The current list of topics is as follows

1. Overview of global environmental issues
2. Global public goods
3. From Stockholm to Johannesburg – 30 years of sustainable development
4. The global commons
5. The analytical framework for environmental policy analysis: The policy regime framework (ideas, interests, institutions)
6. Interests in environmental politics
7. Institutions in environmental politics
8. Ideas in environmental politics
9. International environmental regimes (regime theory)
10. North American environmental policy (an overview)
11. The policy process – agenda setting to evaluation
12. Agenda setting – problem definition
13. Instrument design – instrument choice
14. Implementation and evaluation
15. Environmental policy instruments: regulation
16. EPI – market-based instruments
17. EPI – information-based and voluntary instruments
18. Corporate environmental strategy and CSR
19. ISO 14000 series, etc.
20. Environmental non-governmental organization and their strategies
21. Environmental perception, attitudes, values – environmental psychology

In my notes I wrote down that I did not like putting as much emphasis on international environmental politics. Given this, I am thinking to eliminate most of the global environmental politics/international environmental politics and add subject-area topics (e.g. water policy in Canada, solid waste policy in Canada, etc.). Bear in mind that this course is primarily focused on Canadian environmental policy, and that it is mostly a methodological course (e.g. at the end of the course the student should be able to analyze environmental policy).

The use of social networking sites (SNS) has become widespread in a variety of non-profit and social justice contexts. While before Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund would need to organize mail-in campaigns, now all it takes is a tweet, a Facebook wall message or a YouTube video to spark a movement.

Using insights gained from 10 years of empirical research in the field of environmental policy, as well as my experience as a power social media user, and drawing from the body of work of the sociology of networks, I posit that successful environmental activism campaigns are founded on the basis of a strong understanding and modeling of the
behaviour of participants in SNS.

Drawing from case studies I have analyzed in the past 10 years (and focusing on cases that have used social media in the past 24 months) I offer some general conclusions into how we can model the online behaviour of transnational environmental activists.

I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My former PhD advisor is a very wise man and I owe a great deal of what I have accomplished to the formidable PhD training I had under his supervision. He shaped my thinking, enhanced my research skills by encouraging me and demanding from me to undertake empirical analyses. Even though my memorization capabilities and speed-reading skills have enabled me to master a broad variety of theoretical frameworks, my former PhD supervisor always wanted me to empirically test theories. Doing so gave me the best of both worlds (theory and empirics).

Throughout the course of my teaching, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, I have refined my instructional skills and summarized in a few sentences what I demand from my students: I want my students’ research to be evidence-based, empirically-grounded and theoretically sound.

As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s quote has indicated above, it is foolish to theorize before one has data. Even though much of my comparative environmental policy work has focused in the development of better theories that allow us to understand why governments at various scales choose different policy options, I have years of training in empirical research methods, both qualitative and quantitative. I have undertaken in-depth qualitative studies (interviews and institutional ethnographies) and built massive datasets that have been explored through a variety of quantitative methods (including firm demographics and multivariate analysis).

Much as my students may think I’m too demanding, I strongly believe in providing them with a strong foundation in research methods. Even if I do not teach a methods course per se, I showcase examples of studies that have both sound theoretical grounding and robust empirical research methodologies. I think that the best long-lasting learning experience I can give any student is the self-confidence of knowing how to tackle a problem using empirical research methods.

In preparing my lectures for this week (in the course POLI 375 Global Environmental Politics), I found myself at a loss. While I am well immersed in the academic literature, reading every issue of the associated journals in the discipline (Global Environmental Politics and International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics), I couldn’t find one single short piece that described to me (and obviously to my students) the state of the research agenda in environmental security.

The work of Simon Dalby, Geoff and Dave Dabelko, Thomas Homer-Dixon and a number of other scholars is focused on environmental security. And while the definitional issue seems to have been left behind in the conversation, I still find that scholars have difficulties in determining what exactly encompasses environmental security.

Recent work by Joshua Busby has focused on demonstrating the linkages between climate change and international security. This link is particularly visible because of the obvious nexus between vulnerability to climate change in nations and bad governance/past conflict. The above mentioned negative conditions have made these countries even more vulnerable. Responding to disasters thus becomes a challenge.

In my primary research field (water), the concept of water security has been at the forefront of academic discussions, but I ponder whether the field of environmental security can afford to continue to focus on “security in resource X or Y” rather than examining the inextricable linkages between environmental degradation and international security/foreign policy.

So I ponder, where is the debate going in the field of global environmental security? Is it going to continue in the two sub-fields (interconnected) of environmental refugees and climate-security? I wrote this blog entry to help set the stage for an online conversation between me, my students in the course, and potentially other research colleagues in the field. Comments, as always, appreciated.

Teaching public policy has always been a delight for me. Exploring the challenges of creating and implementing policies that are effective, efficient and equitable along with my students has been one of the highlights of my academic career. Previously, I taught POLI 350A Public Policy, with a focus on Canadian public policy (urban, social, health and environmental). This year, I am teaching POLI 352A The Comparative Politics of Public Policy. I was thrilled to be offered to teach comparative public policy, given that my research is focussed primarily in understanding cross-national environmental policy puzzles.

