How do policy entrepreneurs influence policy change? Framing and boundary work in EU transport biofuels policy

Abstract

Drawing on in-depth qualitative research exploring EU biofuels policy, this article aims to advance understandings of the role and influence of policy entrepreneurs within Kingdon’s (2011) multiple streams framework (MSF). Focusing on one entrepreneurial policy official, the article analyses both, the particular discursive techniques this official deployed in seeking to influence EU biofuels policy, and the wider contextual factors that impinged on those techniques’ ability to actually attain policy influence. Persuasive framing is shown to have enabled the entrepreneur to influence initial agenda setting processes, whilst boundary work is shown to have enabled the same official to subsequently defend an existing policy in the face of widespread criticism. Critical interactions between all three streams of the MSF, however, were outside the control of this policy entrepreneur, implying that discursive techniques alone are insufficient to open (or close) policy windows.

Keywords:

• biofuels
• boundary work
• framing
• policy change
• policy entrepreneurs

Acknowledgements

This research was carried out whilst I was at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, and was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council [ES/GO13195/1]. I am grateful to all the interviewees who contributed to the study, as well as to Susan Owens and Michael Bravo for their feedback on earlier versions. I am also indebted to four anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. All remaining errors are entirely my own.

Notes

1. Many EU member states, including the UK and the Netherlands, called for legislative action in responding to a European Commission public consultation in 2010.

2. Only in October 2012 did the European Commission publish a full Impact Assessment into ILUC (EC 2012).

3. In the case of European Commission officials, adhering to this principle importantly necessitates withholding details of each interviewee’s Directorate General (DG).

4. Several years after the Biofuels Directive had been passed, the Commission continued to rely on this type of argument, stating in a 2007 progress report, for instance, that biofuels represented ‘the only direct substitute for oil in [the transport sector] … available on a significant scale’ (EC 2007, p. 2).

5. Influential contributors to this change of image in the UK were reports published by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC 2008) and the Royal Society (2008).

6. Searchinger et al. (2008) claimed that ILUC could cause biofuels to generate up to twice as many GHG emissions over 30 years as their fossil-fuel counterparts.

7. The European Commission was aware of ILUC prior to the passing of the Renewable Energy Directive, but did not include formal measures to counter its effects in that legislation. Whilst this represents an intriguing instance of ‘non-decision-making’, it unfortunately falls outside the remit of data available here, which focuses on debates taking place after the RED’s passing.

8. Tyner et al. (2010).

9. Indeed, the point of this analysis is not to establish who was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ about ILUC; uncertainties over the very nature of the relationships linking global trade and land-use change patterns preclude the definitive identification of ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ points of view. The aim here is simply to examine the discursive techniques through which one dominant perspective on the significance of ILUC was established.

10. Interview, Commission Official, 2010.