Policy design and environmental policy development: A meta-policy analysis of Aotearoa New Zealand's Resource Management Act 1991
Abstract
Predominant policy analysis frameworks are incapable of addressing the fluid and dynamic nature of policy contexts. Ignoring the variety of values, contexts, audiences, and tools in policy analysis hinders the design and development of useful policy. This is especially relevant in environmental policy which must integrate ecological, economic, and sociocultural dimensions in order to achieve viable or sustainable life-supporting systems. However, these dimensions are riddled with diversity, complexity, and uncertainty, and this necessitates policy analysis frameworks with the capacity to provide simultaneously contingent and systemic analyses. Meta-policy analysis assumes such a policy setting and enables policy analysis on three levels which include the policy itself, epistemology and worldview, and the capacity for change or policy development. Addressing these levels requires the ability to analyze fluid and multiple dimensions. A revised framework of policy design was created using social postmodernism, feminist standpoint epistemology, and mobile subjectivity. This model enabled a contextual meta-analysis of Aotearoa New Zealand's Resource Management Act 1991 and addressed the legislation's formulation and implementation. The research indicates policy design meets meta-policy requirements and can be used to assess multiple, dynamic policy contexts. The research also shows that the formulation of the Resource Management Act includes values, context, audience and tools, but that its current implementation highlights serious problems in all four areas. In particular, implementation of the Act is hindered by a lack of coordination and integration amongst responsible government agencies and ministries. This is due to the preponderance of free market ideology within central government, a serious lack of bicultural structures and processes throughout the country, crippling resource scarcity in government and the wider society, and a dramatic incapacity to generate and coordinate necessary feedback related to the three dimensions of environmental policy.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Bartlett, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Political science|Environmental science
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