Embedding ecosystem services ideas into policy processes: an institutional analysis

Abstract

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.