Durable by Design?

Andrew Jordan is Professor of Environmental Policy at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia.  He has published extensively on European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK) environmental policy and politics, and provided expert advice to both EU and UK institutions. He is a Director of the Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre on Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), and a Co-Chair of the ESRC-funded Brexit & Environment network.  He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Brendan Moore is Senior Research Associate at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia. His research focuses on EU climate change policy, the politics of emissions trading, and the impact of Brexit on UK and EU environmental governance. He is the network coordinator of the Brexit & Environment network, a group of scholars providing independent research on how Brexit is affecting policy, governance, and the environment

• Part I – Policy Durability; 1. The Quest for Durability: When, Where and How Do Policies Feed Back into Politics?; 2. Designing Durable Policies: An Instruments Perspective; Part II – Designing Policy Durability; 3. Designing Climate Policy in the European Union; 4. Climate Policy Designs: Contexts, Choices, Settings and Sequences; 5. Regulation: The Governance of Biofuels; 6. Emissions Trading: The Governance of Large Stationary Emitters; 7. Voluntary Action: The Governance of Car Emissions; Part III – Climate Policy: Durable by Design?; 8. Climate Policy Feedbacks: Significant Mechanisms, Effects and Directions; 9. Durable by Design? Policy Making in a Changing Climate; References; Bibliography; Index.

'In many countries contemporary policy-making is dominated by policy churn or the tendency for policy aims, goals, programmes and policies to bounce back and forth as governments and popular opinion change. While in some cases these short-term fluctuations may not affect longer term policy goals and aspirations, in many others this pattern of policy-making can be very damaging to attempts to resolve problems such as climate change or pensions that require sustained and consistent long-term policy effort. In such cases policy-makers and their advisors – 'policy designers' – are rightfully concerned with better understanding how policy durability can be built into present day choices and programmes in order that they can withstand partisan and other forces driving short-termism. Written by experts in the field, Durable by Design? carefully examines and draws lessons from three key cases of efforts to design robust and resilient policies in the environmental sphere in Europe. The book illuminates the phenomenon of policy feedback and explains how these policy dynamics can be managed so that policy solutions can be made consonant with problems of this type.' Michael Howlett, Simon Fraser University