Non-Decision Making in Pollution Control in Britain: nitrate pollution, the EEC Drinking Water Directive and agriculture

In: Policy & politics, Band 17, Heft 3, S. 227-240

Abstract

This article looks at the development of the politics of nitrate pollution control in Britain between its emergence on the agenda in the early 1970s and 1988. Using and adapting Blowers' development of the key approaches to policy analysis it explores the way in which the issue, which was for a long while treated as a minor one, of concern only to the experts within the water industry, has moved towards the centre of the political stage as a consequence of British difficulties in complying with the requirements of the EEC Drinking Water Directive, the privatisation of the water industry and a decline in the political influence of agriculture. It suggests, however, that this shift has been slow and tentative, and that it remains unclear to what extent actual controls will be imposed upon farmers and who will bear the cost of those controls.