Networks of agri-environmental policy implementation: a case study
of England's Countryside Stewardship Scheme
Land Use Policy, 21 (2):
177-191 (2004/4)Abstract
An increasing amount of land in England is managed through agri-environment
schemes such as the Countryside Stewardship Scheme (CSS). The levels
of public funding, and the largely experimental status of these initiatives,
demands on-going critical evaluation of scheme performance. Based
upon information collected during a 3-year programme of environmental
monitoring and evaluation of CSS (1997-2000), this paper focuses
attention on the implementation of CSS agreements. It argues that
understanding of this process needs to take into account a diversity
of actors, and in contrast to previous ‘participation studies’ should
not be viewed as the product of agreement holders (AHs) acting in
isolation. In doing so, the paper draws on actor network theory,
to conceptualise the implementation of the CSS as a process involving
the active construction and evolution of an actor network, initiated
by Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (the government
department that runs the scheme), into which AHs and a host of other
entities (both human and non-human) need to be enrolled in order
for the desired environmental outcomes to be realised and sustained.
A number of areas of contestation and instability in the implementation
process are revealed through the actor network analysis, allowing
a series of recommendations to policy makers to be identified.
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