I have spent the better part of the past decade exploring the cross-regional dynamics of industrial restructuring in Mexican cities. My research has examined patterns of water governance across 5 different states in a Mexican watershed. Current projects include an investigation of how environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) in Canada, the United States and Mexico, use the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC)’s Citizen Submission on Enforcement Matters Mechanism (CSEM) to pressure national governments to remedy failures to comply with their domestic environmental regulations.

photo credit: Carlos Sánchez Pimienta

Throughout this semester, I’ve found teaching this course particularly challenging. Given that the course has no prerequisites, students can take this class without any previous coursework in public policy. While not unsurmountable, the challenge I faced was to ingrain the comparative method in my students’ thinking process. Thinking about how other nations design and implement policy and various factors influencing policy process and outcomes becomes challenging.

When one is required to detach oneself from his/her own national and cultural biases, and undertake a cross-national, or cross-regional policy comparison, recognizing those biases and going beyond our accumulated knowledge about a particular country’s policy style becomes part and parcel of the challenges in undertaking the analysis. I noticed this particular challenge in an article I recently assigned to my undergraduate students by Jacob Hacker:

Hacker, Jacob (2004) “Dismantling the Health Care State? Political Institutions, Public Policies and the Comparative Politics of Health Reform” British Journal of Political Science (2004), 34:4:693-724

In this article, Hacker undertakes a challenging cross-national comparison of public health reform in affluent democracies (Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States), focusing primarily on the politics of reform, and attempting to explain cross-national variations in legislative and policy outcomes. Hacker’s article offered my students a really good example of comparative analysis of health policy across five different nations.

When I asked my students to think critically about Hacker’s analysis, I requested that they indicate any shortcomings that they may have perceived in Hacker’s methodological approach, his theoretical framework and his case selection. For me, the main goal of this exercise was to test to what extent I had been successful in inculcating my students with an evidence-based, theoretically-grounded, comparative policy analytical framework.

I find comparative public policy analysis incredibly exciting, rewarding and challenging at the same time. Exploring causes of cross-national policy outcomes’ variations and offering empirically-grounded explanations for these is a highly exciting process. Throughout the semester, I did a lot of in-class analysis and application of various analytical frameworks, including the Bardach 8 step model.

Moreover, in teaching this course (The Comparative Politics of Public Policy), I have perceived that my students’ main challenge has been to think comparatively from the start. I wonder why this is the case, and I prepared this blog entry with two goals in mind: First, to ask my colleagues who have experience teaching comparative public policy, what their experience has been and what the main challenges have been in teaching this course. Second, to ask my own students to provide in here (on this blog) a written response to the main challenges they have faced throughout the course, and to test whether my perception is accurate.

I’m delighted to see that the government of British Columbia is using social media to encourage public participation. The year 2009 saw a number of politicians begin exploring the use of social networking sites to reach to their constituents. While there is still ample room for improvement, it is a great move on the part of governments to start implementing these public participation tools.

Thanks to David Hume and Christine Wood (both with the BC government), I learned about the workshops that will take place throughout April 2010 in the province of British Columbia to gather input on the BC Water Act. The Vancouver workshop is on April 21st, and I’ll do my best to attend.

The Ministry of Environment is hosting Water Act Modernization multi-sector workshops in March and April 2010 in the following communities:

• Nanaimo – March 5
• Prince George March 8
• Kamloops – March 11
• Kelowna – March 12
• Abbotsford – March 29 • Smithers – April 13
• Nelson – April 16
• Fort St. John – April 20
• Vancouver – April 21

These workshops are designed to share information, discuss principles for the Water Act and explore proposals for change. The main focus of the workshops is to explore options and solutions for change proposed in a public discussion paper, to be released in February.

photo credit: Latvian Foreign Ministry

Professor Eugene Bardach is, in my opinion, one of the most practical policy analysts out there. An emeritus professor at University of California Berkeley, Professor Bardach wrote a practical, widely cited, the Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving: A Practical Guide to Policy Analysis. I have used his text and many of his articles not only in my research but also in my teaching (POLI 350A Public Policy).

As I prepare to teach The Comparative Politics of Public Policy (e.g. examining cross-national variations in national public policies, or at the regional level, cross-regional changes), I thought it would be a great exercise for me, for my students and for my readers to conduct a full policy analysis (national or regional level, I don’t expect to do cross-national comparisons) using Bardach’s method.

I plan to write separate blog posts for each one of the steps of Bardach’s model to help my readers (and my students) understand how policy analysis is conducted, in real life. I have been thinking for a long time as to which policies I would like to analyze. I know that the Burrard bike trial could be one, where there’s at least *some* data. I could look at the ban on water bottles at the municipal level.

So, have your say on here. Suggest policy decisions that you would like me to examine using Bardach’s model. I’ll consider all options, primarily based on the amount of information we have available. I’ll decide by early next week (the first week of November, 2009). Drop a comment on this post with your suggestions. It can be a Vancouver, Lower Mainland or Canadian issue, or an international one.