Regulations as Arbiters of Risk: Great Britain, Germany, and the Hazardous Waste Trade in Western...

Regulations as Arbiters of Risk: Great Britain, Germany, and the Hazardous Waste Trade inWestern EuropeAuthor(s): Kate O'NeillSource: International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Dec., 1997), pp. 687-717Published by: Wiley on behalf of The International Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2600858 .

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International Studies Quarterly (1997) 41, 687-718

Regulations as Arbiters of Risk: Great Britain, Germany, and the Hazardous

Waste Trade in Western Europe

KATE O'NEILL

The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University

This article seeks to explain why Great Britain is one of the world's largest importers of hazardous wastes, while Germany, in contrast, is a waste exporter. Why one country exhibits such risk-acceptance behavior, while another is so risk averse, I argue, depends on differences between their national systems of environmental regulation. The style and structure of Britain's regulatory system, unlike that of Germany and its other partners in Western Europe, gives a high degree of leeway to private firms, filtering out the preferences of environmental groups and public opinion, thus enabling and facilitating the importation of hazardous wastes by waste disposal companies. The empirical section tests this argument against two alternative explanations: a state-centric explanation based on individual governments' calculations of the relevant costs and benefits associated with the waste trade, and second, a "comparative advantage" explanation, based on the technological superiority of Britain's waste disposal facilities. The conclusion draws out the implications for international environmental regulation and for domestic-level regulatory change.

Great Britain is one of the world's largest importers of hazardous wastes. It has maintained this position throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, during which time its waste imports steadily increased.1 Nearly all of this trade is legal, in the sense that its importation has the knowledge and consent of the British government, and the majority of waste imports come from other developed countries, especially Britain's partners in the European Union. By way of contrast, Germany, one of these partners, is one of the world's largest waste exporters, despite its strong environ-

Author's note: Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Chicago, Februai-y 1995, and at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Economics Association, Boston, March 1996. The author would also like to thank Ken Conca, Ellen Feldman, Michel Gelobter, Helen Milner, Sayres Rudy, Hendrik Spruyt, Patricia Taylor, Michael Turner, Erika Weinthal, members of the Environmental Politics Workshop at Columbia University, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and assistance.

' The international waste trade involves the deliberate movement of hazardous wastes from their countr-y of origin for disposal or recycling elsewhere. The wastes concerned are largely the result of industrial and agricultural production (thus excluding nuclear and household, or municipal wastes, as well as gaseous emissions), and the risks posed to human health and the natural environment from their accumulation, improper handling, and disposal are far from negligible. Waste products are causal agents in several forms of pollution, including air, water, and soil pollution, and strong links have been tr-aced between the presence of waste disposal facilities and the incidence of life-thr-eatening diseases in many areas (see Allen, 1992, Bullard, 1991, and Seager, 1993). Furthermore, issues of waste trading and waste disposal are highly politicized, due to the concentrated nature of their effects on surrounding communities, and to the efforts of the international media and NGOs such as Greenpeace Intei-national in highlighting incidents of waste dumping on less developed countries, efforts that catalyzed the development of the international regulatory regime in this area.

?D 1997 International Studies Association. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main- Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.



688 Regulations as Arbiters of Risk

mental record. This article presents the argument that these differences are ex- plained by differences between Britain's and Germany's national systems of environmental regulation.

There are several reasons why these high levels of waste importation by Great Britain present a puzzle. First, Britain is a relatively small and densely populated country, implying a limited capacity for handling vast quantities of waste. Second, Britain is an advanced industrialized democracy, with a sizable, although fragmented environmental movement, and British public opinion has always been strongly pro-conservationist. This implies, according to the "Not In My Backyard," or NIMBY, phenomenon, that public opinion strongly opposes the importation of hazardous wastes, and that these preferences will be translated into government policy in terms of an advanced and efficient infrastructure for restricting imports of hazardous wastes. This translation has not yet happened. Third, this case goes against conventional studies, which emphasize the trade in hazardous wastes between developed and less developed countries and the implications of this for North-South relations.

More interesting for scholars of international relations, we have here a case of a country, in the absence of any form of coercion, economic or otherwise, deliber- ately taking on the risk of disposing of other countries' potential pollutants, thus challenging even the most liberal assumptions about state behavior in the international system.2 This issue has not, so far, been directly confronted in the international environmental politics literature, despite its broader relevance for the study of international relations in general, and international environmental policy in particular.

To explain this phenomenon, it becomes necessary to turn to the domestic-level factors that determine a country's policy stance with respect to international environmental issues, which, in turn, allows us to utilize the literature on comparative public policy, especially that concerning environmental policy. This body of literature has so far been underexploited in the field of international environmental politics, and, indeed, it suffers itself from the absence of an international dimensihn in the application of its insights.3 In this article I argue that the key explanation of why some countries import more hazardous wastes than their peers lies in the differences between their domestic systems of environmental regulation, the sets of rules and practices that shape the relationship between public actors and private actors engaged in polluting activity. Britain's regulatory system, unlike that of Germany and its other partners in Western Europe, displays certain characteristics related to its structure and style of environmental regulation, which, by giving a high degree of leeway to private firms, both enable and facilitate the importation of hazardous wastes by waste disposal companies.

Research Questions Much of the literature on the hazardous waste trade focuses on explaining routes of the trade between countries of different income groups, for example, from OECD

2 See the debate between realist and neoliberal theorists about the assumptions underlying state interests with respect to their interactions (chiefly cooperation) in an international system characterized by the absence of any form of sovereign authority. However, even the most generous versions of neoliberal theoiy, which argue that states will cooperate when mutual gains are likely, cannot explain why a state would act to its apparent disadvantage with respect to others. For a discussion of the major themes of this debate see Baldwin, 1993.

3 The field of international environmental politics is a rapidly growing one within the broader rubric of international relations theory. It takes as its focal point the formation of, and more recently, the effectiveness of international environmental regimes and agreements. A sample of the most influential works in the field includes Bernauer, 1995, Choucri, 1993, Haas, Keohane, and Levy, 1993, Lipschutz and Conca, 1993, Porter and Brown, 1995, Mitchell, 1994, Susskind, 1994, and Young, 1994.



KATE O'NEILL 689

countries to less developed countries, or to Eastern Europe. In addition, the primary concern of much of this work is with the illegal waste trade.4 Instead, my major research interest is why certain individual countries, more than others within the same national income group, take on the risk of legally importing hazardous wastes from other countries, in this case, the anomaly of Britain within Western Europe.5

In turn, an institutional approach, by illuminating the relationship between societal actors and government actors engaged in the trade, speaks to the body of literature in the field of international political economy (IPE) concerning different domestic-level responses to similar international issues. Here, the question is why Britain and Germany, faced with similar levels of "objective" environmental risks (and benefits) posed by the waste trade, have responded in very different manners. Neither a state-centric nor a rational actor approach provides sufficient explanatory leverage here. For example, the former does not capture the ways in which government actors themselves are constrained by existing structures and modes of regulation in formulating and implementing policies, while rational actor models typically do not provide insight into the mechanisms whereby competing, and "rational" preference orderings on the part of different actors are mediated in terms of policy outputs.6 Hence, by focusing on micro-level institutional characteristics of the two cases, the following analysis explicitly addresses these problems in the discussion of both the main and competing explanations for the involvement of Britain, and Germany in the waste trade.

