Risk-based governance against national obstacles?

Regine Paul (1) , Frederic Bouder (2) , Mara Wesseling

1 Universität Bielefeld
2 Maastricht University [Maastricht]

Comparative studies have recently highlighted obstacles related to continental European countries’ proclivity for adopting risk-based governance. However, so far, the interface between risk-based policy-making in the EU and potential policy change in reluctant member states has been underexplored. We compare flooding policies in the Netherlands with those in France and Germany to establish the extent to and conditions under which EU-level risk-based policies can transform national governance approaches. Drawing on the concept of Europeanization, we compare national adaptation pressures stemming from the EU floods directive, investigate adaptation dynamics, and account for transformations towards risk-based thinking. We find that Europeanization enabled a mainstreaming of risk-based flooding policies in France and Germany, as national actors used the EU as a venue to entice a desired policy rationalization and centralization. By contrast, and somewhat unexpectedly, the Netherlands partially retrenched from EU procedures because the directive’s reporting mechanisms were considered to breach The Hague’s aspirational policy approach. Overall, the paper identifies a strong potential for even ‘soft’ EU policies to ease national reluctance to risk-based governance approaches, but it also indicates limits where member states use risk-based techniques within an aspirational protection framework.

Keywords: risk-based governance; flooding policy; comparative policy analysis; venue-shopping; Europeanization

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Sociology

Regine Paul, Frederic Bouder, Mara Wesseling. Risk-based governance against national obstacles?: Comparative dynamics of Europeanization in Dutch, French and German flooding policies. Journal of Risk Research, 2016, pp.1 - 20. ⟨hal-02135422⟩