of change (e.g. dismantling or expansion), which usually remains outside the analytical scope of existing studies. The explanatory part of the integrated model of policy change rests on thirteen hypotheses about the causes for policy change, dismantling and expansion. They distinguish three possible international drivers for policy change, namely regulatory competition, harmonisation, and policy diffusion, and three domestic drivers, namely macroeconomic austerity pressures, problem pressure, and domestic politics and institutions.WP 1WP 1 is completed. Deliverable 1 presents a review of the existing theories on the direct and indirect expansive and dismantling effects of international and domestic factors. Furthermore it develops an integrated explanatory framework and formulates precise hypotheses for the quantitative and qualitative study.Deliverable 2 offers a selection of indicators for being able to measure the explanatory variables and to makes decisions on the statistical models to be applied, whereas Deliverable 3 provides guidance for the national policy experts in collecting the data for the dependent variable.WP 2WP 2 is completed. The achievements made during this phase are presented in the following: a) Social and environmental policy legislation, including statutes, statutory instruments and administrative circulars has been compiled for 24 countries over the period 1976-2005. This constitutes a vast collection of environmental and social policy data, which will be an enormously rich resource for the project. b) A comprehensive coding scheme was developed based on in-depth discussions within the project team, including a two-day coding meeting in Berlin (4-5 December 2008). Particular focus was devoted to identifying closed lists of items and instruments. Coding of legislation for analyses began in March 2009. An additional coding meeting devoted to securing inter-coder reliability was held in Konstanz in July 2009. The coding is now completed. c) First results are described in Deliverable 9 (quantitative study report). In both environmental and social policy we find both policy expansion and policy dismantling. Further, most policy changes are of incremental nature in the sense that they relate to levels and scope of policy instruments rather than policy items and the changes of instruments. These initial findings are in line with the expectations in the project and confirm that the coding scheme functions well in terms of describing policy change. The next step will be to use the data to test the hypotheses about variation that we developed in the theory report.WP 3WP 3 is completed. Work on identifying a series of case studies was initiated in preparation of the Brussels conference (taking place from 30 September to 2 October 2009). These case studies are designed to capture the causal mechanisms behind policy dismantling as well as indirect policy changes.Based on the discussions at our Brussels meeting in September 2009, a theoretical framework for the case studies was produced. During this meeting, the different teams also gave an overview of the case study they intended to conduct. Senior researchers in the project produced fundamental feedback about the various case study proposals.These comments and suggestions were the basis upon which each team further elaborated and developed its own case study outline in view of the project's analytical framework between September 2009 and February 2010. Outlines were then sent to the editorial committee in charge of revising the different proposals according to the project's general template in order to assure consistency among the various case studies. Only then would the various teams advance in the elaboration of a consolidated draft chapter.WP 4WP 4 is completed. The results of the qualitative and quantitative parts of the CONSENSUS project have been integrated in a number of ways and different formats. The quantitative analysis illustrates that social policy change is more equilibrated than environmental policy. While the former is characterised by a stable relationship between social policy dismantling and expansion, environmental policies seem to resist more easily against dismantling pressures. In this context, the qualitative analysis offers a compilation of case studies that compare policy dismantling in environmental and social politics by using an exploratory design. The findings suggest that dismantling is by no means confined to the social policy field. The rarity of environmental policy dismantling rather points to the differences between the two policy fields that are subject to the distinct sources of influence to different degrees.Both the quantitative and qualitative analyses illustrate that the two policy fields differ in their exposure to certain factors (economic, demographic, environmental etc.). Further, as the qualitative analysis concludes, dismantling is not and therefore should not be conceived of as an entirely separate and different kind of politics. Rather the integrated analysis of policy expansion and policy dismantling should be pursued to obtain a fuller understanding of the dynamics and determinants of policy change.Potential impact:Dissemination efforts of the integrated results include, in the first place, the organisation of the conference for policy-makers, which took place in Konstanz in July 2011. Further, the project team works at completing a monograph that seeks to combine key qualitative and quantitative findings for publication. In addition, a panel was held by the project coordinator at the latest European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) general conference (Reykjavik/Iceland, August 2011). It offered a platform for drawing attention to the project and making the findings of CONSENSUS available to the wider scholarship on policy change research. In the framework of the panel, both qualitative and quantitative findings were presented and discussed along with external contributions. The findings of CONSENSUS were further presented at a workshop in Stockholm in February 2012 as well as a workshop in Amsterdam (also in February 2012). In April 2012, the project results will also be presented at a workshop on sustainable development which will be hosted by the University of Oklahoma.
