Policies and regulations

Making the world more sustainable is a slow and time-consuming process. Despite major ambitions, such as those laid down by the United Nations in the Sustainable Development Objectives, practice is proving to be stubborn. An important step is the adjustment of policy and regulations. Particularly with regard to policy and regulations, we see many of the improvements that have been made in recent decades being gradually reversed. It is therefore important to have a better understanding of how policy and regulations are created and how they subsequently affect all kinds of practices. 

About the theme number

The issue of the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management magazine focuses on the concept of 'institutional work'. That concept focuses on the actions with which people create, maintain and undermine rules (institutions). In the contributions, the concept is used to analyze what actions are taken to shape policy and regulation and how these actions lead to certain results for various policy practices, including planning, flood protection and climate change. The studies show that actions often stem from different and even conflicting ambitions, that little attention is often paid to the way in which policy and regulation is enforced, and that it is important to investigate how parties influence the meaning of existing and new rules in all kinds of ways. The analyzes also provide new insights into the factors that explain why there is often such a big difference between the ambitions with which policy is shaped and the effects that arise from the policy. 

Raoul Beunen: “This special issue originated from a panel at the symposium Learning and Innovation in Resilient Systems organized by the MST faculty of the Open University. A second edition of the symposium will follow later this year.”

Download

The paper can be downloaded for free in Open Access.