Therefore, I employ a comparative case study methodology to explain individual countries' propensities to legally import hazardous wastes that relies on a combina- tion of primary data on waste movements and regulatory policies, and secondary literature, especially that on comparative environmental policy.7 My main comparative case study is Germany, partly because that is the country for which most comparable data are available. More important, this case allows me to control for several potentially significant variables. Germany shares several important characteristics with Great Britain, including membership in the European Union, and

4 See, for example, Strohm, 1993, Third Wor-ld Network, 1989, Moyers and Center for Investigative Repor-ting, 1990, Clapp, 1994, and Sanchez, 1994. The argument made by these authors is that wastes tend to follow the "path of least resistance." However, it is often underspecified what factors constitute this path-whether it is lower costs of disposal, or lax regulations, or something else, so in a sense, this article breaks down this hypothesis into its component factors in order to test which is the most important.

5 Firms in industrialized countries decide to export wastes for a variety of reasons-the main being economic, with the steep rise in disposal costs over the past few years, due to more stringent regulations and the phasing out of landfill methods of disposal, and the fall in international transport costs (Strohm, 1993:133). Also, the NIMBY phenomenon has made the siting of waste disposal facilities much more contentious. For a thorough discussion of the motives behind waste exportation see Hilz, 1992. However, the broader question of why a government should allow, and even facilitate such exportation will be examined in the context of the German case.

6 This is to assume that in the issue of waste disposal "rational" preferences can even be identified. The literature on risk analysis and communication makes this point abundantly clear, arguing that the vast discrepancy between popular and "expert" assessments of the risks posed by hazardous waste disposal is one of the biggest obstacles to effective waste management at the national level. For a discussion of related arguments see Petts, 1994.

7 For data on the waste trade see Vallette and Spalding, 1990, and figures published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 1985, 1993a,1994a). For data on disposal facilities and capacities, the leading comparative study was carried out by the International Solid Wastes and Public Cleansing Association (Forester and Skinner, 1987; also referred to as the ISWA report). There are many problems relating to data availability and reliability, as pointed out by Montgomery, 1995. With respect to data on legal trade, there are vast differences between national definitions of hazardous wastes and reporting requirements, as noted in Forester and Skinner, 1987, and OECD, 1993a and 1994a, and furthermore, published statistics do not go back vei-y many years. While data on waste disposal facilities are readily available, data on capacities are particularly hard to come by, as most countries report only the amount of waste processed each year, and do not provide statistics on available capacity. Hence, arguments presented in the empirical section use both secondary sour-ces and comparative analysis of the data sets at some points to infer broad trends in the movement of hazardous wastes and related variables.




status as advanced industrialized democracy. They also share common responsibilities under the current international regulatory regime governing the waste trade, which targets the illegal trade from North to South.8 At the same time the two countries display significant differences in terms of domestic regulatory systems. Given that most of the available data predate German unification, however, most of this analysis focuses on West Germany prior to 1990. I also make reference to other West European countries, especially those within the "first tier" (the more advanced states) of the European Union.

The dependent variable in this study is an individual country's propensity to legally import hazardous wastes. There are a couple of ways in which this variable can be measured. The first is simply to look at the volume of wastes a country imports on an annual basis. The second is to use the figure for net imports of wastes (imports less exports). This latter is the more useful here, partly because it controls for transit states, such as the Netherlands, which imports some wastes for immediate re-export, and partly because it provides a measure of a country's ability to absorb hazardous wastes over and above the amount it produces and is able to dispose of at home. At the same time, some notion of the order of magnitude of waste movements in and out of countries is required, to provide some idea of the extent of a country's involvement in the trade.9 Hence, the data presented in the empirical section include imports and exports of wastes by country, as well as the figure for net imports.

The two main alternative explanations, both domestic-level, identified in the literature, and in government policy statements as to why Britain imports such relatively high levels of waste, are first, a state-centric explanation based on individual governments' calculations of the relevant costs and benefits associated with the waste trade, and second, a "comparative advantage" explanation, based on the technological superiority of Britain's waste disposal facilities. These are the arguments against which I will test the regulation explanation.

Differences Between National Systems of Environmental Regulation This article contends that the differences between the relative involvement of the different countries in the hazardous waste trade are best explainedl by differences between national systems of environmental regulation. While some countries have very advanced and complex domestic systems of regulation, others have none, and even among countries with advanced systems, there are significant differences in styles and structures of regulation.'0 These are crucial for understanding not only the waste trade, but also other international environmental issues, and some of the major problems inherent in successfully implementing international regulatory agreements. This argument works at two levels. At the domestic level, it is necessary to look at individual countries' systems of environmental regulation in order to determine to what extent they create a climate conducive to the importation of hazardous wastes. At the international level, differences between countries' regulatory systems influence patterns of trade through what is known as "regulatory

8The main international agreement governing the waste trade is the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, signed in 1989, and implemented in 1992. Highly criticized at the outset, it is now evolving from seeking to monitor and restrict North-South trade in wastes toward a ban on such practices (to be implemented in January 1997). This and other relevant agreements are discussed in the empirical sections.

9 I am indebted to Ken Conca for this point. 10 This is the focus of a growing body of literature on comparative environmental policies, particularly between

advanced industrial states (e.g., Enloe, 1975; Lundqvist, 1978; Brickman, Jasanoff, and Ilgen, 1985; Knoepfel and Weidner, 1986; Vogel, 1986; Boehmer-Christiansen and Skea, 1991; Aguilar, 1993; Boehmer-Christiansen and Weidner, 1995).



KATE O'NEILL 691

arbitrage" (Leyshon, 1992). This concept is used throughout the trade and environment literature, which argues that in the absence of other barriers to trade, domestic factors such as regulatory differences between states become important in determining trade flows.

The New Institutionalist literature, in which this analysis is grounded, argues for the necessity of examining the structures shaping the relationship between state and societal actors, in terms of the goals actors pursue and the means of pursuit. I argue that these structures, or social "ground rules," constrain, and even change the range of options available to actors within the system. 11 Here, the focus is on a particular set of institutional rules, those concerning environmental regulation, or "intermediate-level institutional factors" (Thelen and Steinmo, 1992). These are crucial determinants of the relationship between public and private sector actors in a given country. Much of the literature in the field of comparative environmental policy takes as its dependent variable the relative effectiveness of different national systems of regulation. In contrast to this approach, this study uses these differences to explain a specific international-level phenomenon with implications for the global environment: patterns of trade in hazardous wastes. Thus, in the empirical section, I demonstrate how institutional structures constrain societal and state interests. The British case shows that while there might be a significant level of public opposition to the waste trade, few channels exist for conveying these preferences in an effective way at the policy-making level. Hence, this argument privileges structure over agency, although this is not to say that regulatory systems are immune to change over time, as is evident in the discussion of the impact of the Conservative government on Britain's regulatory context.'2

The basic functions of environmental regulation are first, to control and monitor practices that lead to environmental degradation, and second, to reduce such degradation at the national level. As with other forms of regulation, these rules and practices shape the relationship between government actors and private actors engaged in economic activity. With respect to comparing regulatory systems cross-nationally, it is important to realize that systems of environmental regulation are typically large and complex sets of rules and practices, making it impossible to generalize about their effects from a theoretical point of view without breaking them down into their key components. In other words, simply saying that one country' s environmental regulations are more "lax" than another's is not sufficient, unless the exact ways in which this is the case are specified. 13

There are various ways of breaking down a system of environmental regulation for comparative purposes. One is to focus on their substantive content: the goals of regulation, the actors being regulated (firms and households), and the sorts of

11 For example, see Cammack, 1992, Haggard, 1990, Hall, 1986, Ikenberry, 1988, Krasner, 1988, and Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreth, 1992. In common with these works I take as my dominant perspective that of "historical institutionalism," which takes a more sociological-historical approach to the effects of institutions on behavior, as opposed to the "contractual," or rational choice variant. Cammack (1992:402-3) discusses the main differences between these approaches.

