The Implementation of Air Pollution Control in German Industry

Abstract

In recent years an increasing number of studies has been published analyzing the process of formulation and/or implementation of government policies (Mayntz, 1980). The reason for this growing interest in the result of political programs can be attributed to the limited success of political reforms developed during the 1960s in many industrialized countries. The case of Germany’s environmental policy — which as an explicit policy dates back to the declaration of the federal government in 1969 (Federal Government, 1969) — is a good example of this. In the first Report on the Environment of the Council of Advisors on the Environment, the term “enforcement deficit” was used for the first time to describe the unsatisfactory effect of environmental policies (Rat von Sachverstaendigen, 1974: p. 180). In the second report published in 1978 the findings of a project initiated by the Council were summarized which described and explained the obstacles encountered in the implementation of environmental regulations from the enforcement agencies’ viewpoint (Rat von Sachverstaendigen, 1978: p. 472.; Mayntz et al., 1978).