Factors of Policy Change: The Impact of Transnational Policy Learning and Domestic Veto Players in Environmental Policy

The project aims at explaining policy change in the field of the environment. Thereby, the explanatory power of two theoretical strands shall be tested, which approach policy change from different angles. Die veto-players theory focuses on institutional restrictions within the national executive and legislative arena. Theories of policy-learning, instead, look at motives and triggering events für policy change. What is lacking so far is a systematic combination of both approaches.

For this sake, and employing a macro-quantitative research design, we investigate the changes of about 25 environmental policy measures for a time period of 35 years (1970-2005) in 24 OECD and transformation countries.

The project makes several innovative contributions. First, it is the first systematic and comparative test of different theories of policy-change. Second, it constitutes a quantitative testing of policy-learning theories which have been so far overwhelmingly examined in qualitative studies. Third, the project studies the interaction of national and international causes of policy change in a comparative manner. Fourth, the empirical analyses will employ a newly created and broad data set covering the environmental policy-output of the countries studied (not outcome).