1I Thus, one issue that is not addressed in the context of this article is the question of how these different regulatoi-y systems have evolved in the first place, hence, treating them here as independent variables. However, in most cases in Western Europe (Spain and Portugal being possible exceptions), regulatory systems have shown a high degree of persistence over time. Empirical observation also bears out Albert Weale's point that systems of environmental regulation have not been determined in response to the specific nature of the problem at hand; rather that they are a function of a countl-y's broader regulatoi-y culture (Weale, 1992a).

13 This is especially true where countries already have advanced systems of environmental regulations in place; one of the common conclusions of comparative studies of environmental regulations in advanced countries is that they do not show much significant difference in terms of overall effectiveness in pollution control. See Vogel, 1986, and Moe and Caldwell, 1994.




instruments, or policy mechanisms applied.'4 Another is to examine the ways in which these policies are formulated, enacted and implemented, and followed by the actors being regulated; hence, an argument that procedural concerns are just as, if not more, important as substantive ones. The most important factors here are a country's regulatory structure, or the allocation of responsibilities among different agencies or levels of government, and its regulatory style, that is, the strategies, or standard operating procedures followed by government officials.15

The countries of Western Europe are noted for having some of the most advanced and effective systems of environmental regulation in the world. Furthermore, the early phases of European environmental regulation have led to a greater convergence of the substantive goals and content of environmental regulations in the member states.16 Beyond that, however, significant national differences in regulatory styles and structures emerge. These, I argue, have a determining impact on a country's engagement, or more accurately, the engagement of domestic actors, in the waste trade.

The Regulation Argument: Hypotheses to Be Tested

Allocation of Regulatory Responsibilities. The first difference between national regulatory systems concerns a country's prevailing regulatory structure, in other words, whether the responsibilities for planning, formulating, and implementing a country's environmental regulations are centrally coordinated, or divided across different regulatory bodies (Jordan, 1993:408). Different regulatory structures can be categorized as follows:1

A Typology of Regulatory Structures

1. Central coordination: responsibilities for overall planning, formulation, and implementation of policies lie wholly with a single national agency, or ministry for the environment.'8

2. Horizontal allocation of responsibilities across different ministries and government agencies.'9

3. Vertical allocation of responsibilities between central and local or state governments, where responsibility for planning and policy formulation rests at the center, while local authorities are responsible for implementation.

14 Regulatoi-y mechanisms fall into two categories: command and control mechanisms on the one hand, and incentive, or market-based mechanisms on the other. The main components of command and control mechanisms are the imposition by federal or state governments of uniform emissions, ambient concentration or technology standards, or resource use quotas across the territor-y un-der jurisdiction (Markandya and Richardson, 1992:14, Table 1). Market mechanisms, on the other hand, involve the decentralized use of market signals and prices to make economic actors change their behavior, the main examples being the reallocation of property rights through privatization, tradable emissions permits, and "green" taxes and subsidies. While in theoiy, market mechanisms are superior to the more traditional command and control mechanisms, in terms of cost effectiveness, their implementation has been slow, and at best, partial.

15 These definitions are derived fromJordan, 1993. 16 See Aarhus, 1995, for a discussion of these aspects. 17 Of course, these are pure types: in particular, many countries display a mixture of the second and third categories. 18 The paradigmatic example being a fully (internally) integrated system of pollution control (IPC) (see Irwin, 1990).

IPC-based systems (of which the Netherlands is one of the main examples) differ from simply centralized ones, in that they incorporate a particular philosophy of environmental protection; such a system is usually a deliberate choice rather than merely a product of a country's broader political system.

19 Allocation across agencies may occur in two ways: first, by medium of pollution (air, water, land, for example), and second, across policy sectors: for example, the ministry of agriculture might be responsible for one area of environmental protection, the ministr-y of industi-y for another.



KATE O'NEILL 693

4. Complete devolution of environmental responsibilities from the center to local authorities.

The implications of a country's regulatory structure for its propensity to import hazardous wastes depend in part on the degree of coordination within each country's system. Where powers are divided among different agencies or levels of government, there is likely to be less policy coordination within the system, hence a rise in transactions costs, and a reduction in the ability to monitor possible sources of environmental degradation. Thus, the less coordination there is, the greater the likelihood of a country engaging in environmentally risky behavior, here, a higher propensity to import hazardous wastes.

A centrally coordinated regulatory structure-something of an ideal type-is likely to be more effective in terms of both fulfilling policy goals and controlling waste importation, as, on the one hand, it leads to lower transactions and information costs, and on the other, it means there is a core group of officials directly responsible for the protection of the environment.20 In contrast, problems of coordination and subsequent inefficiencies are more likely to arise when environmental responsibilities are allocated across different ministries (Maluwa, 1989:664).

Proponents of vertical and/or devolved allocations of regulatory responsibilities invoke the principle of subsidiarity, which states that environmental protection is best carried out at the lowest level at which protection is efficient.21 However, with respect to the waste trade, the issue is more complex. While the harmful effects of hazardous wastes on the environment tend to be localized, implying regulation at the local level, the existence of the international waste trade implies a need for central government involvement, as typically the only governing body with jurisdic- tional capabilities at the international level. Hence, in countries that treat the disposal of hazardous wastes as a strictly local issue, without taking into account the transboundary aspects of the problem, there are likely to be fewer controls on waste importation.

Whether a state is federal or unitary adds an important dimension to this variable. In federated systems, subunits have considerable constitutionally protected powers, responsibilities, and funding, while in unitary systems local authorities are often dependent on the whims of central government, and compete for scarce funding, or have to seek other means of raising revenues. In cases where local authorities are in competition with each other over scarce financial resources, and where waste disposal is an important source of revenue, it is likely they will turn to allowing waste importation as an additional means of raising revenue.22 The above analysis yields the following hypothesis:

HYPOTHESIS A. States whose regulatory responsibilities are divided between different agencies or levels of government are more likely to import wastes than those with centralized systems.

Styles of Environmental Regulation. The second difference concerns the style of national environmental regulation and policy making, in other words, the strategies

20 See, for example, Weale, O'Riordan, and Kramme, 1991, Pridham, 1994, and Leonard and Morell, 1981. 21 While the principle of subsidiarity is applied here to the r-elationship between national and subnational authorities,

the concept is most commonly used in the context of relations between the European Union and the member states. Although the exact interpretation of the term has been a matter of considerable controversy, Regina Axelrod states that it has "most recently been interpreted to mean that the Community shotild take action only when it would be most effective to do so at that level" (Axelrod, 1994:116).

22 For example, in the U.S. it has been obser-ved that states seeking to build up their industrial base often seek to attract waste disposal industries, as well as waste producing industries in general (Bowman, 1985:139).




a government adopts for improving the quality of its country's physical environment.23 This includes, therefore, policy formulation and implementation, but not a measure of its success. Existing studies of regulatory style focus on identifying national regulatory styles across policy areas (Richardson, 1982), or the impact of style on policy effectiveness (Vogel, 1986). Here, I examine the effects of certain styles of environmental regulation on a country's propensity to import hazardous wastes, while noting that these regulatory styles are embedded in wider political structures which influence the style and shape of environmental policy making. For ease of empirical analysis, the sorts of wider elements included here are constitutional measures such as the electoral system, for example, or whether the state is federal or unitary.

