Norman J. Vig - Böcker

The first comparative analysis of the development and practice of technology assessment in different national settings.Parliaments and Technology explores an issue critically important to the practice of democracy everywhere: How do citizens and elected officials assess the opportunities and costs of new technologies that may profoundly impact their societies' future? For example, what are the social and moral implications of gene patents, reproductive technology, cloning and genetic engineering or of virtually unlimited access to information? Technology assessment has become one of the most important methodologies for aiding legislatures in analyzing and deliberating such questions.The first comparative analysis of the development and practice of parliamentary technology assessment in different national settings, this book explains the origins, methods, and impacts in five European countries-Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands-and the European Parliament. It also provides a theoretical framework for comparing the institutionalization of new functions in different parliamentary systems and the influence of national political cultures on the conceptualization and operation of these new agencies.Contributors include Josée van Eijndhoven, John Grin, Dick Holdsworth, Rob Hoppe, Simon Jos, Lars Klüver, Todd M. La Porte, Maurice Laurent, Michael Norton, Herbert Paschen, Thomas Petermann, and Norman J. Vig.

As environmental issues continue to become more prevalent in society and surrounding policy challenges become more complex, Environmental Policy once again brings together top scholars to evaluate the changes and continuities in American environmental policy since the late 1960s and their implications for current policy. Students will learn to decipher the underlying trends, institutional constraints, and policy dilemmas that shape today’s environmental politics as they evaluate approaches to future challenges.

All serious environmental threats are now international in scope and more than one thousand international environmental agreements already exist. Yet the prospects for international cooperation leading to the management of impacts on the planet remain grim. The Global Environment meets the need for an authoritative assessment of the state of international environmental institutions, laws and policies at the end of the 20th century.The book examines disagreements over the meaning of sustainable development, problems inherent in implementing environmental policies and the conflict over the exclusion of developing countries from the Kyoto Protocol. It discusses the profound trade-offs that may be required, the role of international financial interests in promoting incompatible forms of development and analyses international environmental institutions, law and policy and sustainable development.