Farmers face numerous challenges and hazards that may affect health. Plant protection products (PPPs) are often investigated and criticized in terms of their effects on human and environmental health. However, research and public debates seldomly discuss farmers' perspectives on plant protection-related health risks. Using qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews with 28 farmers, ethnographic observations, and one 3-day farm visit, we examined how farmers perceive and manage health risks related to PPPs and other plant protection strategies. Contrary to some public opinions in Switzerland viewing farmers as "polluters", participants evaluated plant protection-related health risks for humans and the environment. Thereby, farmers often expressed greater concerns for environmental than human health. However, results further highlight that farmers' perceptions of the severity of these health risks were heterogeneous. Farmers employed different management strategies to minimize health risks and viewed regulatory bodies and technological advancements as important drivers for reducing plant protection-related risks for human and environmental health. They also acknowledged their role and sometimes limited scope of action in a complex system with various economic, socio-political, individual, regulatory, and environmental constraints. Lastly, farmers perceived the importance of non-human health in and for their livelihoods and highlighted their dependence on weather and climate patterns. Therefore, the present work concludes that moving beyond the distinction of human and environmental health in practice and policy may offer the opportunity to jointly improve human and non-human health and well-being and better integrate farmers’ realities into the development toward sustainable agriculture in Switzerland.

Background: Empirical research on farmers' mental health in Switzerland is limited. This study uses cross-sectional data from the first follow-up of the FarmCoSwiss cohort to descriptively compare depression and anxiety symptom prevalence between Swiss farmers and the Swiss general population. Furthermore, the association of these mental health outcomes with farm-related characteristics and individual-based mental health protection strategies was explored.
Methods: Of 878 adult baseline participants, 600 (68%, thereof 67% men) completed the follow-up survey between March and June 2024. Depression and anxiety symptoms were assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) scales, respectively. Sum scores (0–27 and 0–21) were categorized as no/minimal, mild, moderate, or (moderately) severe symptoms for descriptive analyses. Key explanatory variables included five binary farm-related characteristics (farming system: non-organic or organic; production system: animal husbandry/mixed or no animal husbandry; farm size: ≤50 or > 50 hectares; label production: yes or no; management position: yes or no), and a binary indicator of the use of one or more individual-based mental health protection strategies (any or none). Depression and anxiety prevalences were descriptively compared to 2022 data from the Swiss Health Survey. Sex-stratified negative binomial regressions assessed associations between PHQ-9 and GAD-7 continuous sum scores and explanatory variables, adjusted for age, education, marital status, and season of participation.
Results: Over half of the participants (52.3%) reported no depression and anxiety symptoms. Moderate or severe symptoms were observed in 10.7% (depression) and 9.5% (anxiety). Descriptive comparisons to the Swiss general population suggest that depression and anxiety symptoms are slightly more common among FarmCoSwiss participants. Women generally reported higher symptom prevalence. In men only, the use of any mental health protection strategy was associated with lower PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores.
Conclusions: While comparisons between two distinct study populations should be interpreted with caution, our findings suggest that depression and anxiety symptoms may be more prevalent among the Swiss farming population, particularly among women, than in the general population. Individual-based mental health protection strategies show promise for improving farmers' mental health, but our results indicate a need for sex-specific strategies. Further longitudinal research on additional farm- and sex-specific factors affecting mental health in Swiss agriculture may be of interest.

How evidence is used to frame policy issues plays a crucial role in shaping which knowledge is deemed relevant to policymaking. Drawing on argumentation theory and framing literature, we argue that evidence functions as a tool that speakers use strategically and systematically to support specific elements of frames (regarding causes, consequences, or solutions), thereby determining which bodies of knowledge are mobilised in political discourse. Using quantitative content analysis of media, trade, and parliamentary discourse in Switzerland from 2013 to 2022, we identified four frames relating to the issue of pesticide risk reduction: health, environment, economy, and practice. We found that across all frames, the most emphasised frame element is also the one most likely to be supported by evidence. Overall, consequence claims were more likely to be backed by evidence than claims about causes or policy solutions. These patterns reveal which bodies of knowledge are mobilised in political discourse in support of certain policy stances and where the presented frames lack supporting evidence. Recognising the role of framing in evidence use can thus support more transparent and reflexive policymaking by helping researchers and policymakers to identify unavailable or overlooked knowledge and addressing gaps in both research and policymaking.

Factual knowledge plays a key role in building support for policy change. While change does not depend on factual information alone, it helps in both defining problems and finding solutions. By their very nature, policy issues are controversial and subject to political discourse. Factual knowledge becomes part of this discourse when it is used as evidence to either support or oppose a particular problem definition or solution. In the context of the Swiss parliament’s discourse on pesticide risk reduction between 2013 and 2022, we examined how problem- and solution-oriented evidence were used in both proposing and opposing policy change. To do so, we used computational text classification methods to examine policy documents produced by actors in the parliamentary arena. Our results indicate clear patterns in how evidence was used by these actors. While proponents of change regularly used problem-oriented evidence to highlight the risks of pesticides, opponents relied more on solution-oriented evidence to show that current policies are sufficient and additional policies are unnecessary. Furthermore, over time, those who opposed change shifted from using problem-oriented evidence to using more solution-oriented evidence. We argue that this is related to both triggering events and the advancing accumulation of knowledge about the problem, also known as knowledge creep. Thus, evidence use in political discourse is influenced by several factors, the effects of which may vary in magnitude and overlap over time.

In political discourse, speakers use scientific and experiential evidence. Both types can inform policy making, yet little is known about when political actors turn to experiential evidence to back their statements. In this article, we examine factors that influence the selection of scientific and experiential evidence in political discourses. Using data from a quantitative content analysis, we assess the influence of (1) issue polarisation, (2) the statement's focus on either the problem or the solution, and (3) the actor's position on policy change on the type of evidence used in Swiss media discourse on pesticides between 2013 and 2022. Our results show that an increase in issue polarisation was associated with an increase in the use of experiential evidence. It also mattered whether evidence was used to describe problems or solutions. In both cases, scientific evidence was preferred, but experiential evidence was used more often when speaking about solutions. Whether speakers were proponents or opponents of policy change had no influence on the type of evidence used. These findings suggest that speakers generally considered scientific evidence more appropriate to support their statements than experiential evidence. However, with increasing polarisation, the reliance on experiential evidence over scientific evidence suggests a shift towards emotionally resonant narratives rather than rigorously validated knowledge. For the case studied, we conclude that while speakers are committed to evidence-informed policy making in principle, experiential evidence is at risk of being devalued and weaponised in polarised contexts.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: In Switzerland, little is known about farmers’ wellbeing. Based on cross-sectional baseline data from the Swiss agricultural health cohort FarmCoSwiss, we carried out a study to investigate farmers’ flourishing i.e. complete wellbeing and ability to thrive – to our knowledge, the first study worldwide to do so –, to descriptively compare it to the general population and to explore its association with farm characteristics and occupational hazards.
METHODS: Of 1480 self-registered adult farmers recruited as a Swiss-wide convenience sample, 947 individuals (63.9%) signed the informed consent form, and 872 answered the online questionnaire in German, French or Italian at baseline between November 2022 and August 2023. The questionnaire obtained information on, among others, the primary outcome flourishing as assessed by the Secure Flourish Index (SFI) with its six subdomains Happiness and life satisfaction, Mental and physical health, Meaning and purpose, Character and virtue, Close social relationships, and Financial and material stability, each assessed on a scale from 0 to 10. Participants additionally answered questions on the primary predictors farm characteristics and 20 pre-selected occupational hazards classified into five domains (physical, chemical, biological, psychosocial and environmental). Participants assessed the hazards in terms of exposure frequency (Likert scale from 1 to 5) and perceived health harmfulness (Likert scale from 1 to 4). First, farmer’s mean SFI was descriptively compared to mean SFI in the general adult population using the data of 7220 participants from the 2023 follow-up of the population-based COVCO-Basel cohort established in Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft cantons. Second, zero-one inflated beta regression models were constructed to investigate the age- and sex-adjusted association of mean SFI values (overall; domain-specific) with the farming system (non-organic or organic), the production system (animal husbandry or crop cultivation), farm size (five categories) as well as the exposure to, and perception of, occupational hazards (sum of respective Likert scales).
RESULTS: Mean SFI values were between 7 and 8, in both FarmCoSwiss and COVCO-Basel. Descriptively comparing these two samples, farmers showed lower flourishing overall (7.44, SD = 1.41; COVCO: 7.70, SD = 1.30) and in the four domains Happiness and life satisfaction (7.39, SD = 1.87; COVCO: 7.91, SD = 1.55), Mental and physical health (7.03, SD = 1.73; COVCO: 7.68, SD = 1.53), Close social relationships (7.66, SD = 2.08; COVCO: 7.94, SD = 1.73) and Financial and material stability (7.06, SD = 2.45; COVCO: 7.33, SD = 2.69). Farmers reported being most frequently exposed to biological hazards (66.2% often/always exposed), but psychosocial hazards were perceived as the most harmful to health (51.9% judging them as rather/very harmful). Exposure to psychosocial hazards was negatively associated with overall flourishing and its six subdomains. In the domains Happiness and life satisfaction, Mental and physical health, and Meaning and purpose, organic farming was associated with higher flourishing. In the domain Close social relationships, organic farming was associated with lower flourishing. The largest association was observed for farm size. Farmers with the smallest farms (<5 ha) scored low in the Financial and material stability domain, with a decrease in mean SFI (logit scale) of 1 as compared to farmers with the largest farms (>50 ha).
CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest a potentially lower overall flourishing among farmers as compared to a sample from the general population, with small farm size and exposure to psychosocial hazards being of particular concern, but organic farming having potential benefits. The study underscores the need for longitudinal research of farmers’ wellbeing to maintain a thriving agricultural workforce.

