Networks for Water Policy: A Comparative Perspective

Network models for analysing public policy have become widely used in recent years. This volume, originally published in 1995, assesses the network idea by applying a common perspective on network analysis to the constellations involved in water policy formation and implementation in England and Wales, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, the USA and at the level of the EU. Water policy - addressing basic human needs for the supply of adequate surface and groundwater as well as for the maintenance and improvement of water quality, is an increasingly salient subject. Each case covered in this volume treats the issues of water policy network composition and structure, and determinants of network characteristics, as well as documenting the influence of the networks on policy developments towards more network openness, emulation of business behaviour nd less domination by traditional professional groups such as engineers. Essays by the editors provide a common analytical perspective and offer both explicitly-comparative conclusions and evidence-based assessments of the strengths and limitations of the network perspective.

Prof.dr. Hans Th. A. Bressers is Emeritus Professor of Policy Studies and Envi-ronmental Policy at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and founder of the CSTM, currently the Section of Governance and Technology for Sustainability. He has been vice-chairman of the official permanent Evaluation Committee of the Environmental Manage-ment Act, which advised the Minister regularly on the efficacy of Dutch environmental policy. He was also the chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Dutch Minister for the Environment for the implementation of environmen-tal policy by local government and has been chairman of SWOME, the Dutch social science association for envi-ronmental and energy research. He also has been an independent scientific member of the Commission on Sustainable development of the Dutch Social-Economic Council (SER) and a member of the national Advisory Committee on Water. His dissertation on the effectiveness of Dutch water quality management (1983) won the annual award for best Dutch Public Administration book and was later chosen by a Dutch practitioners’ journal as one of the ten best international public administration books of the 20th century.

Laurence J. O’Toole, Jr. is distinguished research professor emeritus in the School of Public Administration’s Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia (USA). His research focuses on environmental policy and management as well as policy implementation in complex institutional settings.

Jeremy Richardson is an Emeritus Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He was previously Nuffield Professor of Comparative European Politics at Oxford. Prior to moving to Oxford had been Professor of Politics at Strathclyde, Warwick, and Essex Universities. His main interests are in the role of interest groups in the policy process, the policy change process, and the processes of European integration. He was the Founding Editor of the Journal of European Public Policy and is currently Co-Editor of the Journal. His recent publications include Policy-making Under Pressure. Rethinking the policy process in Aotearoa New Zealand (2021: Co-Edited with Sonia Mazey), and British Policy-making After Brexit (2023: Special Issue of the Journal of European Public Policy co-edited with Patrick Diamond). In 2011 he was the recipient of the European Union Studies Association award for Lifetime Achievement in European Studies.