Drawing on Vogel (1986), this article identifies two elements of regulatory style that affect a country's propensity to import hazardous wastes.24 The first concerns the access of different groups to the policy process, and how that access is achieved. The second concerns the mode of policy application.

The first element-policy access-revolves around the configuration of state-business-society relations within a given country.25 Each of these groups has certain interests toward environmental policy, which often cotiflict.26 How these conflicts are resolved depends crucially on which group has the greater access to, and influence on, the policy process. This, in turn, depends, at least in part, on the institutional set-up of the country involved. For the purpose of this analysis, countries can be placed along a continuum of types of style with respect to policy access: at one end of the continuum are inclusive styles, and at the other, exclusive. Inclusive styles of environmental regulations are ones where all groups have access to the policy process at its different stages. This might be through the court system, or through widespread public consultation during the policy formation stage. Exclusive styles, on the other hand, are those where the state acts autonomously in the formulation and implementation of environmental policy. An intermediate case is where the state works in close collaboration with business to the exclusion of other constituencies. In both these cases, the policy process tends to be secretive, and there. are few institutional mechanisms for enabling widespread public participation in the process.

Second, there are essentially two modes of policy application: rigid and flexible. Rigid systems are those characterized by strict, nationally applied standards of pollution control, for example, a clean air act that strictly limits the quantities of

23 Vogel, 1986:20. Regulatoi-y style can be distinguished from the concepts of "regulator-y culture," and from regulatory mechanisms. The former refers to the "set of mu-tual understandings which- help define and evaluate options for regulator-y action" (Meidinger, 1986:172), in other words, the social "ground rules" for government action, while regulatoi-y mechanisms are the instruments used by authorities to achieve desired goals-typically these fall along the lines of either command aind control, or market-based mechanisms. For a classic discussion of regulator-y style see Richardson, 1982, and for an over-view of the relevant literature see van Waarden, 1995. He identifies six types of regulatoi-y styles; while my work does not follow this schema, the policy access variable corresponds most closely to his "liberal-pluralist ver-sus etatist versus corporatist" categoly, and mode of application to his distinction between legalistic and pragmatic styles (van Waarden, 1995:335-6).

24 On the issue of different and/or changing national styles of environmental regulation see also Aguilar, 1993, Jordan, 1993, Brickmnan et al., 1985, Heritier et al., 1994, and Weale, 1992a, 1992b, and 1995.

25 "Society" inclu-des the general public, and environmental interest groups. It is, however, extremely problematic to assume that it can be described as a unital-y actor, as the conflicts in the USA between labor and environmental interest groups demonstrates. On the other hand, in the European cases, NGOs, such as Greenpeace, have played a vocal role in forming public opinion about the environment-but with contrasting policy outcomes in each case.

26 One of the interesting features of waste disposal issues, broadly defined, is the gap between the assessment by the general public and by trained experts of the risks associated with waste disposal. Many studies have pointed out that pu-blic risk perceptions in this area are extremely high, to the despair- of the scientific community. The rights and wrongs of this debate are not the subject here; what matters is the fact that public per-ceptions should be translated into policy in an open, or inclusive reguLlatoi-y system and are less likely to be in an exclusive regulatoi-y system.



KATE O'NEILL 695

emissions allowed into the atmosphere. These standards are applied without dis- crimination across industries. Flexible systems, on the other hand, tend to apply regulations on a case by case basis. Rather than relying on nationally applied technical standards, they tend to work on the principle that each polluter should make the best efforts possible to clean up its act.

The implications for a country's propensity to import hazardous wastes are as follows. First, countries with exclusive styles of regulation systems or that favor the interests of business are more likely to import hazardous wastes than systems that have a higher degree of public access, an argument bolstered by evidence that public opinion runs strongly against waste importation. Second, flexible styles of regulation create a climate that is much more conducive to waste importation, as firms are under less strict requirements regarding pollution, and such systems tend to lack the central coordination necessary for properly controlling hazardous wastes and their effects. Both of these elements together create a unique configuration of government-private sector relations for each country, which, in turn, determine the extent to which industrial interests, in particular, waste disposal companies, are allowed to import hazardous wastes, while companies in other countries find it in their interests to export the wastes.

Styles of environmental regulation are not necessarily constant over time. As is demonstrated in the discussion of the cases, there are two sources of change in regulatory style: internal and external. Internal sources of change are often related to changes in government, particularly when the change in government also involves substantial policy transformations. External sources of change generally come from international regimes and organizations, a case in point being the implementation of trade agreements that subsequently affect domestic regulation.27 With respect to Western Europe, the main external sources of change are the rules and directives laid down by the European Community, now Union.28 Countries vary, however, in their degree of resistance to these changes, and this resistance is determined largely by the extent to which environmental regulations are institutionalized within, and thus protected by, the domestic political system.29 Thus:

HYPOTHESIS B. A country's style of environmental regulation has a signifcant effect on its propensity to import hazardous wastes; waste importation will increase

i. the more exclusive the degree of access to the policy process ni. the moreflexible its mode ofpolicy application

Table 1 summarizes the above hypotheses with respect to the effects of regulatory structure and style on waste importation propensities, showing the predicted effects in the two extreme cases.

Alternative Explanations This article directly confronts two competing explanations for the higher level of British hazardous waste imports in comparison with its European partners. The first

27 Another important source of change are crises, or focal points, which may lead to fundamental change in regulatory structures, or the introduction of new legislation. One example in this case is the Seveso incident, 1976, when several drums of dioxin vanished from a plant in Italy following a severe chemical explosion, only to reappear eight years later in a disused abattoir in France (Gourlay, 1992:79), prompting a rapid response at the level of both member states and the Eur-opean Community.

28 To clarify abbreviations, EC refers to the period prior to the implementation of the Maastricht ''reaty; EU to the subsequent period, and EC/EU to the entire period of European integration.

29 Buller et al. conclude that the process of European integration will have a profound impact on the systems of environmental regulation of the member states by imnposing a "prefabricated" regulatory structure onto systems that




TABLE 1. Summary of Hypotheses Related to Environmental Regulation

Structure Style: Access Style: Application Import Propensity

Vertical/ Devolved Closed Flexible HIGH Centralized Open Rigid LOW

is based on Montgomery's economic nationalist explanation (Montgomery, 1992, 1995), a state-centric explanation of waste importation policies, and the second on the notion of comparative advantage in national disposal capabilities.

The Economic Nationalist Explanation

Montgomery's argument is based on the way national governments assess the costs and benefits of hazardous waste importation. The waste trade generates extensive revenues which accrue on the whole to the companies disposing of the wastes. However, there are two main ways in which importing governments may benefit from these transactions: first, via a contribution to a country's balance of payments, and second-and more directly-through the imposition of related tariffs or taxes. Balanced against these calculations of potential benefits are the risks associated with waste importation, including environmental risk and the level of domestic opposition. The argument here is, therefore, that waste importation schemes are approved on an individual basis, based on the calculation by state officials of the potential costs and benefits of each transaction; how these fall thus determines the extent to which a country engages in waste importation. Hence, where government actors calculate benefits from waste importation to outweigh potential risks, waste importation levels will be high.

The Comparative Advantage Explanation

Second, waste-importing countries may have a comparative advantage over others in disposing of wastes-either they can dispose of wastes more cheaply than other countries, or they have specialized facilities to deal with certain types of waste.30 Three factors in particular might explain how a country's waste disposal industry can create a climate conducive to the importation of hazardous wastes: capacity, quality, and facility ownership. A country's disposal capacity is measured by the volume of waste it can dispose of annually through available facilities.31 Countries are more likely to import wastes if they have spare capacity once domestic disposal needs are met.