The effectiveness of the Paris Agreement in achieving its global temperature goal relies on countries adopting ambitious mitigation targets and introducing corresponding measures. But do countries adopt such corresponding climate policies? This paper introduces two Vertical Policy Harmonization Indices, which quantify the gap between a country's nationally determined contribution (NDC) mitigation pledge and its national mitigation policies. These indices incorporate three dimensions of climate policymaking: emission reduction targets, the sectors covered by those targets, and the policy instruments introduced to reduce emissions. By focusing on policy instruments and mixes, we adopt a novel public policy approach for the harmonization assessment. While the Target Index compares the level and scope of reduction targets in the NDCs and national policies of 105 countries, covering approximately 91% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the Policy Effort Index also incorporates a comprehensive evaluation of the policy mix of selected countries. With the Policy Effort Index, we investigate 37 countries, covering over 70% of global GHG emissions. The indices show that three-quarters of the 105 countries have so far failed to translate their NDC targets into national policy. The remaining quarter has harmonized or even more ambitious national policies. Furthermore, countries show the most complete national policy mix in their most GHG-intensive sector, usually the energy sector. These insights demonstrate the indices' potential for enabling future research explaining the deviations between countries' domestic actions and their international pledges and evaluating the effectiveness of the progression mechanism as countries update their NDCs. Key policy insights Twenty-six of the 105 countries have national policies with GHG reduction targets either in line with or more ambitious than their NDC target. Seventy-nine countries (accounting for 50% of global emissions) have failed to translate their NDC target into a national policy. Countries tend to have their most balanced and intense policy mix in their largest emitting sector, which often is the energy sector. The coerciveness of policy instruments and the likelihood of their implementation remains low across sectors. EU membership, and development status appear to be indicative of the gap between climate mitigation pledges and policies.

Theories of the policy process understand the dynamics of policymaking as the result of the interaction of structural and agency variables. While these theories tend to conceptualize structural variables in a careful manner, agency (i.e. the actions of individual agents, like policy entrepreneurs, policy leaders, policy brokers, and policy experts) is left as a residual piece in the puzzle of the causality of change and stability. This treatment of agency leaves room for conceptual overlaps, analytical confusion and empirical shortcomings that can complicate the life of the empirical researcher and, most importantly, hinder the ability of theories of the policy process to fully address the drivers of variation in policy dynamics. Drawing on Merton's concept of function, this article presents a novel theorization of agency in the policy process. We start from the assumption that agency functions are a necessary component through which policy dynamics evolve. We then theorise that agency can fulfil four main functions – steering, innovation, intermediation and intelligence – that need to be performed, by individual agents, in any policy process through four patterns of action – leadership, entrepreneurship, brokerage and knowledge accumulation – and we provide a roadmap for operationalising and measuring these concepts. We then demonstrate what can be achieved in terms of analytical clarity and potential theoretical leverage by applying this novel conceptualisation to two major policy process theories: the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) and the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF).

The agricultural workforce is exposed to rapidly changing working conditions due to societal, economic, political, and ecological challenges. In the Swiss farming community, poor mental wellbeing is a growing concern and research focuses on the distribution and hazards of psychological distress in farmers and their social network. This perspective benefits from insights of the first agricultural cohort in Switzerland, illustrating the complex field that farmers operate in. Consequently, we call for a paradigm shift in research and policy from individual vulnerability to multi-layered social resilience toward building an agricultural workforce with the capacity to create pathways for a sustainable agriculture.

FarmCoSwiss is Switzerland's first agricultural cohort study on farmers' health and wellbeing. It aims to longitudinally describe farmers' mental and physical health and identify risk and protective factors. Between November 2022 and August 2023, 872 participants (65.9% men) were enrolled in the baseline survey assessing farm characteristics, occupational hazards, lifestyle and wellbeing, and physical and mental health. Selected variables were descriptively compared to the general population using Swiss Health Survey (SHS) data (2022) and the Swiss-wide SAPALDIA cohort (2020–2023). Findings suggest better physical health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in younger participants, and better mental HRQoL in older farmers. Furthermore, descriptive comparisons indicate that female farmers may have higher physical, but lower mental HRQoL than men. Most participants (60.5%) were classified as overweight or obese based on self-reported height and weight. Descriptive comparisons between the SHS and FarmCoSwiss suggest that farmers might spend less hours sitting, consume less alcohol and tobacco, but eat more red and processed meat. FarmCoSwiss participants further reported lower prevalences of most diseases compared to SAPALDIA participants. Occupational accidents were common in the farmers' cohort. These high accident rates as well as high BMI values and indications for sex-based differences in physical and mental health highlight the need for further research and in-depth studies. Given increasing political, societal, and environmental pressures on agriculture, epidemiological evidence on farmers' health and wellbeing is crucial to maintain a thriving agricultural workforce.

The study of social-ecological networks (SEN) is a powerful approach to understanding and analyzing human-environment systems and interactions (Bodin et al., 2019; Bodin & Tengö, 2012; Sayles et al., 2019). It particularly emphasizes the interdependencies within and across societal and ecological systems and operationalizes them as a multi-level network. The ecological nodes in SEN can range from forest patches to different species or even specific ecosystem services (Ernstson et al., 2010). The social network consists of nodes such as individuals or organizations (e.g., municipalities, state agencies, private associations from different sectors such as land use, water protection, etc.) that communicate, collaborate, or exchange resources or information (Guerrero et al., 2015; Hamilton et al., 2019). Jointly analyzing both the ecological and social networks allows for a systematic assessment of key relationships driving outcomes in these complex systems. Furthermore, interconnectedness within the ecological network (e.g., different wetlands connected through species migrating between them) can be reflected in the social network (e.g., collaboration across different wetland managers). Such a situation is referred to as a social-ecological fit or social-ecological alignment, which is assumed to lead to beneficial governance outcomes such as, for example, effective and efficient resource management (Bodin et al., 2014; Bodin & Tengö, 2012; Widmer et al., 2019). Thus, the analysis of SEN can contribute to the goal of guiding social-ecological systems toward sustainability.

