The (limited) political influence of ecological economics: A case study on Dutch environmental policies

Although the ecological economics (EE) discourse attempts to influence environmental policy, empirical studies have concluded that its success in this endeavour has been limited thus far. In the Netherlands, however, two EE-related policy concepts, Environmental Utilisation Space and Ecological Footprint, were strongly present in environmental policy during certain periods in time, but subsequently disappeared from the environmental agenda. The central question of this article is how these ups and downs of the EE concepts can be understood: which factors determine their rise on and fall from the policy agenda over time? To answer this question, this article offers a conceptual model informed by the approaches in political science on framing, agenda-setting and knowledge utilisation. We conclude that the interplay of concept-specific characteristics, the formation of coalitions around the concept and contextual variables explain the rise and fall of the aforementioned concepts. A match between the dominant policy frame and the core elements of the concept provides the opportunity for the two concepts to be pushed on the agenda. We observe the alternation of 'constraining' frames, which allows for EE concepts to survive, and 'reconciling' frames, which block agenda entrance for EE concepts. Furthermore, the alternation of these frames seems to correlate with economic and public environmental attention cycles in the Netherlands.