Any country with a patch of waste ground has a potential hazardous waste disposal facility. There are, however, many different techniques for disposing of hazardous wastes, which vary extensively in terms of level of technology, cost, and effectiveness in disposing of harmful elements, and these factors can have a profound influence on the amount of hazardous wastes that are imported.32

have a long history of culturally determined evolution. They hypothesize either that national regulatoi-y styles will begin to converge, and/or that we will see regional differentiation of policy implementation (Buller et al., 1993:191-2).

30 See Gilpin, 1987:173-4 for a discussion of the notion of comparative advantage. 31 Excluding in-house disposal facilities, as these facilities are unlikely to be involved in the processing of imported

wastes. 32 This analysis follows the preference ordering given in Forester and Skinner, 1987. See also Batstone, Smith, and

Wilson, 1989:97, for a similar ordering of disposal technologies. Both accounts are based on the well-known "waste management hierarchy," which lists disposal techniques in order of desirability, starting with waste reduction at the top, and finishing with landfill.



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Consequently, there are two schools of thought with respect to disposal technology. The first argues that wastes travel to countries with more advanced systems of disposal, such as incinerators, or high-level reprocessing. This argument maintains that as waste producers are concerned that wastes are disposed of properly, certain countries are able to build up a comparative advantage in waste disposal based on quality of services offered. Facilities that offer recycling and incineration or chemical treatments are considered the highest quality in terms of effectiveness in treating hazardous substances, with landfill sites at the lowest end of the scale.33 In fact, level of disposal technology is the basis of the regulatory principle that underlies the Basel Convention, which states that waste should not be exported to countries with facilities inferior to those of the exporter.

The second school of thought argues that wastes are much more likely to follow the path of least cost, in strictly short-run financial terms. Producers, concerned by the costs of waste disposal at home, are likely to search for cheaper options abroad: comparative advantage based simply on price differentials. If one assumes (and this is borne out by data) that the unit cost of waste disposal is positively correlated with quality of technology, this argument is the converse of the first: potential importers will seek to build up a comparative advantage in waste disposal based on the relative costs of waste disposal.34 The technologies surveyed here vary widely in terms of disposal costs, both fixed and variable.3 Incineration facilities are the most expensive, both to set up and to operate, while landfill sites, especially uncontrolled sites, are the least expensive (Maltezou, Biswas, and Sutter, 1989:23).

This very ambiguity points toward a problem with the comparative advantage argument, namely, that it suffers from lack of a clear direction as to which might be the case.36 However, here I argue that, in the case of the legal trade among advanced industrialized democracies, the first argument is more important, for several reasons. First, government officials when deciding to import wastes should take into account long-term costs, in terms of cleaning up waste dumps, before issuing import permits.37 Second, countries that agree to abide by the principles of various international regimes should make their policy decisions according to those principles. Hence, the argument runs that countries with more advanced disposal facilities are more likely to import hazardous wastes legally, while those with less advanced facilities are more likely to be involved in illegal trade.

33 Many countries used to dispose of wastes at sea, through dumping or shipboard in-cineration (Forester and Skinner, 1987:53). These practices are now largely banned, either by national policy or international agreement. See Birnie and Boyle, 1992:320-32, for a discussion of international regulation of ocean dumping. The main conventions governing dumping at sea are the London Convention (1972) and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982). Note that these apply only to dumping in international waters and not territorial seas, which are sulbject to regulation by individual states.

34 This conception of costs r-efers only to immediate costs of disposal borne by the facility operators, and reflected in the price charged to waste generators. It does not refer to longer-term costs, for example, incurred in the clean-up of old or contaminated sites, often borne by regulatory authorities, as is the case with Superfund in the U.S. Costs of disposal also vary according to the type of waste being handled. Finally, these costs are often subject to government inter-vention: either in the form of subsidies on the most effective forms of technology, or taxes on the least effective.

35 For example, according to the OECD, "[flor the United States, some 1985 data for the state of NewJersey reported disposal cost ranges of $200 to $2600 per tonne. Very roughly, the average cost of disposal by means other than incineration was $500 per tonne while for incineration, the average cost was $1500 per tonne" (OECD, 1993b: 11). Fol- Germany, "the charges for hazardous wastes that can be landfilled range from 50 to 150 German Marks per tonne, while the price per tonne for particularly hazardous wastes which require chemophysical or thermal treatment, may reach several hundred German Marks" (Defregger, 1983:20-1).

36 I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for this point. 37 This argument is based on certain assumptions about government preferences in a democracy, related to the

discussion of the financial incentives explanation. For example, elected government officials are assumed to have wider objectives than making money out of providing cheap disposal facilities, such as reelection, and also can be assumed to have a longer time horizon than most firms, as they will inevitably be responsible for cleaning up problem sites.




The final aspect of the comparative advantage explanation concerns the ownership of waste disposal facilities. The key variable for management of commercial (as opposed to in-house) disposal facilities is whether they are privately or publicly owned. According to this argument, countries with privately owned and operated facilities are more likely to import wastes from other countries, chiefly because of the logic of market competition. These companies are more likely to aim to maximize profits, above any social welfare goals, and operate in a more competitive environment, where they are forced to compete with one another for waste disposal contracts.38 In an open economy, this in turn implies that these companies will most likely look for business from other countries, hence generating demand for import permits, and a government that seeks to foster this sort of entrepreneurial spirit will be more likely to issue such permits.

To sum up the logic of the comparative advantage argument as applied here, wastes will be (legally) imported to countries with a comparative advantage in terms of high spare disposal capacity, advanced facilities, and a waste disposal industry that prioritizes profit maximization as its goal.

The Case Study: Great Britain and the Hazardous Waste Trade The countries of Western Europe are, after the United States, the world's largest producers of hazardous wastes. Table 2 gives the breakdown, by country, of hazardous waste production by OECD members, for various years between 1982 and 1992.39

Waste importation to Great Britain jumped sharply in the 1980s, from 5,000 tonnes in 1983 to 180,000 tonnes in 1987.40 The most recent government figures show a continued propensity to import wastes: in 1992/3, Britain imported a total of 47,018 tonnes of wastes, jumping to 67,993 tonnes in 1993/4.41 In addition, from 1989 to 1990, Britain produced 4,500,000 tonnes of hazardous wastes itself, ofwhich only a tiny fraction was exported (see Tables 2-4). Greenpeace estimates that in 1989 Great Britain imported 201,182.8 tonnes of wastes, for either recycling or final disposal. This figure is at variance with the OECD figure, which puts waste importation at a much lower level: 46,714 tons in 1991.42 The main reason for this discrepancy is that the official government figures for Great Britain do not include wastes destined for recycling or recovery.43 The main sources of these wastes were The Netherlands (36%),44 Belgium (22%), Switzerland (12%), and the U.S. (10%). In addition, Germany, Austria, and Sweden contributed significant quantities, and Greenpeace lists twenty-six countries that exported waste to Britain in 1989, only

38 This discussion relates to much of the economic literature on the rationale for privatization of industry. See Yarrow and Vickers, 1988, for an analysis of the different sets of incentives facing management of nationalized versus privatized industries.

39 General issues concerning the problems with gathering data on the waste trade are discussed in footnote 7 above. While on the whole I follow the OECD figures, those from Greenpeace are included for completeness, and because they bolster the picture given by the OECD, in terms of broad trends.

