EU policy-making, local action, and the emergence of institutions of collective action

Abstract

This volume presents a new way of looking at processes that result from environmental policy-making in Europe and affect environmental politics in its southem member-states. Instead of asking what Brussels is doing to harmonize environmental policies in Europe and how Brussels succeeds in implementing the idea of sustainability as a unifying policy frame in the member-states, this volume has a different aim. It argues that the ‘new Europe’ provides an opportunity structure for collective action in Europe. This, however, is only part of the story. The other part of the story is that those who act within this new opportunity structure do not act as monads, but as people shaped by common life experiences, i.e., by work and leisure, by production and consumption, and by common experiences of inclusion and exclusion. One major aim of this volume is to uncover such social factors and the driving forces which are fuelled by and react to environmental politics in Europe.