The article deals with the questions of the emergence, persistence and change of policy paradigms. It focuses on the role that policy networks play in this process and draws on the literature of problem definition to explain this role. The paper investigates water policy in Israel in the years 1948–1997. The paper distinguishes among two water policy paradigms that have prevailed: the earlier paradigm was one of expanding water resources and agricultural production, followed by a paradigm of priority of agricultural expansion over water conservation. The paper also distinguishes among periods of anticipatory and reactive water policy and highlights the role of policy networks in formulating public policies.
Focusing on the potential of information regulations, this article aims to contribute to ongoing efforts of policymakers to improve policy tools, in light of the increasing complexity of assessing the environmental impacts of new technologies and industrial corporations. Using the annual reports of corporations and performance data from the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the study analyzed the quality of responses to the amendments of Israel's Securities Regulations by major, publicly traded, polluting industrial corporations in Israel. The main theoretical claim of this paper is that within mandatory regulations there may be a large variability in the degree of specification of requirements. When considerable discretion is left to corporations, the result is a mixed mandatory-voluntary regulation regime. Our findings suggest that such variability impacts the implementation outcomes, as responses to environmental requirements depend on the level of discretion. Facilities increased their reported information, including the negative aspects, when specific mandatory prescriptions were stipulated. However, voluntary motivations did not result in the provision of information when corporations were allowed a high level of discretion. The authors recommend the delineation of exact stipulations of prescriptive requirements for the provision of comparative environmental information in order to obtain the environmental information deemed necessary.
A major argument of this paper is that to enhance the theoretical value of the concept of governance one must focus on how governance networks operate and with what outcomes. To that end, the paper offers a typology of governance‐network capacity (GNC). Network capacity is assessed on a continuum from low to high, on the basis of four abilities of public actors: to select non‐public collaborators, determine the goals of the network, exercise professional discretion, and recruit new resources. Differences in GNC are discussed in terms of their implications for equality and the degree to which new forms of governing networks create bases for retaining or increasing the inequality between municipalities. The paper presents findings from a study of collaborations between public and non‐public actors in 78 governance networks that provide welfare services, operating in six municipalities in Israel.
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