Lars Koch

Dissertation Topic
Cooperative Concepts of Politics in Environmental Policy. A Classification and Evaluation Demonstrated on the Example of Chemical Products Regulation

Brief Description
Cooperation between the government and non-governmental actors is all around within the political decision-making process. This study asks for the reasons and for the functionality of cooperation within all stages of the policy-making process theoretically as well as empirically.
The theoretical part is based on different approaches from economics and political science. The theoretical analysis applies insights from New Institutional Economics - supplemented by results from game theory and experimental economics - Public Choice as well as approaches from political science. The theoretical approaches come to different conclusions with regard to the evaluation of cooperative environmental policy. The author argues that the different estimations depend on the different accentuation of willingness, capacity and opportunity of the authorities to implement efficient and effective environmental measures by their own. Against this background the author builds up a framework to analyze empirical case studies of cooperation within chemicals policy. Analyzed forms of cooperation are the committee for environmental related existing substances, the committee for hazardous substances at the workplace, three voluntary agreements and finally elements of cooperative law making within the ongoing European process for a joint European law with regard to existing chemicals - better known under the acronym REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals).
The final section analyzes the case studies with regard to causes and functionality of cooperation and asks for the contribution of the different theories to explain the results of the empirical analysis.

Links:
Dissertation ( PDF-Format, German)