40 From the British Hazardous Waste Inspectorate Report, 1988, cited in Vallette and Spalding, 1990:351. Britain also exports a small amount of hazardous waste each year to Asia, for recycling, a policy which is highly controversial (OECD, 1994b:73).

41 From figures released by the British Department of the Environment and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution, 1995.

42 According to Greenpeace, "the inadequacy of the official figures is shown by a comparison with Austria's permits. The U.K.'s figures show Austrian imports were 199.4 tonnes for 1989, compared with over 20,000 tonnes detailed in Austria's export statistics" (Vallette and Spalding, 1990:354).

43 Given that the overall average percentage of imported wastes going to recovery operations in OECD countries is 59.7 percent (OECD, 1994a:Table 6), this would be an interesting figure to obtain.

44 The figure for the Netherlands is inflated by the inclusion of wastes from other countries which pass through the country en route to other destinations.



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TABLE 2. Generation of Hazardous Waste by Country, OECD Members, 1982-1992

Year Reported Generation of Hazardous Wastes (1,000 t.)

Australia n.d. 300 Austria 1991 620 Belgium n.d. 27 000 Canada 1990 6 080 Denmark n.d. 112 Finland 1987 250 France 1992 7 000 Germany 1990 6 000 Greece 1990 423 Ireland n.d. 66 Italy 1991 3 246 Japan n.d. 666 Netherlands n.d. 1 500 New Zealand 1982 60 Norway 1990 20Q Portugal 1987 1 043 Spain 1987 1 708 Sweden 1985 500 Switzerland 1991 736 Turkey n.d. 300 United Kingdom 1991 2 956 United States 1989 197 500

Total 258 266

Source: OECD (1994a:Table 2). Figure for Belgium counts all industrial wastes. Only wastes destined for final disposal need to be noti- fied in Britain and Germany. Figures for Germany include the former West Germany only. n.d.: no data provided

one or two of which could be classified as less developed countries. These include Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong-all former colonies of Britain.

Other West European countries import far less waste, especially in comparison to the amount they export, as is demonstrated in Tables 3 and 4, which set out net imports for selected OECD countries in 1989 and 199 1.45 In contrast to the British figures, Germany's net exports of hazardous wastes in 1989 (prior to unification) were 945,621 tonnes, and in 1991, following unification, they were still high, at 224,947 tonnes.46

In both cases, even though the rank ordering of other countries changes, Britain and Germany maintain their positions at the top and bottom of the tables, respec- tively. In order to explain this phenomenon, the following sections compare the arguments concerning regulatory differences with the two alternative explanations posited earlier with respect to these cases, after a brief discussion of the transnational and international context that facilitates the waste trade in Western Europe.

45 Although the available data are incomplete, it is widely accepted that France is the largest importer of wastes in Western Europe, at least up until 1992, when a major dispute with Germany over some mis-labeled hospital waste caused France to close its borders to imports from Baden-Wiurttemberg, until then its main supplier. Given France's size and available disposal capacity for wastes (as well as the importance of the proximity principle in explaining imports for Germany), it does not pose the same puzzle that British practices do. However, it is the intention of the author to include France in subsequent analysis of the European waste trade and environmental regulation.

46 These figures are comparable with those for Great Britain, as Germany also does not include wastes destined for recovery operations in its official figures.




TABLE 3. Net Imports (Exports) of Hazardous Wastes for Selected OECD Countries, 1989, Ranked by Net Import Levels

Imzports Exports Net Imports (Exports) (tonnes) (tonnes) (tonnes)

United Kingdom 40 740 0 40 070 Denmark* 26 842 8 978 17 864 Japan 5 125 40 5 085 New Zealand 0 200 (200) Norway 0 8 078 (8 078) Italy 0 10 800 (10 800) Sweden 33 863 45 012 (11 152) Austria 50 981 86 773 (35 792) Netherlands 88 400 188 250 (99 850) Switzerland 7 684 108 345 (100 661) Germany 45 312 990 933 (945 621)

Source: OECD (1993a:Table 1). *Greenpeace disagrees with these figures, arguing that Denmark is one of Europe's most indiscrimi- nate exporters of hazardous wastes, and cites the export figure of 20,000 tonnes per year, supplied by the Oslo Commission (Vallette and Spalding, 1990:3 10). Some countries, notably France, were omitted from this table as data were incomplete. Figures for the UK and Germany include only wastes destined for final disposal. Given the vast differences between national reporting requirements, these figures should be treated with some caution.

TABLE 4. Net Imports (Exports) of Hazardous Wastes for Selected OECD Countries, 1991, in Rank Order

Imports Exports Net Imports (Exports) (tonnes) (tonnes) (tonnes)

United Kingdom 46 714 525 46 189 Austria 111 595 82 129 29 466 Japan 397 0 397 New Zealand 0 21 (21) Denmark 15 200 21 758 (6 558) Italy 0 13 018 (13 018) Norway 2415 14636 (12 221) Sweden 34 195 63 801 (29 606) Netherlands 107 251 189 707 (82 456) Switzerland 6 416 126 564 (120 148) Germany 141 660 396 667 (224 947)

Source: OECD (1994a:Table 1). Some countries were omitted from this table as data were incomplete. Figures for the UK and Ger- many include only wastes destined for final disposal. Figures for Japan are from 1990.

Thte Context: Transnational Linkages and International Agreements

The countries of Western Europe operate within a dense set of transnational linkages, not only through the European Union, but also through their shared membership in the OECD, and because they are all signatories to the same set of international agreements on the waste trade. Hence, an examination of this context provides insight into why these countries engage in trade with each other; however, it does not explain why some countries-Britain in this case-import more hazardous wastes than others in the same group.



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The EC/EU, since the early 1970s, has tried to regulate transfrontier movements of hazardous wastes, through the establishment of an extensive monitoring system.47 In effect, this regulation has facilitated legal forms of the waste trade, as it seeks only to monitor, as opposed to restrict, the transfrontier movements of waste between member countries.48 One major problem for the EU in formulating this legislation has been reaching a common definition of what exactly constitutes a hazardous waste.49 Second, given the nature of EU legislation, it has been the responsibility of individual member states to implement the laws themselves. This process of implementation has by no means been uniform, as significant differences still exist between national regulatory structures.

The question here is whether Britain's membership in the EC/EU has made a difference in its propensity to import hazardous wastes. Answering this question involves differentiating two functions of the Community: as free trade union and as regulatory body.50 First, the breaking down of barriers to trade in Western Europe played a significant facilitating role in the transportation of wastes across national frontiers. Laurence and Wynne (1989) argued that the completion of the internal market could, in fact, lead to an increase in trade in hazardous wastes as border regulations are relaxed, and that if wastes are treated as any other commodity, a common market in waste transportation will only exacerbate the problem.51 In this context, Britain's EC/EU membership does not explain why it imports proportion- ately more than other West European countries, it only makes it more likely that Britain's trade partners will be part of the same system.52 The EC/EU's second major role is as a supranational regulatory agency, whose powers of intervention in national affairs exceed those of any other comparable international organization. Prior to 1993 (the enactment of the Maastricht Treaty), the Community's powers of environmental regulation were constrained by the unanimity requirement, hence

47 In 1984, the European Community adopted the Directive on the Super-vision and Control Within the European Community of the Transfrontier Shipments of Hazardous Wastes, which established a notification and authorization system for the transportation of hazardous wastes within tlhe European Community. A 1986 amendment addressed the issue of transport of hazardous wastes through a third Community country en route to its final destination (Handley, 1989). However, the elimination of border controls under the Single European Act (1987) led to a single common market for the movement of hazardous wastes, which failed to take into account the vast difference in regulatoiy structures existing between member states (Laurence and Wynne, 1989). Subsequent waste legislation, however, has kept apace witlh events-the Walloon Waste Crisis and the Franco-German clinical waste scandal, for example. In 1993, the EU issued a regulation (259/93), which promoted the principles of proximity and self-sufficiency in waste disposal (Jupille, 1996:49)-a move that will be discussed further in the last section of this article.

