ABSTRACT

While various forms of soft governance have been long in the making, there is a growing introduction of new policy elements in order to ‘harden’ soft governance arrangements. These new forms of ‘harder’ soft governance (HSG) vary in the degree of hardness in different settings. This special issue aims to derive lessons for climate and energy policy on HSG by looking across other policy fields and institutions where such ‘hardening’ has emerged, including in climate policy monitoring, the EU Energy Union, the UNFCCC, the OECD, the Open Method of Coordination, the European Semester, and policy surveillance in transnational city networks. Bringing the contributions together, this introduction reviews soft governance approaches, including their hardening. It then develops a framework for diagnosing HSG, including indicators such as obligations, justification, precision, ‘blaming and shaming’ opportunities, the role of third party actors, bundling, enforcement by policy field coupling, and sanctions. The introduction then identifies driving factors of HSG, including the role of the EU Member States, a strong need for coordination, policy entrepreneurs and institutional opportunities. The lessons from this special issue provide a useful yardstick for the future development of climate and energy governance, and the use of HSG in other policy fields.

摘要

尽管已经形成了各种形式的软治理，但是为了“强化”软治理安排，越来越多地引入新的政策要素。这些新形式的“更严格”的软治理（HSG）在不同环境下的硬度不同。本期专刊旨在通过考察出现这种“强化”措施的其他政策领域和机构（包括气候政策监测，欧盟能源联盟，UNFCCC，经合组织，开放方法）来汲取有关HSG的气候和能源政策的经验教训协调，欧洲学期以及跨国城市网络中的政策监控。综上所述，本导言回顾了软治理方法，包括其强化方法。然后，它会开发一个诊断HSG的框架，其中包括诸如义务，理由，准确性，“责骂”的机会，第三方行为者的角色，捆绑，通过政策领域耦合实施的行为以及制裁。然后，引言确定了HSG的驱动因素，包括欧盟成员国的角色，对协调的强烈需求，政策企业家和机构机会。本期特刊的教训为气候和能源治理的未来发展以及HSG在其他政策领域的使用提供了有用的标准。