INTRODUCTION

The central objective of this chapter is to assess the influence of three international mechanisms on the convergence of environmental policies in Europe, namely international harmonisation, transnational communication and regulatory competition. In so doing, we apply a novel concept – the pair approach – for measuring and explaining convergence.

In this chapter, three central research questions underlying this study are addressed. First, on the basis of the pair approach, we provide further insights into the extent of cross‐national policy convergence, which complement the aggregate analysis in chapter 5. Second, and this is the primary concern of this chapter, we investigate the specific impact of economic and institutional interlinkages between nation states on policy convergence. Third, and related to this point, we are interested in the explanatory relevance of possible alternative explanations (in particular domestic factors) that were introduced in the theoretical part of this book (chapter 3). In answering these questions, we merely concentrate on potential changes in the similarity of individual environmental policies and of policy repertoires of countries over time. The direction of convergence, i.e., movements to the top or to the bottom of regulation, is not the subject of the analysis in this chapter, but will be analysed in chapter 7.

Our analysis is based on the following steps. We first introduce the concept of the pair approach (section 6.2).

One of the key issues of globalisation research in the social sciences is the question of whether globalisation leads to the convergence of political institutions, policies, the legal order and societal structures (Guillén 2001: 235). Is the world becoming ever more similar as a result of globalisation and Europeanisation as the ‘world society approach’ (Meyer et al. 1997) implies? Does the strong growth of economic and institutional interlinkages between nation states lead to increasingly similar policy measures across countries? Or is the search for convergence emerging from the domestic impact of globalisation and European integration ‘an impossible quest’ (Dimitrova and Steunenberg 2000: 201), because domestic responses to global or European challenges are strongly influenced by existing domestic structures and institutions (see, for example, Cowles, Caporaso and Risse 2001; Héritier et al. 2001; Knill 2001)?

Although there has been an intensified and renewed debate on the convergence and divergence of national policies in recent years, we still have a limited understanding of the phenomenon of policy convergence.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter provides an overview of the empirically found patterns of cross‐national policy convergence. The central questions addressed are the following. First, are the environmental policies of the countries under study actually converging and, if so, to what extent? Second, what is the direction of policy convergence; i.e., does convergence coincide with an upward or downward shift of regulatory levels? Third, to what extent do our empirical findings vary across different policy dimensions (presence‐of‐policies, policy instruments and policy settings) and policy types (trade‐related versus non‐trade‐related policies, obligatory versus non‐obligatory policies)?

To answer these questions, we rely on aggregate data analysis to measure the degree and direction of convergence. This way, it is possible to highlight general convergence patterns for the countries and policies under study. In addition to the presentation of aggregate data, we illustrate different convergence patterns for individual policy items. The items reflect the different dimensions (policy presence, instruments and settings) and policy types under study.

For measuring the degree of convergence (i.e., the extent of changes in policy similarity over time), we use several concepts that are commonly applied in the literature (cf. Heichel, Pape and Sommerer 2005 and chapter 3 above). First, to analyse convergence with regard to the presence of policies and policy instruments, we rely on the concept of adoption rates. This approach, which is typically used in research on policy diffusion, gives us information on the spread of policies and instruments across countries.

INTRODUCTION

The study of policy convergence has received considerable attention both in comparative politics and in the field of international studies. Interestingly, both disciplines have approached the subject from opposite starting points and with differing methodologies. Whereas in the field of international studies theoretically derived expectations of an increasing similarity of states and political systems driven by economic or ideational forces constituted a dominant thread in the early convergence literature (for a comprehensive overview see Drezner 2001), comparative studies initially focused more on the explanation of empirically observed differences between national political systems and programmes (Lundqvist 1974, 1980). Only recently have the two research strands effectively merged into an integrated study of policy convergence that increasingly challenges the traditional boundaries between comparative politics and international relations.

In this chapter we first introduce the concept of policy convergence and explain how it relates to similar concepts like policy transfer, policy diffusion or isomorphism. In a second step we review the existing empirical research on environmental policy convergence both in comparative politics and in international relations. Based on this overview, and drawing more broadly on the general convergence literature, we systematise the major causes of policy convergence that have been identified in these studies. We distinguish between causal mechanisms which translate pressures at the international level into domestic policy change and, possibly, into convergence of domestic policies, and facilitating factors which operate at the level of individual countries or specific policies.

