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Discusses the relationship between ecological modernization ideas, policy formulation, & implementation, using Norwegian climate policy & the carbon tax as an empirical case. Although ideas can contribute to understanding the development of environmental policy in general, institutional & interest explanations seem to be more relevant in explaining the lack of success that can be observed in attempts to implement ideas of ecological modernization. This failure must also be related to assumptions underlying such ideas. The first concerns the distributional conflicts underlying many environmental policy issues, which are easily forgotten under the consensus-oriented assumptions of positive-sum games. The second is the strong institutional interests to be observed that question managerial assumptions concerning the capacity of the institutional system to implement an integrated approach. 29 References. Adapted from the source document.

This paper is an examination of Norway's national strategy for developing local environmental policies and institutions from the late 1980s to the present, and how this strategy has been influenced by changes in the dynamic between central government and local political institutions. It is argued that the strategy has changed during the period of study, shifting from a strong emphasis on the development of local institutions to an emphasis on the delegation of responsibilities from central government to local governing bodies. This new policy of delegation has been advanced at a time when municipalities are suffering from a weakened institutional capacity for environmental policy-making because of changes in the country's overall regulatory approach. The authors argue that this approach, which first and foremost has been motivated by national, macroeconomic objectives and the role of local government in service production, is inconsistent with the government's ambitions of a more important role for local government in environmental policy. The nature of environmental challenges, which often cut across political and administrative borders and often involve conflicts between different levels of government, suggests that local institutions are crucially important within the environmental policy domain.

Local government reforms have been carried out in a number of European countries, aiming at both more effective service production and increased citizen participation in local politics. Although extensive research has been carried out analysing the content and background of these reforms, few if any, studies have considered the democratic effects of these reforms at the level of the individual citizen. This article investigates relationship between local government reforms and citizen trust in local government, focusing on individual-level data on local government reforms in Norway in 2008. The analysis shows that it is difficult to find a clear relationship between reform policies and trust in local politicians. These findings parallel other contributions in concluding that it is difficult to find substantial effects from local government re-organisations. Adapted from the source document.

The paper studies processes of adaptation to a changing climate in the water supply and wastewater sector in five Norwegian municipalities. Our case illustrates that the combination of characteristics of climate adaptation as a policy issue, institutional characteristics related to the vertical organization of the water sector in Norway, and characteristics of the professional network between local and national levels of governance seem to have been conducive to problem awareness and proactive approaches to problem solving. Our findings contradict the general picture drawn in the literature concluding that adaptation efforts are mainly reactive and internally related to the sector. We identify important mechanisms related to the production of policy solutions in governance networks mediating knowledge between different institutional levels. By these observations, the paper should contribute to the debate about the working of governance networks, and in particular to the knowledge about factors that are conducive to effective network governance.