When Epistemic Communities Fail: Exploring the Mechanism of Policy Influence

Epistemic communities are an established concept in the study of international relations but can also explain policy change at the domestic level. This article asks why some epistemic communities manage to convince decision makers of their preferred policies while others do not. It suggests that the reason lies in the causal mechanism of epistemic communities' influence on decision makers, mediated by decision makers' demand for expert input. Most epistemic communities scholarship focuses on single case studies where the communities' influence on policy was strong and clear, leading to an overestimation of the groups' influence. To help correct this probable bias, this article compares a successful case of epistemic community influence (health technology assessment in Poland) with an unsuccessful example of the same policy (in the Czech Republic). The juxtaposition allows for unpacking of the necessary parts of the causal mechanism (emergence of an epistemic community, its activity, access to decision makers, and successful suasion) and separating them from the crucial scope condition. Decision makers' uncertainty about the policy issue at hand has traditionally been the key scope condition for epistemic communities but the successful Polish case demonstrates that epistemic communities can be influential even in highly certain areas of routine policymaking, leading to a reconceptualization of uncertainty as policymakers' demand for expert input. Demand can originate from various sources, but any change of it affects individual parts of the causal mechanism, leading to a success or failure of epistemic communities' policy enterprise.     

Shifting Environmental Governance in a Neoliberal World: US AID for Conservation

Abstract: By exploring the shifting and uneven power relations among state, market and civil society organizations in US environmental foreign aid policy‐making, this article forges new ground in conversations about conservation and neoliberalism. Since the 1970s, an evolving group of non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) has lobbied the US Congress to support environmental foreign assistance. However, the 1980s and 1990s rise of neoliberalism laid the conditions for the formation of a dynamic alliance among representatives of the US Congress, the US Agency for International Development, environmental NGOs and the private sector around biodiversity conservation. In this alliance, idealized visions of NGOs as civil society and a countering force to corporations have underpinned their influence, despite their contemporary corporate partnerships. Furthermore, by focusing on international biodiversity conservation, the group has attracted a broad spectrum of political and corporate support to shape public policy and in the process create new spaces for capital expansion.     

Neo‐liberalism,policy networks,and policy change: Agricultural policy reform in Australia and Canada

Developments favouring the liberalisation and globalisation of economic exchange and increasingly rigid constraints on domestic fiscal policy have provided support for neo‐ liberal policy ideas. Neolibcralism challenges the logic of embedded liberalism that underscored trade multilateralism in the post‐second world war period, and the exclusion of sectors like agriculture from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Focusing on agricultural policy, the article examines the pace and extent to which neo‐liberal ideas have been able to gain hold and displace non‐liberal domestic policies in Australia and Canada. The article shows that neo‐liberal ideas have been more easily translated into domestic policy change in Australia than in Canada. A significant part of the explanation for this cross‐national difference is found in the differing domestic political‐institutional arrangements, including federalism, bureaucratic arrangements, the presence or absence of a neo‐liberal epistemic community, and trie structure of interest intermediation systems. These factors, in turn, have their impact on policy change through their effects on the structures of agricultural policy networks and policy communities.     

Developmentalities and Donor–NGO Relations: Contesting Foreign Aid Policies in New Zealand/Aotearoa

In this paper we draw on the concept of governmentality to examine the relationships between donors and northern non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) during moments of policy change. Our case study comes from New Zealand/Aotearoa where a change in government has seen aid policy shift from poverty alleviation to sustainable economic development. We detail three mechanisms through which the government sought to normalise this change: changes in language and fields of visibility; institutional reform; and funding delays and cuts. Far from being complete, however, we also trace how some NGOs contested the new agenda through engaging in the practice of politics and how, at least temporarily, new more politicised development subjectivities were created. While our study raises awkward questions about the autonomy of NGOs within current funding environments, we also emphasise the productive possibilities and openings that emerge as one set of development ideas and techniques, or developmentalities, shifts to another.     

Promoting Environmental Education for Sustainable Development: The Value of Links between Higher Education and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

Environmental sustainability education, the dissemination of environmental education for sustainable development into the community, should be a lifelong process and not one restricted to a learner's years in higher education. Informal environmental sustainability education, including personal involvement in NGO environmental action, can be an effective way of increasing the understanding of environmental and sustainability issues. NGO projects help provide practical environmental education to environmentally aware people who have built their careers in other areas. In the process, they help environmental awareness to trickle into areas of life where it would not ordinarily impinge. In this case study of a community-based land reclamation research project, supported jointly by the NGO Earthwatch and Oxford Brookes University, analysis of the motivations and experiences of project volunteers shows that their aims include making a personal contribution to enhancing the quality of the environment and networking with like-minded individuals, and that they expect to carry their new understanding back into their everyday lives to influence other people in their workplace. Engagement in practical work and action research may help overcome some of the negativity linked to many assessments of the human impact on the environment and, working together, universities and NGOs can more effectively ‘think globally and act locally’. NGOs may provide the best hope for helping to change the destructive aspects of modern society but they are vulnerable through financial dependency on sponsors, volunteers and donors.     

