We do so by analysing the selection and deployment of dismantling strategies at the EU level over an extended period of nearly 25 years (1992–2016). We address the puzzling coexistence of growing dismantling discourses but limited dismantling of policy outputs by paying closer attention to the intervening process: namely the selection and implementation of dismantling strategies. In this article we make an original contribution by investigating how far the observed absence of significant policy dismantling can be explained by analysing the various dismantling strategies that have been deployed, that is, the ‘mode, method or plan chosen to bring about a desired dismantling effect’ (Bauer and Knill 2014, p. Hence, growing political demands for policy dismantling in the EU are not (yet) translating into significant policy change. In fact, in some cases the policies targeted for reform have become more not less stringent (Benson and Jordan 2014). 2019) have, for example, pointed out that in spite of multiple political demands for and the discourse of policy dismantling, EU environmental policies have not been dismantled across the board. 2015 Gravey 2016 Steinebach and Knill 2017 Burns et al. Initial studies of the content of policies at the EU level have, however, suggested that significant dismantling is not occurring at the EU level. More recently Jordan and Turnpenny ( 2012) and Bernauer and Knill ( 2012) have studied dismantling in the UK and Germany, respectively. Over three decades ago, Hanf ( 1989), for example, analysed the deregulation of environmental policy in the Netherlands. Dismantling has generally been studied at the national, rather than at the EU level. But studies of environmental policy dismantling at the EU level have been much more limited. What about the other part: that policy dismantling would fail? The rapid rise up the EU's agenda of new discourses of better regulation and ‘fitness checking’ has certainly attracted the attention of analysts (Gravey and Jordan 2016 Steinebach and Knill 2017). This pattern of events has confirmed the first part of Vogel's prediction: that policy expansion would stall. Policy sectors such as the environment and health were particularly heavily affected (Kassim et al. Their work has revealed that after three decades of significant policy expansion, the Commission significantly reduced the number of new policy proposals after the late 2000s. This growth has been at the heart of the EU's emergence as an environmental ‘Regulatory State’ (Majone 1999) and has attracted the attention of many policy scholars. But has it?ĮU environmental legislation has grown from a few dozen laws in the 1970s to over 400 pieces (Delreux and Happaerts 2016). Crucially, he claimed that the state of policy gridlock in the US after 1990 would ‘at some point occur in Europe’ (Vogel 2003, p. Vogel concluded his article with a bold prediction: that having caught up with the US, the EU would continue to follow in its footsteps, gradually moving in a less environmentally ambitious direction. The net result of limited expansion and limited dismantling was what he termed policy gridlock (Vogel 2003). When Vogel completed his 2003 article, attempts to achieve dismantling were also running into political opposition, this time from pro-environment interests. Bush and Trump administrations (Layzer 2012 Klyza and Sousa 2013 Bomberg 2017). These demands were amplified in the subsequent W. Meanwhile, Vogel argued that weakened support for new policies in the US after 1990 also went hand in hand with political demands for what he termed policy roll-back-or what is now more commonly referred to as policy dismantling, that is, ‘the cutting, diminution or removal of existing policy’ (Jordan et al. And in international negotiations, evidence of the EU exerting its power to push up international standards has continued to accumulate (Selin and VanDeveer 2015)-such as in the area of climate change (Oberthür and Groen 2017). ( 2002) termed an ‘ever closer ecological union’. ![]() Into the early 2000s, the EU continued to move seemingly ineluctably towards what Weale et al. His core claim-that throughout the 1990s the European ‘tortoise’ gradually caught up and, in many respects, overtook the American ‘hare’ as political opposition to new policies grew-has been repeatedly confirmed by subsequent developments (Vogel 2012). But in a highly influential article published in 2003, Vogel argued that things started to change after 1990. Its environmental policies were demonstratively more ambitious than the EU's. The conventional wisdom is that until the 1980s, the US was the world's environmental lead state. Leadership in the development of new policies has been a longstanding theme in environmental policy analysis.
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