Het Nederlandse luchtverontreinigingsbeleid

Samenvatting

Dutch Policy on Air Pollution. The article is a summary of a recent Ph.D. thesis which investigates the relationship between important changes in Dutch environmental policy and the agenda-setting of acidification (in the beginning of the 1980s) and the greenhouse effect (at the end of the 1980s). It seeks an answer to the following question: did the reorientations in environmental policy result from the fact that new air pollution problems were placed on the political agenda, or was it the other way around: was their being entered on that agenda responsible for reorientations that had already begun or were already wanted? This question is tackled by means of an analysis of the two agenda setting processes (with the help of the so-called ‘streamsmodel’ of Kingdon) as well as the development of Dutch air pollution policy between 1970 and 1994 (with the help of Sabatier’s advocacy coalition and policy paradigm framework). One of the main conclusions of the research is that the fact that the greenhouse effect put on the agenda was made possible by a reorientation that was already wanted by a group of policy makers and researchers. The acidification case indicated the opposite order, i.e., policy reorientations were the result of the existence of a new problem.