48 The other main set of regulations seeking to monitor the trade are those enacted by the OECD, which, in 1984 adopted a Decision and Recommendation regarding intra-OECD trade, wlhich stated that "member countries shall control the transfrontier movement of hazardous wastes and, for this purpose shall adequately ensure that the competent authorities of the countries concerned are provided with adequate and timely information concerning such movements" (OECD Council Decision and Recommendation C (83) 180 (Final)). This was amended in 1991, when it was decided that waste movements should be restricted to wastes destined for recovery operations (C (90) 178/Final), and in 1992, the OECD adopted a control system, applied only to OECD members, classifying wastes into Green, Amber, and Red lists, depending on their overall environmental risk and their management practices (OECD, 1993b; Yakowitz, 1993). Unlike EU regulations, however, OECD Directives do not have the same binding effect on domestic legislation.

49 A goal the EU is making some progress toward accomplishing: on December 16, 1994, EU Environment Ministers adopted a common list of dangerous wastes (European Report, February 16, 1995).

50 European environmental policy originally grew out of two conflicting desires: one to create a "level playing field" through the elimination of nontariff barriers between states, such as environmental regulations; the other to protect quality of life in the EC member states, a concept that is growing to encompass notions, of sustainability in industrial practices in particular. For an analysis of the conflicts between these two roles as played out in the development of the EC/EU seeJupille, 1996.

51 This has in fact not happened: several recent ECJ judgments regarding the movement of wastes across frontiers have decided in favor of environmental protection, for example, the 1992 Walloon Waste Case (Jupille, 1996).

52 The Greenpeace data also show that Britain also imports significant amounts of waste from its former colonies, thus supporting a hypothesis that colonial links also have an impact on the flows of waste (Vallette and Spalding, 1990: Appendix E).




the veto power of certain states (Golub, 1994). The lifting of this requirement, along with a greater priority being given to environmental goals at the European level, is, in the opinion of many, leading to unparalleled regulatory convergence on the part of the member states; this analysis remains somewhat skeptical of this trend. These arguments are discussed in more depth in the empirical section and the concluding analysis.

Second, there are several international agreements on the waste trade to which West European countries are party, including the Lome IV Convention and the Basel Convention. The Lome Convention signifies the intention of the EC countries to halt waste exports to their former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific regions. Most West European countries have signed the Basel Convention, and the convention was ratified at the European level in October 1992. As yet, however, it is too early to assess what effect the Convention has had on intra-European waste trade. However, at recent meetings in Pirapolis and Geneva, European countries announced their intention to ban waste exports to less developed countries, including Eastern Europe, and also to dispose of as much waste as possible domesti- cally-an issue that has broad ramifications for intra-European trade, as the West European countries currently are responsible for a significant percentage of waste exports to these regions.

The Explanations Compared: The Regulatory Explanation

I concentrate primarily on differences between the British and German systems for several reasons. First, both have very different images: Britain as "dirty man of Europe," and Germany as an environmental "knight in shining armor" (Ruidig, 1993). Further grounds for comparison are that they have developed very different systems of environmental regulation: their contrasting views have often pitted them against each other in the broader context of European and international environmental policy making (Boehmer-Christiansen and Skea, 1991; Weale, 1992a).53 They also have significantly different political systems, especially with respect to electoral systems and division of powers: while Germany is a-federal state, with a semi-proportional system of representation, Great Britain is a unitary state, with a first-past-the-post electoral system. At the same time, similarities between these countries, particularly in terms of their status as advanced industrialized nations, and their involvement in relevant international organizations and agreements, controls for potentially significant variables.

Allocation of Regulatory Responsibilities. Britain's regulatory structure is complex: while there exists a ministry for the environment which oversees most environmental directorates, other ministries, such as agriculture, and trade and industry, have certain environmental duties as well. However, not all environmental regulation is controlled from the center. Control over hazardous waste disposal, as well as other environmental responsibilities for issues seen as localized in their effects, is devolved to local waste disposal and regulation authorities attached to town and county councils. As Vogel (1986) points out, while central government provides the

53 Most recently, this conflict emerged over the Brent Spar controversy, where Britain favored Royal Dutch Shell's decision to dump the toxic contents of a disused oil rig at sea, while Germany was one of the main opponents of this plan, arguing that the waste be towed ashore for disposal (see Weale, 1995, on this issue). These differences have not always been so marked: during the 1970s, both countries reacted in similar ways, for example, to tlhe oil shocks of 1974 and 1979, in a way that prioritized economic over environmental concerns (Weale, 1992a:30). Subsequently, Weale goes on to argue, Germany has adopted an "ideology of ecological modernization," entailing the development of nationally applied, coherent environmental policies, which recognize the trade-off between economics and the environment; a path that Britain has not yet followed (Weale, 1992a:ch. 3).



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legislative framework for carrying out environmental regulation, implementation is generally left to local authorities, which vary considerably in their ability to implement the policies effectively, thus placing Britain into types 2 and 3 in the above Typology of Regulatory Structures. In fact, the decentralization of waste disposal responsibilities has been carried to an extreme under the British system. Not only are there some 200 relevant bodies and agencies, but, unusually, control over waste imports-the decision over whether or not a given waste shipment can be permitted into the country-is not the responsibility of central government, or indeed HM Customs, but that of the local authorities in the district where the waste is due to be processed.

In Germany, the implementation of environmental protection is often the responsibility of the Ldnder, while the federal environmental agency is responsible for policy formulation-type 3 in the Typology. For instance, hazardous waste disposal is managed at the land level. This pattern is long established in Germany: while individual Ldnder have had environmental regulations in place since the nineteenth century, it was only in 1986, following the Chernobyl disaster, that a central ministry for the environment was established (Weale, 1992b: 160).

The difference between the two countries lies in the fact that the German political system is federal, while the British system is unitary. The powers of the Ldnder are carefully delineated and protected by the German constitution, and, importantly, they have guaranteed fiscal resources. Representation of the Liinder at the national level of government ensures that there is some coordination between the different states, thus preventing "overproduction" of disposal services. In Britain, on the other hand, powers of local authorities are not institutionalized at the center in any way. As one analysis puts it:

Die politischen Biihnen auf der subnationalen Ebene-die Local Authorities-sind im Unterschied zu den Landern in der Bundes- republik-nicht systematisch institutionell in den Entscheidung- sprozeB auf der zentralen Ebene eingebunden. (Heritier, Mingers, Knill, and Becka, 1994: 158)54

Britain has an unwritten, or "flexible" constitution, and local authorities survive essentially at the whim of central government. The implications of this were seen dramatically in the Thatcher years (1979 to 1990), during which local powers were severely circumscribed, and local funding was reduced, largely through the failed implementation of the poll tax. Thus, with respect to my first hypothesis, Britain first suffers from a coordination problem with respect to waste policy, which is implemented entirely at the local level. This problem is compounded by a lack of institutionalization of the powers of local government: hence, given the need for extra revenue, local authorities compete to allow waste disposal companies to operate within theirjurisdictions. Taken together, going back to hypothesis A, these two-decentralization and lack of a guaranteed level of fiscal resources-imply that the structure of environmental regulation in the UK, in comparison with Germany, is likely to lead to a higher level of waste importation.

