The Politics of Green Knowledge: A Comparative Study of Support for and Resistance to Sustainability and Environmental Indicators
Résumé
Since the 1990s, increasing environmental concerns have spurred the need for information and stimulated the development of numerous indicators, yet without a real impact on corresponding policies. To better account for this weakness, a political sociology approach to analyze how these government tools was developed in two cases: the French generic system of sustainable development indicators; and the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive based on indicators of water status. Comparative analysis shows that in both cases a coalition of actors successfully resisted the effective use of indicators by redesigning them and limiting the impact of quantified environmental information on policy making. \textcopyright 2015 The Editor, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice.