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10 Welcome to the Jungle: Policy Theory and Political Instability Paul F. Steinberg Environmental politics is fundamentally about social change—in values, behaviors, patterns of economic activity and, crucially, in political institutions. The transformative aspirations of environmental politics are part of what makes this such an exciting arena for students and social reformers alike and a fertile opportunity for pairing the substantive concerns of environmental studies with the analytic tools of comparative political inquiry. A crucial part of this social transformation is policy change, including the creation and reform of environmental laws, regulations, agencies, and government programs. Environmental problems are often the result of market failures and collective action problems, and their resolution typically requires confronting powerful economic interests. As a result, it is no exaggeration to say that changes in government policy are a prerequisite for large-scale improvement in environmental conditions (see Barry and Eckersley 2005; Steinberg 2005). With policy change figuring prominently on the agendas of environmental movements throughout the world (Dalton, Recchia, and Rohrschneider 2003), it comes as little surprise that the canonical studies of policy change in industrialized democracies draw heavily on environmental cases (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Kingdon 1984; Sabatier 1988; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993; Downs 1972). Yet when we look more closely at the meaning of policy change, and that of institutional change generally, it becomes clear that the concept of “change” refers simultaneously to two quite distinct phenomena. First, change entails moving away from a previous arrangement deemed by reformers to be unsatisfactory. In the context of environmental policy, this move typically requires passing new laws and creating new bureaucratic structures for the control of industrial pollution and the provision of goods ranging from drinking water to national parks. Second, the new arrangement must endure. Endurance is central to the very meaning of institutions, described by Hughes as “relative permanence of a distinctly social sort” (Hughes 1936, 180, as cited in Clemens and Cook 1999). Or as March and Olsen put it, “An institution is a relatively enduring collection of rules and organized practices, 256 Paul F. Steinberg embedded in structures of meaning and resources that are relatively invariant in the face of turnover of individuals and relatively resilient to the idiosyncratic preferences and expectations of individuals and changing external circumstances” (2006, 3). Institutional rules create the order and predictability necessary for collective action (Ostrom 1999). Institutional reform, in turn, is designed to project a new pattern of social interaction into the future, to preserve a moment of political creativity for posterity. The proper metaphor for institutional change is that of switching tracks, not continuous reversals in course. Captured in terms like “lasting change,” “a permanent shift,” and “the revolutionary legacy,” these two dimensions of the process of institutional change—switching and sticking—suggest two distinct categories of causal mechanisms that together are necessary conditions for meaningful reforms in public policies and other state institutions. This chapter focuses on the second dimension of this challenge—the long-term stability of reforms in government institutions, particularly in developing and postcommunist countries.1 Research on institutional stability gained an unfortunate reputation in an earlier generation of comparative politics research, as it often focused on the durability of regimes irrespective of their commitment to human rights (see, e.g., Huntington 1965; for a critique of stability studies, see Jourde 2007, 487–489). Authoritarian regimes commonly invoke stability as justification for their rule, while global powers have often used the rhetoric of stability as a rationale for supporting dictators to their liking. Following global trends toward democratization , however, institutional stability has received renewed attention as a legitimate focus of comparative politics research on topics such as the survival of fragile new democracies and the long-term consolidation of institutional reforms (Schedler 1998). As part of a larger research agenda on comparative environmental politics, institutional stability merits closer attention for at least three reasons. First, major reforms in public policy—be it the development of a modern welfare state, the overhaul of a nation’s health-care system, or the establishment of an effective air quality management system—take place over a period of decades (Meadowcroft 2005). This time is required for experimentation and learning on the part of policy reformers and for the creation of social constituencies in support of the new institutions . Meaningful policy reform cannot be achieved in a context of perpetual turnover in programs, personnel, and practices. Second, institutional continuity is vital for environmental governance in particular, given the potential for irreversible...

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