The environmental nation state in decline

Abstract

The environmental nation state is not a formal category but a substantive one. The current set of national environmental state institutions originated in the late 1960s/1970s but has since changed in character. Many scholars note that since the new millennium, the environmental nation state in OECD countries is losing power and authority and is thus in decline, in line with wider concerns about the positions of states versus markets under conditions of (neo-liberal) globalisation. Assessing the decline of environmental nation state authority, three conclusions are drawn. States do not lose power in all sectors vis-à-vis markets. Hence, environmental nation state decline does not follow a general tendency. Second, the decline of environmental nation state powers cannot be equated with less effective or lower levels of environmental protection, as other environmental authorities have stepped in, and the jury is still out on their environmental effectiveness. Third, declining powers of environmental nation state institutions increasingly become a self-fulfilling prophecy of environmental policymakers, but non-state environmental authorities cannot take over all environmental state functions.

Keywords:

• state capacity
• state authority
• private governance
• environmental performance
• globalisation

Notes

1. In the literature, three dimensions of state capacity are usually distinguished: coercive capacity, extractive capacity (raising revenues), and administrative capacity (producing and delivering public goods and services and regulating economic activity; Skocpol 1985, p. 16, Hanson and Sigman 2013). Environmental state capacity (but also regulating financial markets) concerns mainly the latter dimension, although it is dependent on extractive capacities.

2. There is growing work on indicators and databases for quantification of (administrative) state capacity (e.g. Hanson and Sigman 2013), but hardly on environmental state capacity. Brunel and Levinson (2013) and Sauter (2014) have assessed various existing and new conceptualisations to assess state environmental stringency, but have not yet carried out systematic applications.

3. The number of staff could not be traced for all OECD countries. Occasionally, ministries were reorganised – hence the later years (early 2000s) or absence of the country. In some (federal) nation states, environmental protection is more a responsibility of the states rather than the federal government.