ABSTRACT

The idea of Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) and the policy tool Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) have come to the fore in European policy making over the past two decades. This article examines the introduction and implementation of SEA at national and sub-national levels in Hungary. It evaluates the factors affecting the process of international lesson-drawing in environmental policy based on empirical evidence. The article concludes that, just like in other policy fields, the process of lesson-drawing has been shaped and constrained by domestic governance structures and key endogenous factors embedded in socio-cultural settings. Structure and factors are featured by transience and path dependency at the same time. Hierarchical governance has the most significant influence on the process excluding voluntary forms of policy transfer hence resulting in the application of a stapled EPI, formal, instead of substantive transfer. Environmental policy transfer at the local level is problematic due to the low capacity and the lack of the financial means and human resources. It suggests that the EU principles of subsidiarity have been undermined. The article therefore makes an important contribution to understanding the key obstacles of (environmental) policy transfer. Additionally, reforming the theory of policy integration the author argues that beside the transactive, substantive and procedural aspects (the level of) path dependency should be taken into consideration to a better grasp of the effectiveness of policy transfer.

摘要

在过去的二十年里，环境政策整合 (EPI) 和政策工具战略环境评估 (SEA) 在欧洲政策制定中脱颖而出。本文探讨了 SEA 在匈牙利的国家和次国家层面的引入和实施。它基于经验证据评估了影响国际环境政策经验教训过程的因素。本文的结论是，与其他政策领域一样，吸取教训的过程受到国内治理结构和嵌入社会文化环境的关键内生因素的影响和约束。结构和因素同时具有短暂性和路径依赖性。分级治理对排除自愿形式的政策转移的过程具有最显着的影响，因此导致应用合订的 EPI，正式的，而不是实质性的转移。由于能力低下以及缺乏财力和人力资源，地方层面的环境政策转移存在问题。这表明欧盟的辅助性原则已被破坏。因此，本文对理解（环境）政策转移的主要障碍做出了重要贡献。此外，在改革政策整合理论时，作者认为除了交易性、实质性和程序性方面（水平）之外，还应考虑路径依赖，以更好地把握政策转移的有效性。