This chapter sets out the cyclical theoretical and empirical development of the concept of polycentricity. It starts with a discussion of Vincent Ostrom's work on polycentricity (Section I); followed by a discussion of some of the case studies undertaken to test polycentric systems. The results...

Governments are environmental actors, both as regulators and as contributors to environmental impacts. In both capacities, governmental action tends to be regulated by, and based on, different legal bases as compared to private action. Since governments are capable of acting in ways that...

This special issue provides several perspectives on the potential and limits of judicial risk regulation as a mechanism to redress actual and perceived regulatory failures. Central to this inquiry is the legitimacy of the court system to act as a risk regulator, specifically as compared to...

Since the 1970s, the influence of the European Union in the area of environmental law and policy has steadily expanded, even though environmental policy continues to be a shared competence between the European Union and its Member States. As such, the allocation of competences between the...

Since the establishment of its original mandate as a purely economic union, the competences of the European Union have rapidly expanded, not least in the area of environmental policy making. This increase in competency areas has also affected the accession conditions for Turkey – the necessity...

Within European climate change and energy policy, the European Emissions Trading Scheme (‘EU ETS’) occupies a prominent role. This article considers the developing case law of the European Courts on the EU ETS. Specific attention is paid to the role of the different actors within the EU ETS...

The premise of the article is that horizontal private enforcement could improve the deterrent effect of public enforcement in cases where there is a low likelihood of public enforcement due to information dissymmetry or funding problems on the side of the public enforcer. In order to illustrate...

Within economic theory, emission trading schemes have long been advocated for their relative simplicity and their allocative and dynamic efficiency. Despite these apparent strengths, regulators have only recently started to meaningfully incorporate emission trading into their toolbox. This...

‘Legal uncertainty’ is the uncertainty experienced by the parties to a lawsuit with respect to the outcome of litigation. When the consequences of a judgment extend to third parties, legal uncertainty can spread into markets and become ‘market uncertainty’. Thus, market uncertainty has...

This paper deconstructs the relationship between harm and pollution, and argues that understanding this relationship creates valuable opportunities for improving environmental policy by minimizing or even eliminating the harm from some pollutants, even when reducing the total amount of pollution...