To increase the societal impact of environmental governance research, scholars have called for knowledge cumulation, meaning that scientific evidence builds more systematically on previous findings. Our article develops the perspective that such knowledge cumulation takes place not only within academia but also at science-policy interfaces (SPIs). Drawing on literature on knowledge integration, synthesis, and use as well as science-policy literature, we outline five opportunities for knowledge cumulation at SPIs: (1) proximity to democratic discourse and decision-making; (2) suitability for inter- and transdisciplinary integration; (3) combined problem and solution focus; (4) potential to increase the generality of scientific findings; and (5) creation of targeted synthesis products. We illustrate their respective benefits and challenges with empirical examples from SPIs for climate change, biodiversity and natural resources, and food systems. We conclude that SPIs are an important locus for cumulating knowledge used in complex environmental governance and that future research could explore how this interacts with knowledge cumulation in the academic realm.

Now and then, new issues arrive on the public agenda, such as a sudden health crisis or a disruptive technology. These issues get media attention, and the political actors start thinking about how to best address them. Following the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), such situations can be grasped through the concept of nascent subsystems, which contrast with mature subsystems that have been around for some time and that deal with established issues. Over time, nascent subsystems can develop into autonomous subsystems, or they can be absorbed by an already mature subsystem.

Policy process theories and institutional theories are two foundational strands in political science, both concerned with how people engage in politics. However, they differ in their focus, with policy process theories emphasizing the roles of actors, while institutional theories concentrate on the structures in which these actors are embedded. This paper bridges these two previously isolated strands, exploring how macro-institutions influence policy processes. Specifically, we investigated how political institutions, such as decentralization and corporatism, relate to coalition opportunity structures (COSs), a key concept within the advocacy coalition framework (ACF); we also investigated the role of minority coalitions and subsystem collaboration. Empirically, we based our analysis on prototypes selected according to Aranda Lijphart's models of majoritarian and consensus democracies. Drawing on existing comparative ACF applications related to climate, water, and energy policy processes, we compared results from these studies to assess the impact of institutional settings on coalition dynamics. Our findings suggest that minority coalitions are more present—and sometimes more influential—in federalist than in unitary countries and that corporatism has a greater effect on collaboration within policy subsystems than consensualism.

Many of today’s challenges, such as climate change, war, or health crises, are highly interlinked and intertwined. Actors in the public discourse sometimes use the term “polycrisis” to describe this “causal entanglement of crises”. This article investigates whether this entanglement is visible in the media discourse and whether political actors strategically (mis-)use simultaneous and overlapping crises to influence policymaking in favor of their policy beliefs and preferences. Specifically, it studies how the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 influenced the climate discourse at that time and whether and how political actors included the pandemic as “narrative strategy” to advocate their climate policy beliefs and preferences. To answer this question, this article scrutinizes the climate media discourse in 2020 in Germany and Switzerland and employs a logistic regression model combined with a descriptive and qualitative analysis of the climate discourse in the two countries. Our results show that in both countries primarily pro-environment actors use COVID-19-related arguments as narrative strategy to increase public attention for the need of a more ambitious climate policy, while pro-economy actors follow a strategy of decreasing the salience of the climate issue (i.e., not linking the issues), potentially reducing public pressure for more ambitious climate mitigation.

This article revolves around the hierarchy of beliefs and coordination. The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) emphasises political actors' role and their beliefs in public policymaking. As soon as actors share beliefs, they coordinate actions to affect policy outputs and outcomes decisively. Thus, according to the ACF, beliefs are a key driver of coordination, and manifold studies have tested this relationship. However, does coordination also affect beliefs, i.e., contribute to adopting similar beliefs? The literature, which comprises political and policy network studies, may argue so, referring to social influence and contagion. In this article, we combine the ACF with social and political network analysis to disentangle causality between coordination and beliefs in both directions and investigate whether a mutual relationship exists between the two concepts. To do so, we utilise the same policy subsystem with the same set of actors over several points in time and analyse how beliefs and coordination coevolve over time. We draw on data from the Swiss climate policy subsystem, spanning almost two decades. Specifically, we build a network coevolution model to assess how the political network (ties reflecting coordination) and belief network (ties reflecting belief similarity) influence each other over time. Our results do not definitively answer the "chicken and egg" question: What comes first—beliefs or coordination? Instead, they demonstrate that coordination and belief change mutually reinforce each other.

Currently, most research explaining why countries lead or lag in climate policy assumes a problem-oriented perspective, focusing on barriers to climate policy adoption. Here, we argue that correcting for past failures, solving problems, and bringing climate policies back on track for the Paris Agreement requires a solution-oriented perspective on the political enablers of ambitious climate policies. We unite a growing research community that has previously been scattered across disciplinary subfields with various ontological and epistemological assumptions. Rooted in a thematic review of the scientific literature, we introduce a framework with a typology of six political enablers for ambitious climate policy at its core. For each enabler, we summarize key policy implications. We illustrate our framework with a case study on the adoption of emission trading systems in the transport and building sectors in Germany and the European Union (EU) allowing future solution-oriented research to build on our effort.

Cyanobacteria produce toxic and bioactive secondary metabolites, posing risks to ecosystems and human health, yet their transformation pathways in surface waters remain unclear. We assessed biotransformation for 40 cyanopeptides including microcystins, anabaenopeptins and cyanopeptolins in surface waters and in situ enriched biofilm suspensions. In surface waters, most cyanopeptides did not degrade significantly over the course of 7 days. A wide range of biodegradability across cyanopeptides was apparent in biofilm suspensions from three rivers. Increasing the biofilm density shortened the lag time and increased initial removal of cyanopeptides. Increasing the initial cyanopeptide concentration lengthened the lag time and decreased their initial removal, supporting inhibitory effects of cyanopeptides toward enzymes involved in their own transformation. Transformation kinetics and product analysis demonstrated a structure–reactivity relationship across and within cyanopeptide classes. Anabaenopeptins were hydrolyzed at the C-terminus when arginine, tyrosine and (iso)leucine were present, but not when phenylalanine or tryptophan was present. Microcystins showed tetrapeptide formation when adda linked to arginine but not when it linked to alanine, leucine, or tyrosine. Oxidation of tyrosine and deamination of arginine residues showed an interdependence across cyanopeptide classes. These novel insights into biotransformation products and pathways of a wide range of cyanopeptides facilitate assessment of exposure scenarios in surface waters and inform about kinetics and product formation in biological water treatment.

Anticipating policy instrument preferences can be an important step in policy design to address pressing sustainability problems. But studying preferences for policy instruments is a difficult task because sustainability problems involve a non-negligible degree of tradeoffs and uncertainty. We therefore study the role of actors’ underlying ideologies (policy core beliefs) and risk attitudes in forming their preferences for different instruments. Combining the advocacy coalition framework with multi-attribute utility theory, both ideologies and attitudes toward uncertain policy consequences can influence instrument preferences. So far, policy studies literature has paid little attention to trade-offs between policy core beliefs or risk attitudes. Using Bayesian regression models on data from actors in Swiss pesticide risk reduction policy, we found that attitudes toward trade-offs and risk are indeed relevant to explain preferences for different regulatory and market-based instruments addressing agricultural pesticide use. Therefore, when designing policies for sustainability problems, considering the relative importance of policy core beliefs for different actors can help to find effective and broadly supported solutions. In addition, risk attitudes should be considered when policy design involves more coercive and stimulative policy instruments.

