Developing Social Capital? Inclusion of Participatory Elements and Possible ‘Open-Door’ Policy-Making in EU Environmental Policy

The paper proposes to provide a preliminary sketch and query of whether the notion of EU environmental policy-making can be / should be analysed through the development of social capital. What role can social capital at national and transnational levels have on development of the EU’s environmental policy-making process? The changing international environment has seen organised and civil society interests challenging more traditional governance pathways, and what we are seeing and experiencing at the international level necessitates the inclusion of participatory elements that provide alternative forms of cooperation in policy-making. These forms of cooperation, perhaps based more on norm diffusion than set structures and regulations, allows for a more ‘open-door’ policy-making that can foreseeably include consideration of networks at the domestic level (e.g. consideration of the development of social capital – as discussed in the works of Norris and Putnam). It is from this level that critical analyse of environmental policy is no longer only about capacity and capabilities of states but shifts to consider a wider notion of what are the organisational and structural boundaries associated with governance and policy-making at the EU-level.