Policy image resilience, multidimensionality, and policy image management: a study of US biofuel policy

Abstract

This paper contributes to our understanding of why delegitimising focusing events, combined with the mobilisation of policy losers, does not always result in major policy change by undermining a monopolistic policy image and policy subsystem. Based on a close enquiry of American biofuel policy development, it argues that we can make headway in this endeavour by focusing on three factors: first, the congruence of a policy image with core values of the polity; second, the multidimensionality of a policy image; and third, policy image management strategies that maintain cohesion among coalition supporters and respond to outside criticism. In understanding better why some policy images (and policy monopolies) prove resilient when they come under assault, this paper offers a single case plausibility probe supported by indicative evidence from other policy studies.

Governing Complexity: Recent Developments in Environmental Politics and Policy

“…Scholars in the past three years continued the tradition of using environmental policy topics to develop many of the major theories of the policy process. 12 Researchers contributed empirical tests and theoretical development for the Multiple Streams Framework (e.g., Palmer, 2015), the Punctuated Equilibrium Model (e.g., Busenberg, 2013;Mondou, Skogstad, & Houle, 2014), the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (e.g., Arnold & Fleischman, 2013), and the Advocacy Coalition Framework (e.g., Elgin, 2015;Heikkila et al, 2014). Development of the relatively new Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) continues this tradition, as NPF scholars used the cases of wind power (Shanahan, Jones, McBeth, & Lane, 2013) and climate change (Jones, 2014) to further build and refine the framework.…”

Politics in the U.S. energy transition: Case studies of solar, wind, biofuels and electric vehicles policy

“…Numerous environmental provisions were also added, including sub-mandates for advanced and cellulosic biofuels and standards for lifecycle greenhouse gas reductions. Thus, the regulation was both expanded and "greened," reflecting the multidimensional interests in the pro-ethanol policy coalition (Mondou, Skogstad, and Houle 2014).…”

“…Still, the policy was not a simple culmination of complementary interests. Behind-the-scenes negotiations were incredibly contentious, in part because the rapid growth of ethanol raised concerns about its impacts on food prices, pollution, and land use (Delshad 2009, Breetz 2013, Mondou, Skogstad, and Houle 2014.…”

The Growth of Biofuels in the 21st Century

“…The counter-intuitive result is that, as complex as such a policy is, it is precisely the layering of policy and the nesting of biofuels within broader debates that has helped protect the original, domestically motivated design against novel and unanticipated domestic and international pressures explored in this and earlier chapters. Mondou et al (2014), in their detailed analysis of the resilience of US policy, point to findings that, they suggest and we agree, apply also to EU policy.…”