Greening Society

This book shows how the environmental policy pursued in The Netherlands has undergone a revolutionary change: a change referred to as a paradigm shift. A new trend can be detected from top-down governance to an interactive form of governance. This new paradigm assumes that environmental policy can only be realised successfully if it is embedded in a wider balancing process in which both societal and economic interests are taken into account. Parties other than government, such as businesses, non-governmental organisations, and citizens, must become involved in the policy-making process and subsequently its implementation. The new paradigm has given a significant impetus to the debates on greening our society. The goal of this book is to offer the reader an analysis of this paradigm shift and to explain the possibilities and limitations of exploring the new method of governance. The perspective taken is from the multidisciplinary social science point of view; the developments in environmental policy are analysed on the basis of sociology, political science, and policy studies. While the analyses relate specifically to Dutch environmental policy, the lessons learned can also be of significance for the environmental policy pursued in other liberal democratic nations.