Democratic constraint and embrace: Implications for progressive non-government advocacy organisations in Australia

The advocacy work of non-government organisations can be either constrained or embraced by government attitudes and practices. Although it is widely accepted that NGOs are an essential component of a healthy and robust democracy, serving as essential intermediaries between community and government, and providing a voice for marginalised groups to make claims on governments between elections, the current dominance of the public choice paradigm in public administration has seen the legitimacy of NGOs come under attack. Questions have been raised about the representativeness of NGOs and the legitimacy of their standing as policy advocates. As a result of this shift many disadvantaged groups that had taken years to organise themselves sufficiently to have a voice have found themselves increasingly constrained and excluded from the policy-making process. The threats that many NGOs are now facing have the effect of reducing government accountability, sustaining existing inequities and, ultimately, diminishing the quality of Australian democracy.     

Community Engagement: Participation on Whose Terms?

Community engagement and citizen participation have long been important themes in liberal democratic theory, although managerial versions of liberal democracy have typically been dominant. In the past two decades, however, many countries have seen a shift away from a managerial or top-down approach, towards a revitalised emphasis on building institutional bridges between governmental leaders and citizenry, often termed ‘community engagement’. This paper outlines some of the main explanations for this shift, including international trends in governance and political economy; the availability of improved communications technologies; the need to share responsibility for resolving complex issues; and the local politics of managing social, economic and environmental projects. Some critical perspectives are also raised, suggesting a degree of scepticism about the intentions of government and implying serious limits on the potential influence of the citizenry and community groups. Important distinctions are drawn between policy arenas, in relation to the different dynamics and opportunities in different policy fields. The importance of building effective capacity for citizens and all non-government organisations (NGOs) to participate is emphasised. Typologies of community engagement are outlined, and linked to ideas about social capital.     

The history of Australian legal opposition to Japanese Antarctic whaling

ABSTRACT

Whaling has been a consistent theme in Australia’s relations with Japan since the 1930s, Australia having endeavoured to regulate, restrict, or bring to a complete halt Japan’s Antarctic whaling virtually since it began. Australia’s motivations have been mixed, involving at various points, some combination of protection of Australia’s coastal whaling industry, concern for Australia’s security, for safeguarding Australia’s Antarctic territorial claim, and more recently, concern for Australia’s whale-watching industry and/or for the whales. Since environmental consciousness became a primary factor in the 1970s, Australian policy has been aligned with that of anti-whaling non-governmental organizations (NGOs), albeit that certain actions of NGOs have caused difficulties for the Australian Government. Law – inclusive of legal argument in the course of diplomacy, domestic laws, and international litigation – has been a mechanism of influence used by the Australian Government and NGOs. This paper traces Australia’s legal opposition from its beginnings until Japan’s announcement in December 2018 that it would end Antarctic whaling.     

Caught in the Middle: The State, NGOs, and the Limits to Grassroots Organizing Along the US–Mexico Border

NGOs across the world work on a daily basis to assist marginalized and working poor communities to meet their most basic needs. As NGOs take on the provision of many services that previously existed in the domain of the state, they enter into a contradictory relationship. As they work to improve these communities abandoned by the state, they can become the conduit whereby neoliberal state policy enters marginalized communities. Growing numbers of NGOs find that their primary sources of income come from donors and state agencies that share a propensity for neoliberal forms of governance. In the colonias, working poor Mexican communities, of the US Southwest, the triumvirate relationship among the state, NGOs, and grassroots leaders can create a disabling situation. I examine these cases, in which the neoliberal preference for self‐help projects and a focus on the fulfilment of individual needs can overshadow more collective forms of social change.     

