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In the debate on how to govern sustainable development, a central question concerns the interaction between knowledge about sustainability and policy developments. The discourse on what constitutes sustainable development conflict on some of the most basic issues, including the proper definitions, instruments and indicators of what should be ‘developed’ or ‘sustained’. Whereas earlier research on the role of (scientific) knowledge in policy adopted a rationalist-positivist view of knowledge as the basis for ‘evidence-based policy making’, recent literature on knowledge creation and transfer processes has instead pointed towards aspects of knowledge-policy ‘co-production’ (Jasanoff 2004). It is highlighted that knowledge utilisation is not just a matter of the quality of the knowledge as such, but a question of which knowledge fits with the institutional context and dominant power structures. Just as knowledge supports and justifies certain policy, policy can produce and stabilise certain knowledge. Moreover, rather than viewing knowledge-policy interaction as a linear and uni-directional model, this conceptualization is based on an assumption of the policy process as being more anarchic and unpredictable, something Cohen, March and Olsen (1972) has famously termed the ‘garbage-can model’.
The present dissertation focuses on the interplay between knowledge and policy in sustainability governance. It takes stock with the practice of ‘Management by Objectives and Results’ (MBOR: Lundqvist 2004) whereby policy actors define sustainable development goals (based on certain knowledge) and are expected to let these definitions guide policy developments as well as evaluate whether sustainability improves or not. As such a knowledge-policy instrument, Sustainability Indicators (SI:s) help both (subjectively) construct ‘social meaning’ about sustainability and (objectively) influence policy and measure its success. The different articles in this cumulative dissertation analyse the development, implementation and policy support (personal and institutional) of Sustainability Indicators as an instrument for MBOR in a variety of settings. More specifically, the articles centre on the question of how sustainability definitions and measurement tools on the one hand (knowledge) and policy instruments and political power structures on the other, are co-produced.
A first article examines the normative foundations of popular international SI:s and country rankings. Combining theoretical (constructivist) analysis with factor analysis, it analyses how the input variable structure of SI:s are related to different sustainability paradigms, producing a different output in terms of which countries (developed versus developing) are most highly ranked. Such a theoretical input-output analysis points towards a potential problem of SI:s becoming a sort of ‘circular argumentation constructs’. The article thus, highlights on a quantitative basis what others have noted qualitatively – that different definitions and interpretations of sustainability influence indicator output to the point of contradiction. The normative aspects of SI:s does thereby not merely concern the question of which indicators to use for what purposes, but also the more fundamental question of how normative and political bias are intrinsically a part of the measurement instrument as such. The study argues that, although no indicator can be expected to tell the sustainability ‘truth-out-there’, a theoretical localization of indicators – and of the input variable structure – may help facilitate interpretation of SI output and the choice of which indicators to use for what (policy or academic) purpose.
A second article examines the co-production of knowledge and policy in German sustainability governance. It focuses on the German sustainability strategy ‘Perspektiven für Deutschland’ (2002), a strategy that stands out both in an international comparison of national sustainability strategies as well as among German government policy strategies because of its relative stability over five consecutive government constellations, its rather high status and increasingly coercive nature. The study analyses what impact the sustainability strategy has had on the policy process between 2002 and 2015, in terms of defining problems and shaping policy processes. Contrasting rationalist and constructivist perspectives on the role of knowledge in policy, two factors, namely the level of (scientific and political) consensus about policy goals and the ‘contextual fit’ of problem definitions, are found to be main factors explaining how different aspects of the strategy is used. Moreover, the study argues that SI:s are part of a continuous process of ‘structuring’ in which indicator, user and context factors together help structure the sustainability challenge in such a way that it becomes more manageable for government policy.
A third article examines how 31 European countries have built supportive institutions of MBOR between 1992 and 2012. In particular during the 1990s and early 2000s much hope was put into the institutionalisation of Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) as a way to overcome sectoral thinking in sustainability policy making and integrate issues of environmental sustainability into all government policy. However, despite high political backing (FN, EU, OECD), implementation of EPI seems to differ widely among countries. The study is a quantitative longitudinal cross-country comparison of how countries’ ‘EPI architectures’ have developed over time. Moreover, it asks which ‘EPI architectures’ seem to be more effective in producing more ‘stringent’ sustainability policy.
