Czech minerals policy in transformation: the search for legitimate policy approaches

Jehlicka, Petr and Cowell, Richard (2004). Czech minerals policy in transformation: the search for legitimate policy approaches. Environmental Sciences, 1(1) pp. 79–109.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1076/evms.1.1.79.23764

Abstract

Analysts of environmental policy in the former Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe have increasingly recognised the need to interrelate inherited social institutions and new political dynamics. This perspective is developed by examining the transformation of minerals policy in the Czech Republic, focusing on regulation of the aggregates industry. This sector highlights specific problems for institutional 'capacity-building' for sustainable development. Efforts to move beyond the centralised, legalistic and poorly implemented regulatory regimes of the early post-Communist period encounter significant dislocation between bureaucratic capacities for data-gathering and effective mechanisms for the implementation of strategic policies. This reflects a particular concentration of expertise in the geological sciences rather than policy design, and the importation of policy mechanisms from other EU countries that depend heavily on multi-level planning, for which there is little capacity in the Czech Republic. Understanding hesitant regulatory transformations in the aggregates sector also show the need to articulate national-level analyses of capacity-building with the uneven progress towards ecological modernisation in particular economic sectors.