300194 Transnational Environmental Governance and Public Involvement (BS) (SoSe 2014)

This seminar will focus on shifts in environmental governance, their organisational dimensions and implications for public involvement. Together with a greater reliance on market mechanisms, such shifts include for example a tendency towards more participatory and inclusive forms as well as voluntary rules, soft laws and standards. The seminar will use a number of empirical examples in order to discuss the construction of agency and democracy in the area of environmental decision-making and risk regulation. Students will work with empirical cases and present their work at the final session of the seminar.

A transnational world increasingly understands democracy through an emphasis on dialogue and broad participation. Especially in the environmental field the experimentation with forms of public and stakeholder involvement have been numerous. We will explore transnational standards for public and stakeholder involvement and how these are translated and implemented in local, national and trans-national contexts of environmental governance. This includes how risk regulation and environmental decision-making are constructed in different areas, how for example the allocation of responsibility, knowledge production and decision-making are organised and involve (and shape) different organisational actors as well as citizens and publics.