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Competition and Cooperation in Environmental Policy: Individual and Interaction Effects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2004

KATHARINA HOLZINGER  and
CHRISTOPH KNILL
KATHARINA HOLZINGER
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg
CHRISTOPH KNILL
Affiliation:
University of Konstanz
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Abstract

The theory of regulatory competition suggests a race to the bottom of environmental standards. This theory, however, has not found much empirical support. Several attempts to account for this theoretical failure have been made in the literature, which mainly refer to the underlying assumptions of the theory. In this article, we present an alternative explanation. We argue that in reality regulatory competition is overlapped by other mechanisms affecting the adjustment of national policies. Most important are the effects emerging from regulatory cooperation at the level of the European Union (EU). To arrive at more precise theoretical predictions, we therefore not only analyze the individual effects of competition and cooperation on national policies, but also the impact of their interaction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , May 2004 , pp. 25 - 47
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This paper is based on first results emerging from the project ENVIPOLCON which is funded by the European Commission within the specific programme for research, technological development and demonstration on ‘improving the human research potential and the socioeconomic knowledge base’. The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Commission.