Abstract
Since the late nineteenth century, the nation-state has played a major role in protecting the natural environment. This resulted in the proliferation of specialized state environmental organizations, institutions and practices. For decades this state centrality in environmental protection was judged favourably. However, since the framing of ‘state failure’ in the 1980s and accelerated processes of globalization in the 1990s the environmental state is contested, resulting in the foregrounding of other actors, institutions and authorities in environmental protection. This contribution assesses these debates and developments with respect to the concept of environmental state in OECD countries. It concludes that within today’s polycentric landscape of environmental governance, it is still a useful concept but it has lost its monopoly position and conventional meaning that prevailed earlier.
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Notes
- 1.
The development and form of the environmental state in OECD countries show a large degree of homogeneity, although also within this category differences exist. Some of the arguments and findings on the environmental state in OECD countries have wider relevance beyond the OECD region; but the literature on for instance Asian states (Gilley 2014) and African states (Death 2016) clearly mark particularities of (environmental) states in these geo-political regions that would need a more detailed and specific analysis.
- 2.
I draw here on earlier work (Mol 2016).
- 3.
- 4.
On environmental expertise , see Lidskog and Sundqvist this volume.
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Mol, A.P.J. (2018). The Environmental State and Environmental Governance. In: Boström, M., Davidson, D. (eds) Environment and Society. Palgrave Studies in Environmental Sociology and Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76415-3_6
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