Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
This classification is based on the work of Stone
(2002)
who distinguishes
between five general mechanisms for changing or coordinating behaviour of actors.
These are (1) 'inducements', i.e., changing people's behaviour with, often financial,
rewards and punishments, here named economic instruments, (2) 'rules', i.e., com-
mands to act or not in certain ways, or determining permissions and entitlements,
(3) 'rights', i.e., strategies that allow individuals, groups, or organisations to invoke
government power on their behalf, (4) 'powers', i.e., shifting the power of decision
making to different people, the last three are here subsumed under regulatory instruments,
and, (5) 'facts', i.e., strategies that rely principally on persuasion, here named advi-
sory/voluntary instruments. Stone
(2002)
also stresses that these instruments are
ideal types and that no policy option ever relies purely on one type of instrument.
A similar distinction is made by Moskowitz
(1978
: 65ff.) who analyses a wide
range of alternative policy options that have the common objective to redirect finan-
cial investments from the private sector to ensure neighbourhood preservation.
Here, Moskowitz distinguishes between three types of interventions: (a) regulatory
policies for mandatory investments, (b) direct subsidies, such as tax benefits to
change the final profit estimation, and (c) persuasion by providing facts, figures,
and experience to demonstrate that the private sector could realistically expect
profits from these investments. This also corresponds with similar distinctions
made by environmental economists (e.g., Stavins
2004)
.
The
area of intervention
points to the governance structures a policy is
supposed to have an impact on. More precisely, a policy aims at influencing
real-world transactions (e.g., use of pesticides, protection of species, etc.) by
changing existing or creating new governance structures that co-ordinate these
transactions in such a way that, e.g., their results are internalised by the actors.
The differentiation used in PICA follows to a large extent the widely used catego-
ries of governance structures (hierarchies, markets, and hybrids) suggested by
Williamson
(2004)
. However, first, it can be assumed that almost every gover-
nance structure in the real world can indeed be seen as some hybrid form between
the polar cases market and hierarchy.
11
Thus, in the respective columns of Table
3.1
those areas of intervention that are closer to either market or hierarchy are
subsumed. Second, with specifying the third column self-organised network,
the attention is directed to a specific (hybrid) form of governance structures
that is of particular interest if pursuing agricultural, environmental, and rural
development policy objectives (Hagedorn et al.
2002)
.
The column
property rights change
is the third dimension to describe a policy
type. It accounts for changes in private and collective property rights likely to be
induced by the policy option, in particular, on natural resources. It covers an
important institutional specificity of environmental policies. Undoubtedly, most
11
While in
markets
(repeated) economic exchange is based on voluntary bilateral agreements
between individuals (e.g., auctions, stock markets, etc.), an authority on a higher level compulso-
rily selects economic action in
hierarchies
(e.g., state agencies, but also within private firms).