NGOs as Social Movements: Policy Narratives,Networks and the Performance of Dalit Rights in South India

Donor‐funded development NGOs are sometimes portrayed as co‐opting, privatizing or depoliticizing citizen action or social movements. This much is implied by the term ‘NGOization’. Alternatively, NGOs can be seen as bearers of rights‐based work increasingly threatened by tighter regulation or substitution by corporate social responsibility models of development. This article engages critically with both perspectives. It traces the role of NGOs and their funders in agenda setting, specifically in bringing the previously excluded issue of caste discrimination into development policy discourse in the form of a Dalit‐rights approach in Tamil Nadu, south India. The authors explore the institutional processes of policy making and NGO networking involved, the alliances, entanglements of NGOs and social movements, and the performativity of NGO Dalit rights. But at the same time, the article illustrates how NGO institutional systems have constrained or failed to sustain such identity‐based claims to entitlement. In Nancy Fraser's terms, the article explores success and failure in addressing ‘first‐order’ issues of justice, that is rights to resources (in this case, land), and in tackling ‘second‐order’ injustices concerning the framing of who counts (who can make a claim as a rights holder) and how (by what procedures are claims and contests staged and resolved). This draws attention to the important but fragile achievements of NGOs’ discursive framings that give Dalits the ‘right to have rights’.     

Cooptation of ENGOs or Treadmill of Production? Advocacy Coalitions and Climate Change Policy in Finland

Corporatist Nordic welfare states are largely thought to have exemplary environmental policies. Finland, however, was labeled “a failing ecostate” by a recent study owing to its weak climate change policy. Why is Finland different? We use data from a survey of organizations belonging to the Finnish climate change policy network to investigate two alternative explanations related to policy networks. According to the Cooptation Thesis, inclusive corporatist polities, where environmental NGOs (ENGOs) have support from and access to the state, formulate less ambitious policies because environmentalists moderate their views to secure state funding and political access. Second, according to the Treadmill of Production Theory, the decisive feature of Nordic corporatism with regard to environmental policy is the tripartite system linking business interests, labor unions, and the state in a coalition that prioritizes economic over ecological values. The results indicate that the ENGO Coalition is the least influential, least resourceful, smallest, least linked to the others, and not particularly moderate. The Treadmill Coalition is the most influential, most resourceful, second largest, well linked to the state, and least ecological in its beliefs. Thus, of the two policy network explanations, the dominance of the Treadmill Coalition rather than cooptation of ENGOs gets support.     

The potential and pitfalls of global environmental governance: The politics of transfrontier conservation areas in Southern Africa

This article examines the potential and problems associated with global environmental governance with particular reference to Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in Southern Africa. By taking a political ecology approach, it reflects on theories and practices of global environmental governance through an analysis of transboundary environmental management. In particular, it examines the politics of the struggle over control of and access to key natural resources and how it impacts on the implementation of transfrontier conservation. In order to do this, this article includes an analysis of the complex role of local and global NGOs, the changing role of the state in relation to international actors, the importance of community based natural resource management, the commitment to tourism to make conservation pay its way and the problems associated with illicit networks of traffickers of wildlife products, cars and people.It is important to investigate the politics of TFCAs because they are part of a wider context of increasing forms of transnational management of the environment; such transnational forms of management are often deemed to be more effective than national level management because of the transboundary nature of environmental problems. This article argues that the assumption that transnational management can be neatly implemented needs rethinking. In particular, it highlights the ways that complex networks of actors constitute a significant challenge to global environmental governance. This in turn raises more general questions about the effectiveness of other forms of global environmental governance centred on managing problems such as climate change, pollution or trafficking of endangered species and tropical hardwoods.     

The politics of repressing environmentalists as agents of foreign influence

Theoretically, this article reveals the long-term risk for local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of participating in transnational advocacy networks (TANs), accepting money from foreign sources and throwing ‘boomerangs’ internationally—a strategy used by local NGOs to seek international allies to pressure repressive and unresponsive states at home. Focusing primarily on the suppression of environmental NGOs that oppose natural-resource extraction, this article examines three cases—Russia, India and Australia—to illuminate the consequences of this trend for local civil society and TANs. It also documents a global trend towards states depicting local NGOs with international linkages as subversive agents of foreign interests, justifying legal crackdowns and the severing of foreign funding and ties. State framing of NGOs as agents of foreign interests is repressing local environmental activism, depoliticising civil society and weakening international NGO alliances—a conclusion with far-reaching consequences for the future of TANs, local NGOs and environmental activism.     

Knowledge making and corporate environmentalism from the perspective of the egg tray

ABSTRACT

In the 1990s, there was a change in capitalist thinking on environmental issues in many global settings, which materialised in what has been termed corporate environmentalism. Beginning with a history of the moulded fibre egg tray and one of its primary manufacturers, this is a case study of how corporate environmentalism came about and was enacted as a confluence of corporate priorities, environmental concerns, production processes, materials, and the development of new measuring tools. Unlike the many environmental history studies that emphasise the role of NGOs and policy developments, this study begins in the business world. More specifically, it is based in the making of environmental knowledge in the form of life cycle assessments and environmental accounts and in the environmental reframing of materials like moulded pulp and plastic. In this way it is the story of how it became reasonable for a manufacturer of egg trays to choose the slogan, ‘Choose Fibre. Save Nature’.     

