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Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning

In 1998, Evert Vedung posited a typology of policy instruments making governing akin to a conversation with a donkey: regulatory (sticks), economic (carrots) and information-based (sermons) instruments. Kathryn Harrison later applied this typology to pollution control in her popular 'Talking with the Donkey' piece. Though command-and-control instruments were central up until the late 1990s, growing global interest in 'New Environmental Policy Instruments' (NEPI) led to a disinterest in regulatory mechanisms and an increase in attention to information-based and economic instruments. Are governments using regulation as a policy instrument now more than before or are they choosing policy mixes? In this paper, I examine the state of the art regarding regulation as an environmental policy instrument by exploring whether the apparent shift to NEPI did reduce interest in environmental regulation as a policy instrument. I find that policy experiments with models of policy instruments led to increased interest in policy instrument mixes. Evidence from a systematic review of JEPP scholarship and a broader scholarly review of the literature on environmental policy instruments over the past 20 years focused on drinking water and solid waste governance suggest that policy mixes might work best when faced with conditions of uncertainty and governance complexity.

Environmental regulation, governance, and policy instruments, 20 years after the stick, carrot, and sermon typology