CONSENSUS

Sustainable development is now an overarching, long term goal of the EU - as is ‘better regulation’ and, frequently, deregulation. One of the key challenges for sustainable development is how to integrate economic, environmental and social objectives within this ideological policy framework. Through exploring historical patterns of deregulation, and anticipating future deregulatory initiatives, the CONSENSUS project will investigate how and to what extent conflicts and trade-offs between economic, social and environmental objectives are addressed in processes of deregulation and policy dismantling. In particular, how do individual states respond to these challenges under different levels of economic pressure? CONSENSUS will carry out a systematic longitudinal comparison across 25 OECD countries, over the period 1975-2005, on how priority areas for sustainable development – climate change, public health, natural resource management, biodiversity and poverty and social exclusion (such as social transfer and social assistance programmes) – have been shaped by factors (eg. global competition, international harmonization of standards, veto players, political parties and macro-economic austerity pressure) which can trigger policy dismantling. A mixed-methods approach will combine quantitative (statistical) with qualitative (case-study, documentary analysis, surveys and questionnaires) methods. More information will be available on commencement of the research in Spring 2008. CONSENSUS is a Collaborative Project bringing together seven Partners from across Europe for three years. CONSENSUS is supported by the SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME of the European Union, under Work Programme topic: SSH-2007-2.1.2. (The extent to which tradeoffs or synergies exist between the different aspects of sustainable development The consortium of CONSENSUS is led by the University of Konstanz, Germany. Project Co-ordinator: Prof. Dr. Christoph Knill.

Primary Research Theme: Governance for sustainability

Timescale: April 2008 - 2011
(This project is still ongoing)

Funded By: The European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme

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