What role do evaluations for environmental policies have in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden? And could evaluations be better implemented in order to create and uphold effective and efficient environmental policies? These are the two questions this study aims at answering. The study focuses on three main areas in regard to ex-ante and ex-post evaluations for environmental policies: Organisation, guidelines and specific evaluations. As a result of the analysis, a number of lessons learnt for the three investigated areas are found and a set of recommendations on how to improve the evaluation of environmental policies in the Nordic countries in the future are provided.

The literature on policy strategies, instruments, and styles is impressive. Still, a complex variety of theoretical and conceptual approaches and analytical tools hamper a good overview. Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons proposes such a framework for the field and clearly shows how public policy instruments are classified, packaged, and chosen, while highlighting the role evaluation plays in the instruments-choice process.Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons offers a comprehensive analysis of categories and typologies of policy instruments. It classifies sticks, carrots, and sermons - or, more specifically, regulation, economic means, and information. Readers are offered a comparative perspective of evaluation practice in foreign contexts. Special attention is paid to the examples of Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Canada, the United States, and the Republic of Korea. As such, this volume crosses language barriers that stand in the way of dispersing research results among the international community of theoreticians and practitioners. As nations become increasingly interdependent, problems of implementation and evaluation of policy choices will become issues of increasing gravity.Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons provides insights into the traditional and current practice of policy and program evaluation in various contexts. The book's theory of comparative public policy will produce understanding and guidance in designing better policies. It will be of wide interest to those in the fields of public policy, particularly policy design, policy implementation, policy evaluation, comparative politics, and economics.

What role do evaluations for environmental policies have in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden? And could evaluations be better implemented in order to create and uphold effective and efficient environmental policies? These are the two questions this study aims at answering. The study focuses on three main areas in regard to ex-ante and ex-post evaluations for environmental policies: Organisation, guidelines and specific evaluations. As a result of the analysis, a number of lessons learnt for the three investigated areas are found and a set of recommendations on how to improve the evaluation of environmental policies in the Nordic countries in the future are provided.

As Thomas Sterner points out, the economic 'toolkit' for dealing with environmental problems has become formidable. It includes taxes, charges, permits, deposit-refund systems, labeling, and other information disclosure mechanisms. Though not all these devices are widely used, empirical application has started within some sectors, and we are beginning to see the first systematic efforts at an advanced policy design that takes due account of market-based incentives. Sterner‘s book encourages more widespread and careful use of economic policy instruments. Intended primarily for application in developing and transitional countries, the book compares the accumulated experiences of the use of economic policy instruments in the U.S. and Europe, as well as in select rich and poor countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Ambitious in scope, the book discusses the design of instruments that can be employed in a wide range of contexts, including transportation, industrial pollution, water pricing, waste, fisheries, forests, and agriculture. Policy Instruments for Environmental and Natural Resource Management is deeply rooted in economics but also informed by perspectives drawn from political, legal, ecological, and psychological research. Sterner notes that, in addition to meeting requirements for efficiency, the selection and design of policy instruments must satisfy criteria involving equity and political acceptability. He is careful to distinguish between the well-designed plans of policymakers and the resulting behavior of society. A copublication of Resources for the Future, the World Bank, and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. The book examines the methodological challenges in analyzing the effectiveness of development policies. It presents a selection of tools and methodologies that can help tackle the complexities of which policies work best and why, and how they can be implemented effectively given the political and economic framework conditions of a country. The contributions in this book offer a continuation of the ongoing evidence-based debate on the role of agriculture and participatory policy processes in reducing poverty. They develop and apply quantitative political economy approaches by integrating quantitative models of political decision-making into existing economic modeling tools, allowing a more comprehensive growth-poverty analysis. The book addresses not only scholars who use quantitative policy modeling and evaluation techniques in their empirical or theoretical research, but also technical experts, including policy makers and analysts from stakeholder organizations, involved in formulating and implementing policies to reduce poverty and to increase economic and social well-being in African countries.

This text analyzes the background of the instrumental approach to the field of public administration. It also provides an exposition of four alternative schools of thought about policy instruments, namely, the instrumentalist, proceduralist, contingentist and constitutivist schools.

The literature on policy strategies, instruments, and styles is impressive. Still, a complex variety of theoretical and conceptual approaches and analytical tools hamper a good overview. Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons proposes such a framework for the field and clearly shows how public policy instruments are classified, packaged, and chosen, while highlighting the role evaluation plays in the instruments-choice process. Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons offers a comprehensive analysis of categories and typologies of policy instruments. It classifies sticks, carrots, and sermons—or, more specifically, regulation, economic means, and information. Readers are offered a comparative perspective of evaluation practice in foreign contexts. Special attention is paid to the examples of Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Canada, the United States, and the Republic of Korea. As such, this volume crosses language barriers that stand in the way of dispersing research results among the international community of theoreticians and practitioners. As nations become increasingly interdependent, problems of implementation and evaluation of policy choices will become issues of increasing gravity. Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons provides insights into the traditional and current practice of policy and program evaluation in various contexts. The book's theory of comparative public policy will produce understanding and guidance in designing better policies. It will be of wide interest to those in the fields of public policy, particularly policy design, policy implementation, policy evaluation, comparative politics, and economics.

Richardson et al.’s respected and seminal Policy Styles in Western Europe (1982) shed valuable light on how countries tend to establish long-term and distinctive ways to make policies that transcend short-term imperatives and issues. This follow-up volume updates those arguments and significantly expands the coverage, consisting of 16 carefully selected country-level case studies from around the world. Furthermore, it includes different types of political regimes and developmental levels to test more widely the robustness of the patterns and variables highlighted in the original book. The case studies – covering countries from the United States, Canada, Germany and the UK to Russia, Togo and Vietnam – follow a uniform structure, combining theoretical considerations and the presentation of empirical material to reveal how the distinct cultural and institutional features of modern states continue to have implications for the making and implementation of public policy decisions within them. The book is essential reading for students and scholars of public policy, public administration, comparative politics and development studies.

This handbook provides a unique, systematic and comprehensive overview from leading experts in the field of the policy-making tools deployed at all the phases of the policy process. It covers the fundamentals of both new and established policy tools – from regulation and public enterprises to subsidies and information campaigns, as well as new tools, such as social impact investing, nudges, crowdsourcing, co-production and new digital governance and data analysis techniques. The book consists of nine sections with five corresponding to the major research emphases of studies on policy tools across the stages of the policy cycle (agenda-setting, formulation, decision-making, implementation and evaluation). These are accompanied by overviews of key research and concepts, a discussion of how different kinds of tools can be usefully combined in simple or complex policy portfolios or mixes, and a concluding section on future research directions. Consolidating the state of knowledge and uniting classic foundational material with recent advancements in theory and practice in one location, the handbook is a defining volume in this field. The Routledge Handbook of Policy Tools is essential reading and an authoritative reference for scholars, students, researchers and practitioners of public policy, public administration, and public management, as well as those interested in comparative politics and government, public organizations and the use of policy tools and instruments in individual policy areas from climate change to public health.