Die Schweizer Gewässerbiodiversität ist stark gefährdet und der Klimawandel sowie andere direkte und indirekte Treiber des Biodiversitätsverlustes verstärken sich zunehmend. Während gesetzliche und strategische Grundlagen zum Schutz der Schweizer Gewässerbiodiversität vorhanden sind, steht deren Vollzug vor vielen Herausforderungen wie beispielsweise fehlenden Datengrundlagen, mangelnden Ressourcen, Zielkonflikten und ungenügendem Austausch zwischen relevanten Akteuren. Das Projekt LANAT-3 der Wyss Academy for Nature hat sich zum Ziel gesetzt, Lösungen für diese Herausforderungen zu erarbeiten. Dieser Bericht fasst die Erkenntnisse der ersten Projektphase (2020-2023) zusammen. [...]

La biodiversité aquatique suisse est gravement menacée et le changement climatique ainsi que d'autres facteurs directs et indirects de perte de biodiversité augmentent de plus en plus. Bien qu'il existe des fondements juridiques et stratégiques pour protéger la biodiversité aquatique suisse, leur mise en oeuvre se heurte à de nombreux défis tels que par exemple l'absence de données, manque de ressources, les conflits d'objectifs et des échanges insuffisants entre les acteurs pertinents. Le projet LANAT-3 de la Wyss Academy for Nature vise à développer des solutions à ces défis. Ce rapport résume les conclusions de la première phase du projet (2020-2023). [...]

La biodiversità acquatica svizzera è in grave pericolo, poiché i cambiamenti climatici, in concomitanza con altri fattori diretti e indiretti di perdita di biodiversità, sono in crescente aumento. Sebbene esistano basi giuridiche e strategiche per proteggere la biodiversità acquatica svizzera, la loro attuazione deve far fronte a numerose sfide, tra cui la mancanza di dati, la scarsità di risorse, gli obiettivi contrastanti e uno scambio insufficiente tra gli attori rilevanti. Il progetto LANAT-3 della Wyss Academy for Nature mira a sviluppare soluzioni a queste sfide. Il presente rapporto riassume i risultati della prima fase del progetto (2020-2023). [...]

Swiss aquatic biodiversity is under great risk, with climate change and other direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss increasing. While there exist legal and strategic foundations for protecting Swiss aquatic biodiversity, their implementation faces many challenges such as a lack of data and resources, as well as conflicting objectives and insufficient exchange between relevant actors. The Wyss Academy for Nature's LANAT-3 project aims to develop solutions to these challenges. This report summarizes the findings of the first project phase (2020-2023). [...]

In einer Artikelreihe werden die Erkenntnisse der ersten Phase des Wyss Academy-Projekts «Den Biodiversitätsverlust der Gewässer stoppen – trotz Klimawandel» (LANAT-3) vorgestellt. Der erste Artikel fokussiert auf den partizipativen Prozess in der Testregion «Untere Emme», der der Identifikation von Herausforderungen und Lösungsansätzen rund um den Schutz der Gewässerbiodiversität diente. Die resultierenden «5 Stossrichtungen zur Förderung der Gewässerbiodiversität» sind ein Zwischenergebnis. Sie dienen als Grundlage für die Weiterarbeit und liefern erste Impulse.

Extreme weather events affect many areas around the world. How a country or region reacts to it can take many forms. In this article, we concentrate on policy responses, as typically found in laws, acts, or strategies. Recent research in climate change adaptation or environmental governance concluded that the degree of severity of extreme events is a crucial indicator that policy action should be taken. The event alone is a necessary, but insufficient condition for policies to be introduced. In this context, we ask: Which conditions must be at stake so that an extreme event is able to deploy its focal power and induce policy introduction or change? To answer this question, we studied more than two centuries of flood risk management in Switzerland. We relied on qualitative and quantitative data, as well as process tracing techniques, to relate event characteristics, media, political, and policy contexts to policy change in flood risk management. Results indicate that two conditions made floods turn into focusing events and support paradigm shift: high economic damage and a policy subsystem’s actor constellation favorable to change. We are convinced that our results are also replicable for other natural disasters and other countries than only Switzerland.

Subventionen werden von der Bevölkerung zwar breit akzeptiert, gleich-zeitig aber für ihre oft fehlende Wirksamkeit kritisiert. Dieser Artikel be-leuchtet die Funktionsweise von Subventionen aus politikwissenschaft-licher Sicht und analysiert sodann, wie sich jene auf deren Beliebtheit, aber auch auf deren Fähigkeit zur politischen Zielerreichung auswirkt.
Wir betrachten Subventionen im politischen Entscheidungs- und Um setzungsprozess aus Sicht der Bevölkerung und der Zielgruppe einer Politik. Zusätzlich beleuchten wir, wie sich Subventionen im föderalen System entfalten können und welchen Spielraum die Kantone bei der Umsetzung von Subventionen haben. Insgesamt möchte unser Beitrag demnach eine möglichst ganzheitliche Perspektive darauf bieten, wie sich Subventionen auf Ebene der Akteur:innen, der Prozesse und der Institutionen verhalten; ebenso, wie es um ebenenübergreifende Wechselwirkungen steht.
Wie bereits im Titel unseres Beitrags herausgestrichen, dient uns die Klimapolitik als ein besonders geeignetes Illustrationsfeld, um die Funk tionsweise, aber auch die Chancen und Herausforderungen von Subven tionen gleichermassen darzulegen. Bei der Klimapolitik handelt es sich um eine typische Querschnittspolitik, die ihrem Wesen nach sektoren-, akteurs- und staatsübergreifende Implikationen hat.

The goal of activities and processes at the science-policy interface (SPI) is to improve the outcome of decision- and policy-making. The underlying rationale is that decisions and policies will be more robust and effective if they are informed by scientific evidence. The pressing challenges that humanity is facing are complex and can only be addressed by integrating across academic disciplines and by incorporating the knowledge, experience and expertise of non-academic actors. This is illustrated for the development of pathways for sustainable food systems, specifically in the context of Switzerland. Inter- and transdisciplinarity (ITD) provide valuable insights, methods, and approaches for SPI activities. Co-production of knowledge is a central ITD concept, which could be extended to co-production of policy. At the same time, the involvement of unelected experts in policy development can compromise democratic legitimacy, posing a challenge to the ITD approach.

We feel honored to contribute the postface to this debate which reflects on the relevance and impact of our discipline for the Swiss Political Science Review. In what follows, we have summarized the "take-home messages" that we identified when reading the debate. We have therefore synthesized those elements of the relevance and impact of political science that should hold true in a more generalizable or global context. In the second part, we put the insights from this debate in a Swiss context, whether academic, political, or societal. Most importantly, we elaborate on the peculiarities of the Swiss system and their implications for Swiss political science to be relevant and create an impact.

In einer Artikelreihe werden die Erkenntnisse der ersten Phase des Wyss Academy-Projekts «Den Biodiversitätsverlust der Gewässer stoppen – trotz Klimawandel» (LANAT-3) vorgestellt. Der erste Artikel handelte vom partizipativen Prozess in der Region «Untere Emme», dieser Artikel analysiert sämtliche beteiligten Personen und deren Netzwerk sowie die Wahrnehmung der Ziele und Herausforderungen. Das Flussgebietsmanagement erfordert viel Zusammenarbeit und wird durch Konflikte und Umweltprobleme beeinflusst. Ein sektorübergreifender Ansatz ist nötig, um diese Herausforderungen zu bewältigen.

