Symbolic environmental legislation and societal self-deception

Abstract

The primarily symbolic quality of many environmental laws is widely held responsible for the fact that despite all eco-political achievements many major environmental problems still remain unresolved. This contribution works towards a clear conceptual distinction between symbolic and non-symbolic environmental legislation; it investigates different levels of effectiveness of symbolic legislation, tries to establish a series of external factors which are conducive to the production of primarily symbolic laws, and argues that such legislation must not simply be understood as wilfully deceiving the citizenry, but can also be read as reflecting a certain readiness of citizens to let them be deceived. Thus, the incidence of symbolic legislation may point towards practices of societal self-deception. The German Summer Smog Act 1995 and the Ordinance on Large Combustion Plants 1983 are analysed and compared as paradigmatic examples of symbolic and non-symbolic environmental legislation and as empirical cases for the study of the questions that have just been outlined.

Notes

1. In Germany, for example, the percentage of people naming ‘environmental protection’ as one of the most important national problems declined from 65% in 1988 to 18% in 2004 (Kuckartz & Rheingans-Heintze, 2004).

2. While the quality of air and inland waters has improved considerably since the early 1980s, there has been very limited success in areas such as noise reduction or energy policy (including global climate change) (Rat von Sachverständigen für Umweltfragen (SRU), 2004).

3. Some authors have noted that there are varieties of symbolic legislation which are socially desirable, for example because of their integrative and stabilising effect on society, or because they contribute to meeting the population's emotional needs (Noll, 1981; Voß, 1989; Wenger, 2003). Symbolic legislation may also appeal to the population's morale (Henderson & Pearson, 1978) and cause changes in public attitudes (Friedman, 1975). However, such ‘declaratory’ (Noll, 1981) and ‘aspirational’ (Henderson & Pearson, 1978) legislation differs from the kind of laws which are the object of this study in that it a priori dispenses with legal obligations and does not purport to be effective in a substantive sense. It does not involve any form of deception or self-deception and will not be further discussed in this piece.

4. There is only a small number of conceptual analyses most of which can be found in the German and Swiss literature. Many of them draw, explicitly or at least implicitly, on the more general idea of symbolic politics as developed in the early publications by the American scholars Arnold (1962), Gusfield (1963) and Edelman (1962, 1971).

5. Edelman (1962) argues in a very similar spirit. Even the more recent conceptual contributions (Dwyer, 1990; Hansjürgens, 2000) imply a general tendency towards symbolic politics and legislation.

6. The pertinent literature refers to ‘instrumental’ and ‘symbolic’ dimensions of legislation (Gusfield, 1963; Carson, 1974; Kindermann, 1988; Dwyer, 1990). Although this distinction is crucial to the understanding of symbolic legislation, the terminology is somewhat misleading for, assuming strategic behaviour on the part of the legislator(s), ‘symbolic’ purposes are equally instrumental in achieving certain political goals (see Edelman, 1962, 1971). Since the term ‘instrumental’ thus does not serve to distinguish both dimensions, it should be avoided altogether.

7. Due to the country's federal system, the German legal hierarchy is somewhat complex. Generally, federal law is considered to be of higher standing than that of the federal states (Länder). Constitutional law is superior to statutes, ordinances and administrative rules (in that order). Complexity is further increased by European Union law, which shall not be addressed here.

8. Public choice theory is an application of rational choice theory to political decision-making processes. As such it resorts to the basic conjectures of methodological individualism (i.e. societal macro-phenomena are explained by the characteristics and interactions of individual actors) and the rational actor paradigm (‘Homo oeconomicus’) assuming that actors weigh the costs and benefits of alternative options and choose the one that best suits their own personal interests.

9. For further details of the interview process and analysis see Newig (2003).

10. Formed under high solar radiation with a time delay out of gaseous precursor substances – mainly non-methane volatile organic compounds (NM-VOCs) and nitrous oxides (NO_x) – ozone, the leading substances of ‘summer smog’, can cause lung damage, especially in sensitive persons such as children, and can also damage vegetation. Precursors are emitted mainly from the combustion of fossil fuels in industry and traffic, but also from organic solvents and varnish for NM-VOCs. Because of the particular physico-chemical properties of summer smog components, the seemingly paradoxical situation frequently occurs that the highest concentrations are measured in rural rather than in metropolitan areas.

11. All original citations are in German, translation by the author. For further details see Newig (2003).

12. The alternative hypothesis that in accordance with the logic of issue attention cycles public interest would soon have decreased even without the Ozongesetz seems implausible because public attention dropped very abruptly, whilst public attention dynamics in environmental issues normally show a much smoother decline (Newig, 2004).

13. To even out random fluctuations, a three-period moving average has been applied to the latter two time series. For sources and a detailed discussion of methodological issues see Newig (2003, 2004). The daily paper die tageszeitung was chosen for its early electronic full-text availability. Although this politically left-wing newspaper is not representative of German public opinion, it is a reliable indicator of public attention. All other major German supra-regional newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Südddeutsche, Frankfurter Rundschace (FR) show the same pattern (Newig, 2003).

14. In the meantime the Social Democratic–Liberal coalition government had been replaced by a Conservative–Liberal coalition.

15. Waldsterben/Großfeuerungsanlagenverordnung– problem severity (total emissions of SO₂ from large combustion plants), and press coverage (numbers of articles in the German daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung regarding the issue of Waldsterben/Großfeuerungsanlagenverordnung). For sources and methodology see Newig (2003, 2004) with further references. For sources and a detailed discussion of methodological issues see Newig (2003, 2004).

16. The German Waste Avoidance, Recycling and Disposal Act (Kreislaufwirtschafts- und Abfallgesetz) 1994 is a third case that is analysed in Newig (2003). Whilst in substantive terms, this law was almost as ineffective as the Ozongesetz, it was still less ‘symbolic’ than the latter, not least because it had been enacted with good intentions and in the genuine belief that it would offer a substantive solution for the mounting waste problem.

17. The car industry was adamantly opposed to any temporary speed restrictions because it did not want to have a precedent for a general speed limit on German motorways.

18. According to an ‘Emnid’ poll, 72% of the population supported a general traffic ban in metropolitan areas once certain ozone limit values were reached; only 22% opposed this (Der Spiegel, 10 May 1993: 14). Another poll by the public TV channel ZDF revealed that 69% of all German citizens supported general speed limits; 86% supported speed limits in times of summer smog; 70% supported a traffic ban in this case (Die Tageszeitung, 6 August 1994).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jens Newig

This contribution draws in large parts on the doctoral thesis of the author (Newig, 2003), a project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, Hannover, Germany. The author thanks the editors of this volume and an anonymous reviewer for valuable comments on an earlier version of this contribution