INTRODUCTION

As has been shown in the previous chapter, the study of cross‐national policy convergence is a highly popular research area in political science. Notwithstanding these far‐reaching research efforts, it is generally acknowledged that we still have a limited understanding of the causes and conditions of policy convergence.

It is the objective of this chapter to develop the theory further by a systematic discussion of the causal factors of policy convergence and by the formulation of general theoretical expectations on policy convergence for each factor. We proceed in the following steps. First, we briefly present the central aspects we distinguish for the assessment of policy convergence. In a second step, we identify and compare different causal factors of cross‐national policy convergence. Having elaborated on the major causes of policy convergence, however, we still know little about the conditions under which these factors actually lead to convergence. This is the objective of the third part of our analysis, in which we develop theoretical expectations for the different aspects of cross‐national policy convergence. These hypotheses form the background for the empirical study of environmental policy convergence in Europe presented in the following chapters. Specifications of these expectations in the form of testable hypotheses that relate to the different empirical models used in this study will be presented in the respective chapters (6 and 7).

HOW TO CONCEPTUALISE POLICY CONVERGENCE?

For the purpose of the underlying study, we define policy convergence

INTRODUCTION

The central objective of this book was to advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of causes and conditions of cross‐national policy convergence. In theoretical terms, we were especially interested in the extent to which growing economic and institutional interlinkages between nation states – developments that are usually associated with catchwords such as globalisation and Europeanisation – constitute major driving forces of cross‐national policy convergence. In this regard, we studied the impact of three central convergence mechanisms, namely, international harmonisation, regulatory competition and transnational communication.

In empirical terms, we analysed the relevance of these factors for the area of environmental policy. More specifically, we were especially interested in two research questions. On the one hand, we studied the extent to which the policies of the countries under study actually became similar over time. On the other hand, we focused on the direction of convergence; i.e., the question whether potential similarity increases coincide with often‐discussed races to the top or bottom of national environmental policies. To answer these questions, we analysed the development of forty different environmental policies of twenty‐four countries over a period of thirty years (1970 until 2000).

In addressing these theoretical and empirical questions, our study not only indicates several new insights and innovations, but also points to new and interesting questions for future research. Both aspects, innovations and avenues for future research, will be presented in more detail in the following sections.

The varied electoral success of green, radical right, and ethnoterritorial parties across Western Europe is the result of mainstream party strategies. This is the thesis introduced in Chapter 1. Contrary to the dominant literature, I argue that the electoral trajectories of niche parties are not mere reflections of the institutional or sociological characteristics of a country. These successes and failures are rather the result of deliberate attempts by center-left and center-right political actors to quell new political threats and bolster their own electoral competitiveness. Niche party fortunes are, in many respects, the by-products of competition between mainstream parties.

And yet existing strategic theories of party competition prove ill-suited for understanding the nature of interaction between mainstream parties and their neophyte competitors. Unlike their mainstream party opponents, niche parties refuse to compete within the given policy dimensions, instead promoting and competing on new issues that often cut across existing partisan lines. Consequently, mainstream party reactions are not limited to the standard spatial tools of policy convergence and divergence – i.e., movement toward and away from a competitor – on an established issue dimension. Rather, mainstream parties can also alter niche party electoral support by manipulating the salience and ownership of the neophyte's new issue for political competition.

In this chapter, I challenge the standard spatial approach to party interaction by developing a theory of party competition based on this expanded conception of party strategies.

In 1970, calling for the protection of “our British Native stock” against “colored immigration,” the National Front fielded candidates in its first parliamentary election. Formed four years earlier by a merger of the League of Empire Loyalists and the British National Party, the National Front criticized the absence of the immigration issue from mainstream party political debate. Over the next decade, this xenophobic niche party would try to force the issue onto the political agenda with its repeated calls for the immediate cessation of immigration to the United Kingdom and repatriation of all nonwhite foreigners.

Although it garnered an average vote of less than 4 percent across contested districts, or a scant 0.3 percent average nationwide during the 1970s, the National Front did not go unnoticed by the British mainstream parties. The Conservative Party reacted with intense accommodative tactics to the defection of some of its voters to the niche party. Adopted by the Heath government as early as 1973, the Tories' accommodative proposals included the strengthening of immigration controls and the retraction of British citizenship obligations to immigrants from former Commonwealth nations. Conservative politicians, including party leader and future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, even invoked the National Front's xenophobic imagery of Britain as “a crowded island” being “swamped” by foreigners to try to win (back) anti-immigrant voters.