Pre-adoption phases of innovation are understudied in the innovation literature. This article addresses pre-adoption phases of innovation by running a prospective analysis. We assess the readiness of municipalities for the adoption of a digital tool that brings about process innovation concerning stakeholder management. Through an online survey, we elicit the public managers’ attitudes and their adoption expectation towards the tool. By drawing on insights from Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Theory of Planned Behaviour, we investigate which attributes of innovation along with managerial, organisational and environmental factors, contribute to a favourable attitude and an increased likelihood of innovation adoption. Our analysis reveals that while the perceived attributes of innovation such as its relative advantage and compatibility are major determinants of attitude formation and adoption expectation, pro-digitalisation beliefs, innovation-oriented organisational culture and environmental context factors such as high population and rates of new residential growth are critical in translation of positive attitudes to increased likelihood of adoption. Hence, in addition to perceived attributes of innovation and managerial characteristics, our findings also highlight the importance of organisational and environmental factors to the adoption expectation, and thus provide a more nuanced understanding of pre-adoption phases of innovation.

A network perspective to urban water governance provides a useful analytical perspective. Network approaches allow systematic descriptions and analysis of the structure of interactions among actors and technical elements. This chapter presents conceptual approaches, theoretical elements, and methodological tools related to actor networks in urban water governance. The chapter starts by presenting theoretical aspects and related research questions at the intersection of network governance and urban water governance. After an introduction to the main concepts and measures of Social Network Analysis, the chapter focuses on how network approaches can help in analyzing processes of digitalization and decentralization, not least with the concept of sociotechnical network approaches that combine actor networks with technical networks.

Calls for supporting sustainability through more and better research rest on an incomplete understanding of scientific evidence use. We argue that a variety of barriers to a transformative impact of evidence arises from diverse actor motivations within different stages of evidence use. We abductively specify this variety in policy and practice arenas for three actor motivations (truth-seeking, sense-making, and utility-maximizing) and five stages (evidence production, uptake, influence on decisions, effects on sustainability outcomes, and feedback from outcome evaluations). Our interdisciplinary synthesis focuses on the sustainability challenge of reducing environmental and human health risks of agricultural pesticides. It identifies barriers resulting from (1) truth-seekers’ desire to reduce uncertainty that is complicated by evidence gaps, (2) sense-makers’ evidence needs that differ from the type of evidence available, and (3) utility-maximizers’ interests that guide strategic evidence use. We outline context-specific research–policy–practice measures to increase evidence use for sustainable transformation in pesticides and beyond.

The role of the parliamentary arena and members of parliament (MPs) therein for both mainstreaming and cross-sectoral policy integration is largely unknown. Studying the case of Switzerland, this paper analyzes the integration of the biodiversity issue into policies of 20 different policy sectors over a period of 19 years to assess how two specific actor attributes - issue and sector specialization - increase the chances of MPs of engaging in both biodiversity mainstreaming and its cross-sectoral integration. The results based on a comprehensive collection of political documents from the parliamentary arena, and multilevel regression models show that an increase in MPs' sector specialization is associated with both a decrease in mainstreaming and a decrease in cross-sectoral integration activities. By contrast, an increase in issue specialization typically translates into biodiversity-related activity in a larger number of sectors. In the parliamentary arena, therefore, it is primarily a small group of "issue specialists" who take responsibility for the integration of crosscutting issues, such as biodiversity, into critical sectoral policies.

Prominent current policy problems such as climate change, migration, or the financial crisis embrace a multitude of issues that are tackled within single- or multiple-policy subsystems. However, interdependencies among actors that arise due to their multi-issue engagement are often discounted when studying policy processes, including learning dynamics and alliance or trust formation among actors engaged in multiple issues. Various issues compete for actors' attention, and actors need to choose an appropriate set of issues to deal with given their scarce resources. In this, why do actors engage in multiple issues? We present an innovative inductive approach that identifies policy issues related to Swiss water politics and actors involved therein. We use a two-mode exponential random graph model to estimate actors' multi-issue activity. Results show that 39% of actors engage in more than one water-related issue and that cross-subsystem and homophily clustering and clustered issue popularity drive this issue engagement.

In the last decade, a number of smart city initiatives have flourished around the world. While the literature is ripe with descriptions of those projects and pioneering cities, there is far less systematic research on why some cities are more advanced than others. As single locating entities, cities are posited to have strong geographic rootedness. Hence, spatial and socio-economic context, considered as the main stimulant of organizational innovation, can be particularly important for cities. We investigate 22 Swiss cities with smart city projects and use fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to determine the configuration of conditions that make some cities more advanced than others in their smart city development. Results indicate that a configuration of high share of service sector, presence of research institutions and high urban density is sufficient for the outcome, whereas population size, new residential development and participation to international networks appear as less important. By providing insights into the spatial and socio-economic underpinnings of smart city development, the study contributes to the understanding of the geographies of smart cities.

Managing environmental problems requires cross-sectoral and cross-level collaboration among actors. Scholars of institutional arrangements investigate how rules shape such collaboration. Scholars of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) look for explanations for collaboration in actors' values and beliefs. Rarely have these two factors been considered together when studying collaborative behavior. This paper considers institutional arrangements and actor values to examine the structure and potential drivers of actor collaboration. The study combines the Institutional Analysis and Development framework and the ACF, applying social network analysis to explore an interaction network prescribed by rules and a surveyed collaboration network. It tests the influence of actor beliefs, reputation, and institutional arrangements on collaboration investigating water management in the German Ruhr catchment. The study finds that perceived power and actor beliefs explain actor collaboration better than institutional arrangements and that perceived interactions are more diverse and denser than hierarchically structured networks of prescribed interactions.

Resilience is generally defined as the capacity of a system to recover quickly after shocks. Such an ability for continuity is also relevant for political systems. Important shocks to political systems can be triggered by natural disasters, political regime change, or other major events. We conceptualize political systems as political networks consisting of several interconnected political actors tackling problems on the political agenda. We investigate political networks' ability to recover from shocks. To do so, we first identify different types of shocks that have the ability to impact political networks. Second, we review the literature on resilience and discuss concepts related to political resilience. Third, we outline network measures and models able to grasp the reaction of a political network to shocks, so that we can operationalize the level of resilience of such a system. Throughout the text, we illustrate our theoretical ideas with selected case studies and empirical examples. We conclude that political networks need to allow for change and flexibility during the "after shock" situation: a resilient political network is not one that adopts the exact same shape, but one that has reinforced elements of its structure as a response to a shock. Finally, we outline pathways to future research.

To improve sustainable service provision, the public sector has been repeatedly subject to administrative reforms. Yet, the question arises of which types of organizations might be preferred. To address this, we systematically analyze which water supply organizations decision-makers and stakeholders, across different levels of government in Switzerland, prefer. We find that the actors prefer public organizations that involve coordination between municipalities and reject private organizations. Distinguishing between different actor levels reveals a distinct pattern, mainly related to the level of responsibility: the national (confederation) and regional (cantonal) actors only prefer coordination across municipalities, where local politicians lose a degree of control. In contrast, the local actors prefer those organizations where they can maintain democratic control the most. However, such organizations are not expected to perform sustainably, mainly because of lengthy decision-making processes, lack of access to external funds, and short-term financial planning. We, thus, conclude that, at the local level, there is potentially a trade-off between democratic values and performance.

