Herbstsesemster 2012
The management and protection of complex natural resources and other environmental goods (such as landscape, biodiversity) requires novel institutional arrangements („environmental governance”) to secure the formulation and implementation of progressive (market-based) regulation, as well as the coordination between public and/or private actors also across levels of government. The lecture covers the phenomenon of the increasing institutional diversity and complexity of policy processes in environmental policy at all levels of government and identifies corresponding theories from political science, sociology and economics.
Based on that, the students will get the chance to discuss a tangible example that shows how institutions, instruments and actors had been created to deal with a particular environmental policy problem and to judge the quality of the process. These examples can be taken from the local to the international context and do not have to be limited to Switzerland or the EU.