Measuring the Impact of the Crisis on European Environmental Policy

This edited volume brings together key scholars to investigate the impact of the 2007–8 economic crisis upon environmental policy in Europe, which has been identified as a source of environmental leadership. In this introductory chapter the editors outline the key questions that the volume investigates: has policy been affected by the crisis, in what direction, what strategies have states adopted, and at what level have the effects manifested themselves? The chapter outlines the analytical toolkit that is applied across all the cases, the Index of Policy Activity (IPA), which seeks to test concepts from the policy dismantling literature and to apply and further develop the IPA in order to offer a robust comparative analysis of the ways in which the economic crisis has shaped European environmental policy.