We summarize what we assess as the past year's most important findings within climate change research: limits to adaptation, vulnerability hotspots, new threats coming from the climate-health nexus, climate (im)mobility and security, sustainable practices for land use and finance, losses and damages, inclusive societal climate decisions, and ways to overcome structural barriers to accelerate mitigation and limit global warming to below 2°C.

Although the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) emerged in Western democratic contexts, scholars increasingly apply it in other parts of the world to analyze diverse policy topics. These cross-country comparisons have provided a means for advancing comparative research, drawing lessons about policy processes, and offering opportunities to refine the framework. In this paper, we provide an overview of the ACF and its use as an analytical tool for comparative research. Through a systematic literature review, we identified 27 applications in 15 African countries, including democracies, authoritarian governments, and hybrid systems. Based on these applications published in peer-reviewed journals, we explore this illustrated collection of case studies to see how the ACF has been applied outside of Western democracies and to identify strengths and weaknesses of the ACF as a portable framework. These applications confirm the basic postulations of the ACF, but we also identify a few nuances and expectations. Based on these insights, we finally lay out a research agenda and a new generation of questions for applying the ACF in the African context as well as globally.

Während das Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) in westlich-demokratischen Kontexten entstanden ist, wird es von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern zunehmend in anderen Teilen der Welt angewandt. Diese länderübergreifenden Analysen haben es ermöglicht, die vergleichende Forschung voranzutreiben, Erkenntnisse über diverse politische Prozesse und Themen zu gewinnen und den analytischen Rahmen des ACF zu verfeinern. In diesem Papier geben wir einen Überblick über das ACF und seine Verwendung als Analyseinstrument für die vergleichende Forschung. Durch eine systematische Literaturrecherche haben wir 27 Anwendungen in 15 afrikanischen Ländern identifiziert, darunter Demokratien, autoritäre und hybride Systeme. Auf der Grundlage dieser in Fachzeitschriften veröffentlichten Anwendungen untersuchen wir – in Form einer illustrierten Sammlung von Fallstudien – wie das ACF außerhalb westlicher Demokratien angewandt wurde, und ermitteln dabei Stärken und Schwächen des ACF. Die 27 untersuchten Fallstudien bestätigen die grundlegenden Postulate des ACF, aber wir zeigen auch einige Nuancen auf. Auf der Grundlage dieser Erkenntnisse entwerfen wir schließlich eine Forschungsagenda und eine neue Generation von Fragen für die Anwendung des ACF im afrikanischen und weltweiten Kontext.

The effective conservation and promotion of biodiversity requires its integration into a wide range of sectoral policies. For this to happen, the issue must receive attention across policy sectors. Yet, we know little about how attention to the issue evolves over time and across sectors. Drawing from the literature on environmental policy integration/mainstreaming and policy process theories, we develop competing hypotheses, expecting either increasing or fluctuating attention to the biodiversity issue. We tested the hypotheses using the case of Swiss politics between 1999 and 2018. Applying a combination of computational methods, we analyze the content of a comprehensive collection of policy documents (n ≈ 440,000) attributed to 20 policy sectors. Comparing the sectors, we find that (1) a persistent increase in attention is the exception, (2) if there is an increase in attention, it is likely to be temporary, and (3) the most common pattern is that of invariant attention over time. Biodiversity integration - if it does happen at all - tends to occur in cycles rather than in steady long-term shifts. This implies that the conservation of biodiversity does not follow the cross-sectoral nature of the problem, but is subject to the dynamics of "politics," where actors, because of limited resources, engage with (aspects of) an issue only for a certain amount of time.

Many policy problems such as climate change, water pollution, or biodiversity loss originate in one sector or location but deploy their effects elsewhere and so require comprehensive regulation that is both source-directed and cross-sectoral. But, how can we assess a country’s cross-sectoral policy performance when it comes to solving complex (environmental) problems? To answer this question, the study examines pesticide regulation in Costa Rica. Synthetic pesticides are widely used to sustain agricultural production, but they constitute a risk for humans and nature. To assess policy performance, both the substantive (policy instruments) and institutional (legislation) aspects of policymaking targeting pesticide risks mitigation are considered for evaluation. More specifically, the policy mix of instruments in respective action plans as well as legislation in respective laws and regulations are analysed. To assess the cross-sectoral dimension and to add to literature on policy density and intensity, criteria like formulation of objectives, target group integration, coordination and policy instrument types are used. The findings indicate that policy mixes in the water and health sector exhibit high cross-sectoral performance in terms of source-directed instruments, but cross-sectoral performance in the overarching legislation is limited.

Les pesticides sont avant tout utilisés dans l’agriculture, mais aussi en milieu urbain et dans d'autres domaines. Sous forme de produits phytosanitaires, ils réduisent les pertes de rendement et de qualité dues aux organismes nuisibles. Toutefois, l'emploi actuel de pesticides porte toutefois un préjudice considérable à l'environnement et en particulier à la biodiversité. En dépit de certaines lacunes, les répercussions indésirables sont bien documentées. La présente fiche d'information aborde spécifiquement les incidences de l'usage de pesticides sur l'environnement, la biodiversité et les services écosystémiques et propose des pistes d'action possibles pour la politique et la société, visant à réduire les effets indésirables. Elle ne thématise pas, par exemple, l'importance des pesticides pour la production agricole ou les incidences sur la santé humaine.

Pestizide werden primär in der Landwirtschaft, aber auch im Siedlungsraum und in weiteren Bereichen eingesetzt. Als Pflanzenschutzmittel vermindern sie Ertrags- oder Qualitätseinbussen durch Schadorganismen. Der heutige Pestizideinsatz belastet aber die Umwelt und insbesondere die Biodiversität beträchtlich. Trotz Wissenslücken sind die unerwünschten Auswirkungen gut dokumentiert. Das Faktenblatt nimmt spezifisch die Auswirkungen von Pestiziden auf Umwelt, Biodiversität und Ökosystemleistungen in den Blick und zeigt mögliche Handlungsansätze für Politik und Gesellschaft zur Reduktion der unerwünschten Nebenwirkungen des Pestizideinsatzes auf. Nicht thematisiert werden im Faktenblatt etwa die Bedeutung von Pestiziden für die landwirtschaftliche Produktion oder die Auswirkungen auf die menschliche Gesundheit.

Centralities are a widely studied phenomenon in network science. In policy networks, central actors are of interest because they are assumed to control information flows, to link opposing coalitions and to directly impact decision-making. First, we study what type of actor (e.g., state authorities or interest groups) is able to occupy central positions in the highly institutionalized context of policy networks. Second, we then ask whether bonding or bridging centralities prove to be more stable over time. Third, we investigate how these types of centrality influence actors' positions in a network over time. We therefore adopt a longitudinal perspective and run exponential random graph models, including lagged central network positions at t1 as the main independent variable for actors' activity and popularity at t2. Results confirm that very few actors are able to maintain central positions over time.

Policy discourses are important platforms for political actors to express their preferences on certain issues and are usually linked to a specific policy subsystem. From a research perspective, they have the potential to indicate ideological coalitions, policy change and learning. Using discourse network analysis, we identify core policy actors, issues, and coalitions in Switzerland's climate policy discourse and investigate how they have evolved over the past 15 years. In line with the policy process literature, we expected to see more stability than change in the discourse linked to the mature climate policy subsystem. However, our results have shown that policy discourses are more volatile than policy subsystems, and that national and international policy developments are able to trigger change, particularly in terms of the configuration of actor coalitions and the issues discussed.

