Learning, Frames, and Environmental Policy Integration: The Case of Swedish Energy Policy

Abstract

Environmental policy integration (EPI) has been advanced as a guiding policy principle in Europe to ensure that environmental concerns are considered across all areas of policymaking. EPI can be treated analytically as a process of policy learning. The author analyses EPI and other types of learning in Swedish energy policy from the late 1980s up to today. A systematic tracing of agendas, arguments, and policy change indicates that learning processes and partial EPI have occurred. Changing actor configurations and increasing resource dependencies have facilitated learning and EPI, driven in turn by the European deregulation processes, global policy agendas, and the development of the Nordic electricity market. However, learning and EPI has been slow, indirect, and partial—constrained by how policymaking is organised in central government. Further measures are needed to advance EPI in national sector policy, including the development of policy-level strategic assessments and stronger sector accountabilities.