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POSTMATERIAL VALUES AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY CHANGE
Author(s) -
Watts Nicholas,
WandesfordeSmith Geoffrey
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
policy studies journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1541-0072
pISSN - 0190-292X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1541-0072.1980.tb00944.x
Subject(s) - environmentalism , articulation (sociology) , environmental policy , proposition , salient , political science , set (abstract data type) , politics , order (exchange) , positive economics , environmental ethics , sociology , political economy , economics , environmental resource management , epistemology , law , philosophy , finance , computer science , programming language
This paper advances the proposition that environmental policy may be particularly suited as a vehicle for the articulation of post‐material values in advanced industrial societies, and that recognition of this is likely to prove enormously helpful in future comparative and cross‐national research into the origins of environmentalism and the causes of environmental policy change. The paper notes the salient characteristics of postmaterialism and the overlap of these with the leading indicators of environmentalism. Possible structural causes for this overlap are noted and opposed to the prevailing socialization explanation for the adoption of postmaterial and environmental values. To help understand the impact of environmentalism on policy an idealized development of the movement is sketched. This leads to the description of a set of general factors likely to be related to the way environmentalism finds political expression in various countries. In the final section, the focus is on what we might want to know about the policy process in order to be able to gauge environmentalist influence on policy outputs.