Despite an increasing number of people exposed to flood risks in Europe, flood risk perception remains low and effective flood risk management policies are rarely implemented. It becomes increasingly important to understand how local governments can design effective flood risk management policies to address flood risks. In this article, we study whether high flood exposure and flood risk perception correlate with the demand for a specific design of flood risk management policies. We take the ideal case of Switzerland and analyze flood risk management portfolios in 18 flood-prone municipalities along the Aare River. We introduce a novel combination of risk analysis and public policy data: we analyze correlations between recorded flood exposure data and survey data on flood risk perception and policy preferences for selected flood risk management measures. Our results indicate that local governments with high flood risk perception tend to prefer non-structural measures, such as spatial planning and ecological river restoration, to infrastructure measures. In contrast, flood exposure is neither linked to flood risk perception nor to policy preferences. We conclude that flood risk perception is key: it can decisively affect local governments' preferences to implement specific diversified policy portfolios including more preventive or integrated flood risk management measures. These findings imply that local governments in flood-prone areas should invest in raising their population’s awareness capacity of flood risks and keep it high during periods without flooding.

In this chapter we study the longer-term response of a national government to natural disasters. We are interested in when and how collaborative governance arrangements spark new national flood prevention policies. Our understanding of collaborative governance not only includes public and private actors that are involved in a complex network (see Nohrstedt 2015) but also the larger institutional setting as well as regulations in the domain of flood risk management. In other words, we conceive the full range from politics and polity to policies when defining collaborative risk management (see also Driessen et al. 2012). For national flood prevention this concretely means that decision making and implementation processes are designed multilevel and cross-sectoral, that competences and responsibilities are shared between different jurisdictions and policy subsystems, and that policies and regulations reflect this horizontal and vertical integration of actors and institutions (Ingold et al. 2018; Ingold 2017). [...]

Numerous pesticide policies have been introduced to mitigate the risks of pesticide use, but most have not been successful in reaching usage reduction goals. Here, we name key challenges for the reduction of environmental and health risks from agricultural pesticide use and develop a framework for improving current policies. We demonstrate the need for policies to encompass all actors in the food value chain. By adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, we suggest ten key steps to achieve a reduction in pesticide risks. We highlight how new technologies and regulatory frameworks can be implemented and aligned with all actors in food value chains. Finally, we discuss major trade-offs and areas of tension with other agricultural policy goals and propose a holistic approach to advancing pesticide policies.

Public policy analysis is interested in how policies emerge and develop in order to address societal problems. Issues related to water, such as the contamination of surface waters, floods, or plastic pollution in oceans are often highly complex, concern different jurisdictions, and require the collaboration of public and private actors. This complexity is addressed through integrated water management principles. However, these principles give room to open questions such as: what are the main challenges of policy analysis (research and practice) in terms of multi-level actor involvement (politics), cross-sectoral solutions (policies), and new institutional arrangements (polity)? To answer these questions, the seven papers of this Special Issue combine approaches borrowed from policy analysis with principles of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Each article tackles a complex, water-related problem and collectively, the papers present empirical evidence from case studies located around the world. We learn from all these analyses that adopting a policy perspective helps disentangling the procedural components of IWRM (the involvement of actors, the definition of the appropriate management area, the attribution of competences, etc.) from more substantial ones (like the development of a management plan and the implementation of measures). Addressing cross-sectoral and multi-level challenges is a difficult task, and policy analysis can help shedding light on both, the legitimacy of processes, and the effectiveness of their outputs and outcomes.

The world is in the grip of a crisis that stands unprecedented in living memory. The COVID-19 pandemic is urgent, global in scale, and massive in impacts. Following Harold D. Lasswell's goal for the policy sciences to offer insights into unfolding phenomena, this commentary draws on the lessons of the policy sciences literature to understand the dynamics related to COVID-19. We explore the ways in which scientific and technical expertise, emotions, and narratives influence policy decisions and shape relationships among citizens, organizations, and governments. We discuss varied processes of adaptation and change, including learning, surges in policy responses, alterations in networks (locally and globally), implementing policies across transboundary issues, and assessing policy success and failure. We conclude by identifying understudied aspects of the policy sciences that deserve attention in the pandemic’s aftermath.

The concept of “advocacy coalitions” is the bedrock of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), one of the most established and successful approaches for understanding policy processes across the globe. This article revisits and sharpens the conceptual definition of advocacy coalitions. We summarize the lessons from its theoretical emphases under the ACF and specify its five attributes (policy actors, shared beliefs, coordination, resources, and stability). Through this specification, we identify the ideal coalition type and several coalition subtypes. We then clarify and make a distinction between how we think about coalitions as a concept and how we approach coalitions empirically. This article sharpens the lens for describing and explaining coalitions toward better observations, theorizing, and measurements. It ends with next steps for further deepening and broadening knowledge about advocacy coalitions.

Achieving effective, sustainable environmental governance requires a better understanding of the causes and consequences of the complex patterns of interdependencies connecting people and ecosystems within and across scales. Network approaches for conceptualizing and analysing these interdependencies offer one promising solution. Here, we present two advances we argue are needed to further this area of research: (i) a typology of causal assumptions explicating the causal aims of any given network-centric study of social–ecological interdependencies; (ii) unifying research design considerations that facilitate conceptualizing exactly what is interdependent, through what types of relationships and in relation to what kinds of environmental problems. The latter builds on the appreciation that many environmental problems draw from a set of core challenges that re-occur across contexts. We demonstrate how these advances combine into a comparative heuristic that facilitates leveraging case-specific findings of social–ecological interdependencies to generalizable, yet context-sensitive, theories based on explicit assumptions of causal relationships.

This paper focuses on cooperation among organizations in a common‐pool resource (CPR) problem situation. Cooperation is particularly challenging in settings where resource degradation is produced by a variety of different sectors and parts of the population; and where the problem, as well as public responsibilities, transcend borders and jurisdictions. Focusing on transboundary water quality management in the Rhine catchment area, we ask: What drives two actors in a CPR problem situation to cooperate with each other? We argue that the degree of threat to a CPR is an important driver for collective action, and focus on actors' exposure to and perception of a threat to a CPR. Furthermore, we rely on applications of the ecology of games framework (EGF), taking into account the larger institutional context of CPR management. This allows us to test whether actors' participation in forums, such as regional and international water body associations, helps to overcome the CPR problem by further enhancing interactions among actors. Based on survey data and applying advanced network statistics (exponential random graph models [ERGM]), we conclude that although problem exposure is one factor that enhances joint cooperation, participation in forums plays an even bigger role for cooperation in a CPR problem setting. Our study contributes to research on cooperation in CPR problem settings, highlights the need to more systematically include the effects that CPR problems have on actors when analyzing CPR problem settings, and stresses the function of forums as triggers for cooperation in CPR problem situations.

本文重点关注公共池塘资源（CPR）问题下的组织合作。当资源退化的“始作俑者”来自各类不 同群体，且CPR问题和公共责任超越了司法管辖范围时，合作会很困难。我们将焦点放在莱茵河流域 的水质管理上，并提出如下问题：在面临CPR问题的情况下，什么因素会驱动两个行为者进行合作？ 我们认为，对CPR的威胁是集体行动的驱动因素，因此，我们关注了行为者对CPR威胁的接触以及感 知。我们依赖于生态博弈框架（EGF），来考虑CPR管理背后更大的制度背景。我们检验了行为者参与 论坛是否会有助于增强行为者之间的互动，进而克服CPR问题。根据调查数据，我们采用了社会网 络高级统计分析方法（指数随机图模型，ERGM），并得出结论：对威胁问题的接触可以促进共同合 作；此外，参与论坛对于CPR问题环境下的合作更为重要。该研究有助于对CPR问题环境下的合作进 行探索，突出了在分析CPR问题时系统考虑其对行为者的影响的必要性，并强调了论坛引发合作的 这一功能。

Multiple actors across different institutional levels play a role in water governance. The coordination of these actors is important for effective water governance. However, the joining together of multiple actors can have several implications, such as a redistribution of power across actors, a change in democratic control and citizen influence as well as shifting accountability structures. These implications can involve different barriers and bridges that might impede or foster coordination. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, we assess the following barriers and bridges for coordination: (1) reputational power in terms of who is perceived as important for coordination in the water sector; (2) democratic legitimacy in terms of actors' value of local control of water services; and (3) accountability in terms of the regional actors' capacity to steer in the water sector. This article focuses on three cases in a Swiss region that has experienced water provision challenges due to its highly fragmented water supply structures. We find that reputational power serves as a bridge in our three cases: when the actors responsible for water supply regard potential coordination partners as important, then we observe coordination. In contrast, we do not find conclusive evidence to support the assumption that a fear of losing local control is a barrier for coordination. Instead, our results indicate that accountability, in the form of vertical steering by the regional actors, serves as a bridge for coordination, and that this could help mitigate some of the potentially negative effects of democratic legitimacy perceptions: through convening local actors or providing positive incentives to municipalities to work together, regional actors can foster coordination.

