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The role and importance of street‐level bureaucrats in policy implementation is now widely recognised. So far as the EU's agri‐environmental policy is concerned, however, a focus on the attitudes and behaviour of programme recipients (farmers and other land managers) has tended to obscure the role of street‐level bureaucrats responsible for extending and advising on schemes and the impact of their interpretive frameworks and communication practices on policy outcomes. This paper draws on interviews with extensionists and advisers in England and Finland in order to explore the different interpretations, which these actors bring to the implementation of agrienvironmental policy and to reflect on the implications of this for the way environmental advice is currently being offered to farmers within the agri‐environmental network.

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Over decades the concept of integration has been promoted to enhance alignment between policy domains, and to manage trade-offs and maximize synergies across management practices. Integrated approaches have the potential to enable better outcomes for flood risk management (FRM) and society as a whole. However, achieving integration in practice is a recurring challenge, especially for FRM where multiple actors need to work together across fragmented policy domains. To disentangle this complexity of integration, a framework is proposed for assessing integration and identifying different degrees of integration. This framework is based on evidence from a literature review, 50 interviews with FRM-related professionals in England, and participant observation at 24 meetings relevant for FRM. The framework sets out the context of integration, assesses the governance capacity for integration through the strength of relationships between different types of actors (bridging, bonding, and linking) and the mechanisms (actor-, rule-and resource-based) that influence them, and the realization of integration in practice through knowledge, policies, and interventions. The framework is applied for FRM in England and used to identify degrees of integration: high, intermediate, low, and minimal. An important characteristic of the framework is the interconnectivity between the governance capacity and realization of integration. The framework provides further theoretical insights into the concept of integration, while offering an approach for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners to recognize current degrees of integration in FRM and identify the critical elements for improvement. It is recommended that further research and practice-based applications of the framework are completed in different geographical and institutional contexts. Specifically, such applications can create further understanding of the interactions and dependencies between elements of the governance capacity and realization of integration.

This paper explores the link between agricultural, environmental and structural policies and desertification in Southern Europe. The focus is on the way policy goals evolve in the implementation process and become translated into actions at the operative level. The results derive from policy stakeholder interviews from four research areas situated in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The significance of policies as drivers of desertification varies between the case study areas, and harmful land management practices often result from power imbalances between interest groups involved in land-use planning and policy implementation rather than from flaws in the policies themselves. The vagueness of the definition of what 'desertification' constitutes allows for different interpretations of its nature, significance and the consequent weight it is given in land management decision-making, thus lending itself to be both misinterpreted and misappropriated by different stakeholder interests. The paper discusses the interplay between five different discourses of desertification and four distinct agendas of policy implementation and land use. The agendas either enhance or mitigate desertification and represent the interests of actors who have acquired a powerful position in the network of stakeholders, often relying on, and simultaneously maintaining, discourses and structures that lend them first right to decision-making over the natural resources of the locality.

An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk Juntti, Meri and Lundy, Lian (2017) A mixed methods approach to urban ecosystem services: experienced environmental quality and its role in ecosystem assessment within an inner-city estate. Landscape and Urban Planning, 161 . pp.

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The cross compliance instrument is an EU wide policy mechanism that ties the payment of the remaining agricultural subsidies to compliance with environmental, animal welfare and food safety standards. Policy negotiations concerning the exact nature of the conditions in individual Member States draw on different environmental and economic circumstances and differing interpretations of farmers' role in the rural environment. This article reports on two case studies of decision-making concerning the national cross compliance rules in England and Finland. Actor Network Theory is employed in order to understand how socio-economic and environmental contexts combine to influence and constrain interviewed decision-makers and the propositions they make regarding power and action in the implementation of the cross compliance mechanism. The approach uncovers some significant differences in the normative logic of how cross compliance is interpreted and delivered in the studied countries and highlights how 'baseline environmental standards' imply very different obligations for farmers in different member states. It is evident that a more flexible policy approach is needed to achieve a minimum level of environmental protection throughout the EU.