Kurzy

Study project: A city for all? Environmental justice and urban governance

Blockseminar Beteiligung in der Mobilitätswende

Economic Analysis of Environmental Policy WT23/24

We live in the so-called Anthropocene, named after the growing impact of humans on the earth’s environment, which is reflected especially in current climate change. Climate change is not only “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen” (Nicholas Stern), but also a "wicked problem". In light of the economic causes of the Anthropocene and its complex moral issues, an understanding of both economics and politics is needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Thus, in this course students learn to look at and analyse environmental policy comprehensively. For this purpose, a number of principles of economics in general and, in particular, concepts and methods of environmental and institutional economics are introduced and discussed, that are then applied to environmental policy problems. Topics covered include: Market failures, environmental public goods, "tragedy of the commons", externalities and free-rider behaviour. A particular focus is on the role of institutions for environmental policy and how these need to be designed to contribute to a (just) solution of environmental problems (e. g. design of property rights).

After an understanding of the economic problem has been conveyed, the basics of analytical and comparative political science are introduced. The focus is on policy field analysis and its empirical application to environmental policy. First, the origins and lines of development of the political science sub-discipline are outlined and central theories and methods of the macro, meso and micro levels are presented. Against this background, actors, institutions and instruments that influence the processes of environmental policy decision-making to shape the aforementioned institutions are discussed. Using the policy cycle as a heuristic framework, studies on environmental problems such as global warming, biodiversity loss or deforestation are explained. The growing relevance of non-state actors and gender-specific aspects are also addressed.

That is, the course provides a comprehensive body of knowledge and tools for analysing the strengths and weaknesses of environmental policies. A knowledge that will be applied directly to individual case studies during the semester. Hence, at the end of the course, students will be able to express an informed opinion on the challenges of our time.

Environmental Governance

Introductory session on 19th of October 10:15 room EB 416! 

Learning outcome

This module will enable students to:
- identify and elaborate on the significance of environmental politics framework conditions, including in relation to other sector politics and in international comparison,
- understand and classify diverse scientific approaches of environmental governance, with their theories and methodologies,
- independently apply political science approaches to diverse, partly new and emerging problems of environmental governance, and to develop strategic plans for action, and
- identify current research gaps and formulate approaches to address them.
Student acquire the knowledge to examine environmental governance from a gender perspective.
In this module, students gain expertise (40%), method skills (40%) and system skills (10%) and social skills (10%).

Content

The module explores the fundamentals of environmental governance. The focus is on governance and democratic theories and their empirical application to different environmental policy fields. We begin with the fundamentals of environmental governance at the local, national and international level. Against this backdrop, we learn about actors, institutions and instruments of environmental governance. With different case studies of environmental politics and problems such as global warming, species loss, deforestation and water pollution, the module enables students to critically analyse "wicked problems" of environmental politics. Multi-level governance is used as a heuristic to introduce different governance arrangments in environmental politics. We systematically examine the role of democratic decision-making in different phases and on different levels of environmental governance as well as the growing relevance of non-state actors. Intersectional perspectives on environmental governance will also be taken into account.