Social-ecological network (SEN) concepts and tools are increasingly used in human-environment and sustainability sciences. We take stock of this budding research area to further show the strength of SEN analysis for complex human-environment settings, identify future synergies between SEN and wider human-environment research, and provide guidance about when to use different kinds of SEN approaches and models. We characterize SEN research along a spectrum specifying the degree of explicit network representation of system components and dynamics. We then systematically review one end of this spectrum, what we term 'fully articulated SEN' studies, which specifically model unique social and ecological units and relationships. Results show a larger number of papers focus on methodological advancement and applied ends. While there has been some development and testing of theories, this remains an area for future work and would help develop SENs as a unique field of research, not just a method. Authors have studied diverse systems, while mainly focusing on the problem of social-ecological fit alongside a scattering of other topics. There is strong potential, however, to engage other issues central to human-environment studies. Analyzing the simultaneous effects of multiple social, environmental, and coupled processes, change over time, and linking network structures to outcomes are also areas for future advancement. This review provides a comprehensive assessment of (fully articulated) SEN research, a necessary step that can help scholars develop comparable cases and fill research gaps.

In policymaking, actors are likely to take the preferences of others into account when strategically positioning themselves. However, there is a lack of research that conceives of policy preferences as an interdependent system. In order to analyse interdependencies, we link actors to their policy preferences in water protection, which results in an actor-instrument network. As actors exhibit multiple preferences, a complex two-mode network between actors and policies emerges. We analyse whether actors exhibit interdependent preference profiles given shared policy objectives or social interactions among them. By fitting an exponential random graph model to the actor-instrument network, we find considerable clustering, meaning that actors tend to exhibit preferences for multiple policy instruments in common. Actors tend to exhibit interdependent policy preferences when they are interconnected, that is, they collaborate with each other. By contrast, actors are less likely to share policy preferences when a conflict line divides them.

One open question in environmental sciences is whether effective management of natural resources depends on the fit between the bio-physical and the governance system. To address this question, we investigate water quality in transboundary rivers and ask to what extent a fit between the area covered by the physical extent of pollution and the area in which this pollution is addressed through management and policy regulation can be observed. We adopt a spatial approach and argue that the visualization of social-ecological overlap and misfit supports science and practice when taking decisions about how best to explain or address ineffectiveness and cause-effect mismatches in transboundary river management.
We focus on drinking water supply in the international river basin of the Rhine focusing on micropollutants. These persistent trace compounds have potential toxic effects on humans and ecosystems, which makes them a relevant type of pollution that needs to be taken into consideration. Based on a combination of mass flow and social network analysis, we can conclude that the Rhine River is characterized by large social-ecological overlap, but that some parts of the catchment area still lack integration.

We address a key puzzle in policy studies: why don't major differences in political systems and policy produce major differences in policy processes, outputs, and outcomes? We show why key aspects of fracking policy are similar in the UK and Switzerland despite the UK majoritarian government being 'all out for shale' and Switzerland’s consensus democracy favouring moratoriums. We use the 'advocacy coalition framework' and new survey data to show why differences in UK and Swiss processes are subtle. In both cases, actors cooperate and compete with each other by sharing information within and across coalitions.

This paper analyzes the prospects for introducing the precautionary principle in water protection policy. In situations where a problem enters the political agenda and scientific uncertainties remain about causes or effects, political actors can justify state intervention based on the precautionary principle. It allows for public action even if risks related to the problem remain unclear. While the precautionary principle is widely applied in health and environmental policy fields all over the world, the mechanisms leading to its adoption are not fully understood. To close this gap, the paper investigates decision-makers preferences for the precautionary principle and further asks: Which factors promote political actors' preferences for precautionary policy measures? In order to answer this question we study the case of emerging micropollutants – a water quality issue that recently entered political agendas, where many uncertainties remain about sources and effects. We rely on data gathered through a standardized survey among the political elite in Switzerland, which represents one of the first countries that adopted policy measures to reduce micropollutants in water bodies, despite the uncertainties that remain. Results analyzed through a temporal network autocorrelation model reveal that actors embedded in collaborative governance arrangements have the tendency to prefer precautionary action. Certain aspects of policy design, such as problem prioritization and target group membership, also impact the prospects for introducing the precautionary principle.

New techniques of unconventional oil and gas extraction, such as hydraulic fracturing, challenge current political, institutional and administrative practices in how to regulate activities in the underground. Conflicts of interests between economic promotion, landscape and natural resource protection, and new trends on energy markets are further intensified by the fact that techniques of oil and gas extraction come with a considerable amount of uncertainties regarding ecological and health impacts. Information exchange is one important aspect of how political actors try to reduce uncertainties and conflicts. Based on exponential random graph models (ERGM) for network data, we analyze to what degree ideologies, public authority, existing collaboration and scientific expertise drive information exchange in hydraulic fracturing regulation in the United Kingdom. Results show that technical and political information exchange have to be disentangled, and that the former is driven by expertise and existing collaboration, the latter by ideology, public authority and existing collaboration.

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the concept of social acceptance, especially in the wake of the transition from non-renewable to renewable energy sources. Social acceptance is thereby studied from very different backgrounds and based on distinct conceptualizations. We argue that the reason for the great variety in the use of 'acceptance' is not mainly its interdisciplinary and multidimensionality, but a missing policy making perspective and its insights and knowledge about processes, actors and (in)formal decision-making.
This contribution proposes a framework to refine the concept of social acceptance. Taking into account that the stage and specificity of the policy making process heavily influence the response towards RET and the process triggered, we identify three steps that need to be addressed when defining a research design that includes social acceptance: the object and context under scrutiny, the relevant actors, and the roles they play. Our proposed framework thereby adopts a political science point of view and the main research interest deals with political actors deciding upon and implementing future policies.

The study of public policy deals with subsystems in which actors cooperate or compete to turn their beliefs into policy solutions. Yet, most studies concern mature subsystems in which the main actors and their allies and enemies can easily be identified. This paper tackles the challenge of studying nascent subsystems, in which actors have begun to engage in politics but are uncertain about other actors’ beliefs. Actors therefore find it relatively difficult to identify their allies and opponents. Focusing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework, we examine three main ways in which actors might agree to support the same policy design before they decide whether or not to form long-term relationships within advocacy coalitions: they see the issue through the same lenses, they follow leaders, or they know each other from earlier cooperation. We use the case of fracking policy in Switzerland and the UK as a key example, in which actors have begun to agree with each other, but where final policy outputs were not yet defined, and long-term relationships not yet observable. We find that, when dealing with new issues, actors strongly rely on former contacts rather than shared ideologies or leadership.