Dissertation Research: Social Experiments in Regulation: Pollution Prevention in the US, Germany and Britain

本文通过对英国、德国和美国有机化工行业污染防治的案例研究，探讨了环境规制中的社会学习。大多数学习理论仍然反映了技术专家和政策制定者自上而下的、可衡量的学习的工具理性思想。本项目以现有的学习方法为基础，运用科学技术研究和比较政策研究的解释观点，探索其他主体如何参与学习。基于社会实验的学习方法可能更好地描述并最终理论化环境领域中发生的许多活动的自下而上和分散的性质。本文将社会实验定义为社会行动者，而不仅仅是政策制定者和监管者，通过在其环境中实际应用的经验，发展、测试、适应和确保环境保护的理念、制度和实践的吸收的活动。为了评估这种方法的可行性，研究人员将开发和应用四个指标：解释框架；代理商;透明度;以及对结果的吸收。为了加强结论，研究人员将进行跨国比较研究，以探索每个国家是否进行污染预防实验以及进行何种污染预防实验与该国的监管和社会政治特征之间的关系。

This dissertation investigates social learning in environmental regulation, via a case study of pollution prevention in the organic chemical industry in Britain, Germany, and the United States. Most theories of learning still reflect instrumentally rational ideas of top-down, measurable learning by technical experts and policy-makers. This project builds on existing learning approaches, and applies an interpretive viewpoint, informed by Science and Technology Studies and comparative policy scholarship, to explore how other agents participate in learning. A learning approach based on social experiments may better describe, and eventually theorize, the bottom-up and decentralized nature of much activity that occurs in the environmental arena. This dissertation defines social experiments as activities by which social actors, not simply policy-makers and regulators, develop, test, adapt, and ensure uptake of ideas, institutions, and practices of environmental protection, through experience with practical applications in their settings. To evaluate the viability of this approach, the researcher will develop and apply four indicators: frames of interpretation; agents; transparency; and uptake of results. To strengthen the conclusions, the researcher will carry out a cross-national comparative study to explore the relationships between whether or not, and what kinds of, pollution prevention experiments take place in each country, and that country's regulatory and socio-political characteristics.