What helps or limits the use of ecosystem services ideas in practice? This paper develops and
tests a new institutionalist-based analytical scheme to explore how ecosystem services as a
‘new’ policy idea might interact with established policy regimes, processes and norms. The
scheme is based on three different decision-making ...
What helps or limits the use of ecosystem services ideas in practice? This paper develops and
tests a new institutionalist-based analytical scheme to explore how ecosystem services as a
‘new’ policy idea might interact with established policy regimes, processes and norms. The
scheme is based on three different decision-making levels: micro, meso and macro. To test
the plausibility of the scheme, it is applied to the case of the UK where a specific Ecosystem
Services Framework (ESF) was prioritised as a new way of doing environmental policy after
2011. Drawing on findings from 32 elite interviews, the paper shows how dynamics at all
three levels intersect with differing institutional explanations. It helps explain important
factors for embedding - or restricting embedding - of the ESF in policy-making. The scheme
provides a useful way to link analysis of the ‘lived experience’ of policy actors implementing
the ESF with the institutional landscape they occupy, and allows for a nuanced and integrated
analysis of the potential barriers faced by ecosystem services ideas generally.