Coping with Accession to the European Union : New Modes of Environmental Governance

The book explores the role of new modes of governance in helping future member states to cope with their accession to the EU. It examines the extent to which civil society and business have assisted the governments of Southern, Central and Eastern European accession countries in taking on the ever more comprehensive body of EU laws and regulations. This book explores the role of new modes of governance in helping future member states to cope with their accession to the European Union. The authors demonstrate that the accession countries of the Southern and Eastern enlargements have lacked two fundamental preconditions for the emergence and effectiveness of new modes of governance: state and non-state actors with sufficient resources to engage in non-hierarchical coordination to improve the effectiveness of public policy. This 'governance capacity' has been largely taken for granted by the governance literature since it has almost exclusively focused on Western democracies. The double weakness of transition countries results in a serious dilemma for governance research and practice alike -- the stronger the need for non-hierarchical modes of governance, the less favourable are the conditions for their emergence and effectiveness Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-6 New Modes of Governance and Accession: The Paradox of Double Weakness....Pages 7-31 Environmental Policy and the Challenge of Accession....Pages 32-47 Greece: Overcoming Statism in Environmental Governance?....Pages 48-69 Portugal: The Challenges of Environmental Governance and the Realities of Government....Pages 70-94 Spain: When Government Welcomes Environmental Governance....Pages 95-122 Hungary: The Tricky Path of Building Environmental Governance....Pages 123-147 Poland: When Environmental Governance Meets Politics....Pages 148-168 Romania: Environmental Governance — Form without Substance....Pages 169-191 After Accession: Escaping the Low Capacity Trap?....Pages 192-210 Back Matter....Pages 211-244 "The book explores the role of new modes of governance in helping future member states to cope with their accession to the European Union. To what extent have civil society and business assisted the governments of Southern, Central and Eastern European accession countries in taking on the ever more comprehensive body of EU laws and regulations?"--Provided by publisher