The disciplining of scientific communities

Abstract

Amidst ongoing concern with training students in the skills and knowledge necessary to contribute towards a knowledge-intensive economy, we explore how particular ‘epistemic subjects’ are produced within specific epistemic communities. We examine how social studies of science have probed the ‘disciplining’ practices that constitute scientific knowledge production, but have tended to overlook how students participate in, and become members of, epistemic communities. We propose that training contexts provide a window onto the disciplining processes through which scientific fields and their practitioners are co-produced. We offer an empirical example of an emerging scientific field that is working to establish community boundaries through the recruitment and training of university students. We explore how newcomers’ practices, values and identities are disciplined through participation in this nascent community whilst remaining open to negotiation and resistance. The conclusion calls for more scholarly attention to educational trajectories as processes through which disciplines and their disciples are produced.     

The missionary position: NGOs and development in Africa

This article traces the evolution of development non–governmental organizations (NGOs) in Africa, and suggests that their role represents a continuation of the work of their precursors, the missionaries and voluntary organizations that cooperated in Europe's colonization and control of Africa. The authors maintain that the work of the NGOs today contributes marginally to the relief of poverty in Africa, and significantly undermines the struggle of the African people to emancipate themselves from economic, social and political oppression. Development NGOs have, unwittingly or otherwise, become a part of the neo–liberal system that has resulted in widespread impoverishment and the loss of the authority of African states to determine their own agenda. NGOs could, and some do, play a role in supporting an emancipatory agenda in Africa, but it involves breaking with the 'missionary position' by disengaging from their paternalistic role in development.     

The Response of International Organizations to the Environmental Challenge: The Case of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

This article examines the effectiveness of UNIDO in addressing the challenges of environmental degradation and in helping developing countries promote sustainable development paths. The analysis suggests that the slow process of integrating environmental concerns in UNIDO's activities was affected both by internal organizational factors, such as the shared professional values in UNIDO's institutional culture and its organizational flexibility and responsiveness, and by factors relating to the external context, including financial constraints and interagency conflicts. In contrast to studies of successful persuasion of ‘epistemic communities’ in international negotiations, this article looks at the factors which have impeded the process of persuasion. At the theoretical level, it seeks to analyse the difficulties of changing the policy agenda in a specific international organization.     

Improving Sanitation in the Slums of Mumbai: An Analysis of Human Rights-Based Approaches for NGOs

Human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) can challenge the underlying structures and power relations that perpetuate poverty. They have thus emerged in the development field as a prominent instrument for addressing development issues. Access to clean water and sanitation are now internationally acknowledged as human rights, and have become a stand-alone Sustainable Development Goal of the international community’s commitment to international development. This paper analyses the potential use of HRBAs by local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working on sanitation issues in slums in Mumbai. It is argued that it is more productive for local NGOs to build (i) partnerships with duty-bearers (in this case the state and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai) and (ii) the capacity of rights-holders, in particular women, than to rely on litigation strategies to create momentum for change. HRBAs are more useful as a political tool for NGOs for establishing good working relationships with government agencies rather than as a legal instrument, which can be counter-productive to the poverty reduction objectives of NGOs.     

Scaling up Participatory Watershed Development in India

‘Participation’ is widely accepted as a prerequisite to successful watershed development in India, but there is no shared understanding of its meaning, nor of how to make it operational. Meaningful participation, in which communities work collectively, help make decisions and share costs, is limited primarily to projects implemented by non‐governmental organizations (NGOs). Participation in government projects is more superficial because staff lack the skills and incentive to engage in meaningful participation. Strategies to scale up meaningful participation require a large number of NGOs. However, the number of NGOs with the necessary skills and values is limited, so a realistic strategy must seek to improve the capabilities and incentives of government agencies. Their performance may improve by making them accountable through transparent processes and participatory monitoring and evaluation. NGO‐facilitated access to information for communities can potentially change power relations and initiate political processes that make both community leaders and government agencies more accountable to communities.     

Non-governmental Organizations in Africa: Can They Influence Public Policy?

As non-governmental organizations (NGOs) accumulate experience at implementing development projects, they sometimes attempt to increase their influence by engaging in policy advocacy. This article analyses the organizational conditions under which national NGOs in Africa have been able to influence the formulation of agricultural and rural development policies. Case studies are presented of three African NGOs that have sought, with varying degrees of success, to represent the ‘voice’ of the rural poor to policy-makers. Comparative analysis of these cases leads to the conclusion that policy advocacy is most likely to be effective in organizations that have several key characteristics: an homogeneous membership, a federated structure, a focused programme, informal ties with political leaders, and a domestic funding base.