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Introduction:The comparative study of environmental governance /Andreas Duit --Comparing environmental performance /James Meadowcroft --Explaining environmental policy adoption : a comparative analysis of policy developments in twenty-four OECD countries /Christoph Knill, Susumu Shikano, and Jale Tosun --The three worlds of environmental politics /Detlef Jahn --Wind-power development in Germany and the United States : structural factors, multiple-stream convergence, and turning points /Roger Karapin --Early bird or copycat, leader or laggard? A comparison of cross-national patterns of environmental policy changeThomas Sommerer --The role of the state in the governance of sustainable development : subnational practices in European states /Susan Baker and Katarina Eckerberg --Sustainable citizenship : the role of citizens and consumers as agents of the environmental state /Michele Micheletti, Dietlind Stolle, and Daniel Berlin --Decentralization and deforestation : comparing local forest governance regimes in Latin America /Krister Andersson, Tom Evans, Clark C. Gibson, and Glenn Wright --Enforcement and compliance in African fisheries : the dynamic interaction between ruler and ruled /martin Sjöstedt --Causes and consequences of stakeholder participation in natural resource management : evidence from 143 biosphere reserves in fifty-five countries /Andreas Duit and Ola Hall --Conclusion:An emerging ecostate? /Andreas Duit.

The notion of resilience is rapidly gaining influence in public administration practice and research, but a more comprehensive resilience research agenda in public administration is yet to emerge. This article aims to clarify how experiences and potential contributions from social‐ecological resilience research can inform resilience studies in public administration. By contrasting key components of the resilience paradigm and its policy prescriptions with established findings from public administration research, a set of key shortcomings of social‐ecological resilience thinking are identified: (1) deterministic systems models; (2) simplified accounts of politics and policy; and (3) a lack of systematic and generalizable empirical studies. To avoid these shortcomings, it is suggested that public administration resilience studies should explore multiple and competing models for how resilience can be generated; analyse trade‐offs between resilience and other values of public administration; avoid systems theoretical resilience models; and apply the notion of resilience in areas beyond crisis management.

Many environmental problems such as global warming, biodiversity loss and waste accumulation can be described as large-scale collective action dilemmas. Previous research on collective action in Common Pool Resource settings has demonstrated that institutional structures and social capital are important for successful management of natural resources. The objective of this article is to investigate the effect of such factors on large-scale environmental collective action. The analysis employs survey data and indicators of institutional quality for 22 countries. Two measurements of environmental collective action are used: (1) intermediate group collective action; and (2) latent group environmental action. Findings point to a dominating role for two factors -- institutional quality and membership in voluntary organisations -- as key determinants of participation in both latent and intermediate group environmental collective action. These results are interpreted as indications of a possible decoupling between trust and participation in large-scale collective action. Adapted from the source document.

Many environmental problems such as global warming, biodiversity loss and waste accumulation can be described as large-scale collective action dilemmas. Previous research on collective action in Common Pool Resource settings has demonstrated that institutional structures and social capital are important for successful management of natural resources. The objective of this article is to investigate the effect of such factors on large-scale environmental collective action. The analysis employs survey data and indicators of institutional quality for 22 countries. Two measurements of environmental collective action are used: (1) intermediate group collective action; and (2) latent group environmental action. Findings point to a dominating role for two factors – institutional quality and membership in voluntary organisations – as key determinants of participation in both latent and intermediate group environmental collective action. These results are interpreted as indications of a possible decoupling between trust and participation in large-scale collective action.

Theory‐independent measures of institutional change can be developed by identifying and tracking changes in institutional reproduction mechanisms. Such measures can then be used to assess the empirical validity of theoretical models of institutional change. This article performs an analysis of reproduction mechanisms in a case study of a Swedish institution for emission control during the period 1960–2000. The analysis reveals the existence of a highly path dependent institutional development, powerful enough to withstand a wide‐ranging institutional reform implemented in the late 1990s. The case study supports a gradualist model over a punctuated equilibrium model of institutional change, but the analysis also demonstrates the need for path dependency theory to pay greater attention to the question of how micro‐level institutional interaction generates aggregate patterns of change and stability.

AbstractBuilding on the burgeoning literature on the association between the welfare state and the environmental state, this study empirically examines how the politics of the former has affected the development of the latter. We suggest that the size of the welfare state shapes the calculus of environmental policy costs by partisan governments. A generous welfare state lowers the costs perceived by the left‐wing government, as large redistributive spending allows the government to mitigate the adverse impact of the new environmental policy on its core supporters, industrial workers. A generous welfare state also implies diminished marginal political returns from additional welfare commitment by the left‐wing government, which lowers the opportunity costs of environmental policy expansion. To the contrary, because of lower overall regulatory and taxation pressure, a small welfare state reduces the costs of environmental policy expansion as perceived by a right‐wing government. Our theoretical narrative is supported in a dynamic panel data analysis of environmental policy outputs in 25 Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development member states during the period 1975–2005.