This PhD thesis is essentially a collection of six sequential articles on dynamics of accountability in the reformed employment and welfare administration in different countries. The first article examines how recent changes in the governance of employment services in three European countries (Denmark, Germany and Norway) have influenced accountability relationships from a very wide-ranging perspective. It starts from the overall assumption in the literature that accountability relationships are becoming more numerous and complex, and that these changes may lead to multiple accountability disorder. The article explores these assumptions by analyzing the different actors involved and the information requested in the new governance arrangements in all three countries. It concludes that the considerable changes in organizational arrangements and more managerial information demanded and provided have led to more shared forms of accountability. Nevertheless, a clear development towards less political or administrative accountability could not be observed.
The second article analyzes how the structure and development of reform processes affect accountability relationships and via what mechanisms. It is distinguished between an instrumental perspective and an institutional perspective and each of these perspectives takes a different view on the link between reforms and concrete action and results. By taking the welfare reforms in Norway and Germany as an example, it is shown that the reform outcomes in both countries are the result of a complex process of powering, puzzling and institutional constraints where different situational interpretations of problems, interests and administrative legacies had to be balanced. Accountability thus results not from a single process of environmental necessity or strategic choice, but from a dynamic interplay between different actors and institutional spheres.
The third article then covers a specific instrument of public sector reforms, i.e. the increasing use of performance management. The article discusses the challenges and ambiguities between performance management and different forms of accountability based on the cases of the reformed welfare administration in Norway and Germany. The findings are that the introduction of performance management creates new accountability structures which influence service delivery, but not necessarily in the direction expected by reform agents. Observed unintended consequences include target fixation, the displacement of political accountability and the predominance of control aspects of accountability.
The fourth article analyzes the accountability implications of the increasingly marketized models of welfare governance. It has often been argued that relocating powers and discretion to private contractors involve a trade-off between democratic accountability and efficiency. However, there is limited empirical evidence of how contracting out shapes accountability or is shaped by alternative democratic or administrative forms of accountability. Along these lines the article examines employment service accountability in the era of contracting out in Germany, Denmark and Great Britain. It is found that market accountability instruments are complementary instruments, not substitutes. The findings highlight the importance of administrative and political instruments in legitimizing marketized service provision and shed light on the processes that lead to the development of a hybrid accountability model.
The fifth and sixth articles focus on the diagonal accountability relationships between public agencies, supreme audit institutions (SAI) and parental ministry or parliament.
The fifth article examines the evolving role of SAIs in Denmark, Germany and Norway focusing particularly on their contribution to public accountability and their ambivalent relationship with some aspects of public sector reform in the welfare sector. The article analyzes how SAIs assess New Public Management inspired reforms in the welfare sector in the three countries. The analysis shows that all three SAIs have taken on an evaluative role when judging New Public Management instruments. At the same time their emphasis on legality and compliance can be at odds with some of the operating principles introduced by New Public Management reforms.
The sixth article focuses on the auditing activities of the German SAI in the field of labor market administration as a single in-depth case study. The purpose is to analyze how SAIs gain impact in diagonal accountability settings. The results show that the direct relationship between auditor and auditee based on cooperation and trust is of outstanding importance for SAIs to give effect to their recommendations. However, if an SAI has to rely on actors of diagonal accountability, it is in a vulnerable position as it might lose control over the interpretation of its results.
Information flows in EU policy-making are heavily dependent on personal networks, both within the Brussels sphere but also reaching outside the narrow limits of the Belgian capital. These networks develop for example in the course of formal and informal meetings or at the sidelines of such meetings. A plethora of committees at European, transnational and regional level provides the basis for the establishment of pan-European networks. By studying affiliation to those committees, basic network structures can be uncovered. These affiliation network structures can then be used to predict EU information flows, assuming that certain positions within the network are advantageous for tapping into streams of information while others are too remote and peripheral to provide access to information early enough. This study has tested those assumptions for the case of the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy for the time after 2012. Through the analysis of an affiliation network based on participation in 10 different fisheries policy committees over two years (2009 and 2010), network data for an EU-wide network of about 1300 fisheries interest group representatives and more than 200 events was collected. The structure of this network showed a number of interesting patterns, such as – not surprisingly – a rather central role of Brussels-based committees but also close relations of very specific interests to the Brussels-cluster and stronger relations between geographically closer maritime regions. The analysis of information flows then focused on access to draft EU Commission documents containing the upcoming proposal for a new basic regulation of the Common Fisheries Policy. It was first documented that it would have been impossible to officially obtain this document and that personal networks were thus the most likely sources for fisheries policy actors to obtain access to these “leaks” in early 2011. A survey of a sample of 65 actors from the initial network supported these findings: Only a very small group had accessed the draft directly from the Commission. Most respondents who obtained access to the draft had received it from other actors, highlighting the networked flow of informal information in EU politics. Furthermore, the testing of the hypotheses connecting network positions and the level of informedness indicated that presence in or connections to the Brussels sphere had both advantages for overall access to the draft document and with regard to timing. Methodologically, challenges of both the network analysis and the analysis of information flows but also their relevance for the study of EU politics have been documented. In summary, this study has laid the foundation for a different way to study EU policy-making by connecting topical and methodological elements – such as affiliation network analysis and EU committee governance – which so far have not been considered together, thereby contributing in various ways to political science and EU studies.
