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Going beyond technocratic and democratic principles: stakeholder acceptance of instruments in Swiss energy policy

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Abstract

This paper is about stakeholders’ acceptance regarding regulatory instruments in energy policy. We expect that today’s introduced instruments not only correspond most to technocratic principles and what elected officials prefer, but that they correlate with the preferences of a wider number of public and private actors in policymaking. We therefore compare the already introduced policy instruments to instrument preferences of the public administration, elected officials, but also NGOs and utilities. In doing so, we contribute to the question of whether or not the instruments already introduced today correspond to technocratic or democratic principles, or to the preferences of the larger governance arrangement involving other public and private actors. We compare three cantons in Switzerland and gather data through a systematic literature review, expert interviews, and surveys. The comparison of the data suggest that the currently selected policy instruments correspond to technocratic principles, but that they also and often correspond to the preferences of public and private actors. More concretely, whereas in one canton, NGO preferences align with the introduced instruments, in another canton, this is the case for utilities. In the third canton, all different actor types display similar preferences very much in accordance with the currently employed instrument mix. We thus conclude that depending on the region, different principles and preferences are reflected in the current policy mix.

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Notes

  1. The exact wording of the question is as follows (translated from German): ‘In the following you will find a selection of potential or already implemented measures that support the expansion of renewable electricity production in the canton of XX. Which of the following measures should, from the position of your organization, be employed primarily or secondarily by the canton of XX? You may add further measures on the blank lines on the bottom of the list.’

  2. The MCA model is then evaluated for its robustness. The threshold of indifference is set at 1. Lowering the threshold to 0 would make the model more sensitive and in this way more vulnerable to small differences in the evaluation of the instruments that might be purely based on the qualitative assessment and coding. An indifference threshold set at 2 would, on the other hand, overstress the assumption that decision makers and other actors are somewhat indifferent about the differences between policy options that have similar attributes. The threshold of preference is set at 2 for all models. Lowering the threshold to 1 is not possible because it would overlap with the indifference threshold. Raising it to 3 is an option as long as the veto threshold is set at 4 or higher. When running, the model with a preference threshold of 3 does not return large differences to the original model. The order of the instruments does not change. The alternate threshold returns, however, a less distinct ranking.

  3. Both in Lucerne and Thurgau, the number of actors being part of the utility or NGO groups and being active in RE policy is very limited. We thus only have very few responses in the respective groups.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Research and Technology, Überlandstrasse 133, 8600, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Lorenz Kammermann & Karin Ingold

  2. Institute of Political Science, University of Bern, Fabrikstrasse 8, 3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Lorenz Kammermann & Karin Ingold

  3. Oeschger Center for Climate Research, University of Bern, Falkenplatz 16, 3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Karin Ingold

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  1. Lorenz Kammermann
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Correspondence to Lorenz Kammermann.

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Kammermann, L., Ingold, K. Going beyond technocratic and democratic principles: stakeholder acceptance of instruments in Swiss energy policy. Policy Sci 52, 43–65 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-018-9341-5

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