CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2010
| Author | Kitanov, Blagoy |
|---|---|
| Title | EU Membership and the Environment: A Comparative Perspective |
| Summary | This paper aims to analyze the challenges in the field of environmental policy faced by a new EU member state – Bulgaria – by resorting to a comparative politico-economic analysis of two paradigmatic models: the front-runner Denmark and the laggard Italy. The main issue is to investigate if Bulgaria’s lagging in the policy is explained by the same factors that explain the lagging behind of Italy or the communist past is the most important reason for backwardness. I aim to identify the implementation challenges in the field of environmental policy faced by a new post-communist member state after EU accession. After comparing the cases of Denmark and Italy the main hypothesis is derived, which is that poor implementation is caused by the low rank of environmental protection on the political elite’s agenda, the insufficient administrative capacity of the state bureaucracy and the low degree of involvement of grassroots societal actors (NGOs and publics). This hypothesis is demonstrated to be valid for Bulgaria using expert interviews with officials from the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and with a representative of Bulgarian environmental NGO, as well as party programs and Eurobarometer surveys. Simultaneously, the role of the communist legacy is assessed and it is argued that although it cannot be ignored, it is not the root factor in explaining environmental implementation failures in the Bulgarian case since there is no evidence for a path dependent long term development of environmental policy. |
| Supervisor | Csaba, Laszlo |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2010/kitanov_blagoy.pdf |
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