Challenging Khmer citizenship : minorities, the state, and the international community in Cambodia
(2013)
The idea of a distinctly ‘liberal’ form of multiculturalism has emerged in the theory and practice of Western democracies and the international community has become actively engaged in its global dissemination via international norms and organizations. This thesis investigates the internationalization of minority rights, by exploring state-minority relations in Cambodia, in light of Will Kymlicka’s theory of multicultural citizenship. Based on extensive empirical research, the analysis explores the situation and aspirations of Cambodia’s ethnic Vietnamese, highland peoples, Muslim Cham, ethnic Chinese and Lao and the relationships between these groups and the state. All Cambodian regimes since independence have defined citizenship with reference to the ethnicity of the Khmer majority and have - often violently - enforced this conception through the assimilation of highland peoples and the Cham and the exclusion of ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese. Cambodia’s current constitution, too, defines citizenship ethnically. State-sponsored Khmerization systematically privileges members of the majority culture and marginalizes minority members politically, economically and socially. The thesis investigates various international initiatives aimed at promoting application of minority rights norms in Cambodia. It demonstrates that these initiatives have largely failed to accomplish a greater degree of compliance with international norms in practice. This failure can be explained by a number of factors, among them Cambodia’s neo-patrimonial political system, the geo-political fears of a ‘minoritized’ Khmer majority, the absence of effective regional security institutions, the lack of minority access to political decision-making, the significant differences between international and Cambodian conceptions of modern statehood and citizenship and the emergence of China as Cambodia’s most important bilateral donor and investor. Based on this analysis, the dissertation develops recommendations for a sequenced approach to minority rights promotion, with pragmatic, less ambitious shorter-term measures that work progressively towards achievement of international norms in the longer-term.
In my dissertation on 'Security Cooperation as a Way to Stop the Spread of Nu-clear Weapons? Nuclear Nonproliferation Policies of the United States towards the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel, 1945-1968', I study the use of security assistance as nonproliferation policy. I use insights of the Structural Realist and the Rational Institutionalist theories of International Relations to explain, respectively, important foreign policy goals and the basic orientation of policies, on the one hand, and the practical workings and effects of security cooperation on states’ behavior, on the other hand. Moreover, I consider the relations of the United States (US) with the two states in light of bargaining theory to explain the level of US ability to press other states to its preferred courses of action. The study is thus a combination of theory proposing and testing and historic description and explanation. It is also policy-relevant as I seek general lessons regarding the use of security cooperation as nonproliferation policy. I show that the US sought to keep the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from acquiring nuclear weapons in order to avoid crises with Moscow and threats to the cohesion of NATO. But the US also saw it as necessary to credibly guarantee the security of the FRG and treat it well in order to ensure that it would remain satisfied as an ally and without own nuclear weapons. Through various institutionalized security cooperation schemes, the US succeeded in this – though the FRG did acquire an option to produce nuclear weapons. The US opposed Israel’s nuclear weapon ambitions in turn because of an expectation that Arab states’ reactions could otherwise result in greater tension and risks of escalation and a worse balance-of-power in the area. But as also a US-Israel alliance could have led to stronger Arab-Soviet ties and thus a worse balance-of-power, and as it was not in US in-terest to be tied to Israel’s side in all regional issues, the US was not prepared to guarantee Israel’s security in a formal, credible way like it did in West Germany’s case. The US failed to persuade Israel to forgo producing nuclear weapons but gradually, an opaque nu-clear status combined with US arms sales that helped Israel to maintain a conventional military advantage over Arabs emerged as a solution to Israel’s security strategy. Because of perceptions that Israel and the FRG had also other options than cooperation with the US, and because the US ability to punish them for unwanted action was limited, these states were able to offer resistance when the US pressed its nonproliferation stance on them.