Regulatory Style. The following discussion outlines the British and German styles of environmental regulation. In it, I seek to show how these sorts of institutional constraints have patterned state-society relations in these countries, and their subsequent impact on levels of waste importation or exportation.

54 "Unlike the German Ldnder, the political actors at the subnational level-the local authorities-are not systematically involved (institutionalized) in the decision-making process at the central level of government" (translated by author).




Vogel (1986) highlights several key features of the British system which differen- tiate it both from the U.S. and from other advanced countries, relating these differences to constitutional frameworks and historical trajectories of the relationship between business and government. First of all, the most important charac- teristic of the British system is its flexibility. It emphasizes voluntary compliance on the part of industry, and policies are negotiated between industry representatives and government officials on a case by case basis. This system of policy formulation is highly secretive, and participation by environmental interest groups and the general public is minimal. Furthermore, the political system is structured to exclude direct participation (with any prospect of success) in national elections by the Green Party. 5 The environmental groups that do have the most access to the policy- making process tend to be the more conservative, such as the National Trust, which plays a role in preserving the British countryside and heritage usually performed by public bodies in other countries. This process has led to many accusations of regulatory capture: charges which have yet to be fully refuted.

Public opinion, too, appears to have had little direct influence on policy making: Vogel argues that environmental consciousness is relatively low, in the sense that there is a fairly high degree of acquiescence to, and satisfaction with, government policies-for example, following the astonishing transformation of air quality in Britain's inner cities in the period since the 1956 Clean Air Act. This, however, is not altogether an accurate picture. Many recent events, for example, the export of live animals to Europe for slaughter, attempts to destroy historic areas of woodland to make way for motorway construction, and most significantly, the wave of public outrage in the wake of the "Mad Cow" debacle, have led to highly publicized protests, which, though small in number, have involved a broad cross-section of the public; however, rather than these debates occurring before the appropriate policy decisions were made, they have more often, and sometimes literally, taken the form of "lying down in front of the bulldozer." Coupled with that, several waste-related controversies-notably that of the waste ship The Karin B.-have emerged only subsequent to the leaking of information to the popular press. While survey data o,n attitudes to waste importation are not available, studies put the level of environmental awareness in Britain as comparable to that in Germany.56 A much earlier study shows that British and German respondents also showed a similar, and high level of, concern about the disposal of wastes as an environmental problem.57 Generally speaking, there is a widespread feeling among the British public of exclusion from the direct policy-making process, and that environmental concerns will not be accurately reflected in government policy. This somewhat paradoxical picture of inactivity on the part of the majority, coupled with the unconventional tactics followed by the more active environmentalists, can be directly related to the absence of formalized institutional channels for public opinion to express itself in the policy process.

55 Britain has a "first past the post" electoral system. This means that in each constituency, the party with the most votes will win, and that the party with the highest number of overall seats wins the election. This system, unlike systems of proportional representation which predominate elsewhere in Europe, is systematically biased toward two large, inclusive parties, with large territorial bases of support (as opposed to issue-based support), to the exclusion of other, more specific groups. Thus, small parties such as the Greens are excluded from parliamentai-y representation; even Britain's environment-friendly third party, the Liberal Democrats, are excluded from anything more than minority representation in Parliament (Bogdanor, 1983).

56 "In the UK the proportion of people viewing environmental protection as an urgent problem rose from 67 per cent in 1988 to 82 per cent in 1992. In Germany the rise was from 84 per cent to 88 per cent" (Peattie and Ringler, 1994:217; citing Eurobaromneter, 1992).

*57 Heidenheimer, Heclo, and Adams, 1990, citing a r-eport issued by the Commission of the European Communities, 1983. According to the results of this study, disposal of industrial and chemical waste r-anked 2.25 in Germany and 2.16 on a scale of environmental concern. Scor-es were ranked from 0 to 3.



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Second, with respect to mode of policy application, "the British make much less use of legally enforceable environmental quality or emissions standards than does any other industrial society. They attempt to tailor pollution-control requirements to meet the particular circumstances of each individual polluter and the surrounding environment" (Vogel, 1986:75-6). This is achieved through the application of the "best practicable means" (BPM) criterion: rather than firms having to meet nationally imposed pollution standards, they simply have to ensure they are doing the best they can, on an individual basis, to protect the environment, given the means at their disposal.

Two important sources of change in the 1980s affected the style of environmental policy making in Britain. The first, and most significant, were the policies of extensive deregulation and privatization followed by the Thatcher government, with the aim of increasing competition within, and hence the competitiveness of, British industry. This reshaped the context within which environmental policies have been formulated and implemented, giving considerably more leeway to firms in the private sector, and de-emphasizing the role played by government officials in carrying out policy goals. As many observers have pointed out (e.g., Hall, 1992), such a fundamental break in governance modes is rare, and the project of evaluating and measuring these effects has generated a vast amount of scholarship. Waste imports to Britain, as noted above, increased dramatically during this period, and while actual government policies toward the management, disposal, and importation of wastes did not change, the contextual changes provided both more leeway and more incentive for the legal importation of wastes by private actors, for example, through the forcing of local authorities to "contract out" for waste disposal services.

The major external source of change has been the role played by the EC/EU in regulating the European environment. Britain's role in the EC has always been somewhat contentious, and environmental policy has been no exception to this. Britain has jealously guarded its sovereignty against encroachment from the supranational level: prior to the Single European Act, when policy directives required unanimous consent by the member states, Britain was, to a certain extent, able to use its veto power to amend environmental regulations (Golub, 1994). So, during the 1980s in particular, Britain was under little pressure to change its approach to domestic environmental issues, which is the rubric under which waste management and importation fell. Now, however, this situation is changing, with the widening in scope of European environmental policy. The prospects for change in regulatory style, and hence waste importation, will be discussed in the conclusion to this article.

To sum up the British style briefly, returning to the two axes of regulatory style outlined above, it is one of close cooperation between government and business, to the exclusion of other interests, and it is highly flexible and informal, relying on the criterion of best practicable means applied on a case by case basis as opposed to nationally imposed standards. Crucially, the nature of the British political system is such that environmental policy is not formally institutionalized, and thus can be changed extensively according to the ideology of the government in office.

With respect to the German style of environmental regulation, at first glance, there are several similarities between it and the British system. Starting with access to the policy-making process, both are predicated on cooperative relations between government and business-the German system follows a corporatist design, with "industry as protagonist, and voluntary agreements" (Aguilar, 1993:234). However, beyond this, significant differences begin to emerge. First of all, the German political system, with its federal system of government, semi-proportional electoral system, and active judiciary, allows a greater degree of access for environmental




groups to the policy-making process (Heritier et al., 1994).58 Throughout the 1980s, the German Greens had a significant presence in the Bundestag. Although they lost all representation in the 1990 elections (subsequently regaining electoral representation in Ldnder elections), they at least put environmental issues onto the agendas of the mainstream political parties, which in turn has undercut the ability of industry to control the environmental policy-making process (Grant and Pater- son, 1994:148). Second, the Germans have demonstrated a greater commitment to cleaning up the environment, particularly as they are so vulnerable to transboundary pollution, notably acid rain, and have made that commitment clear in the context of the European Community. Therefore, the German system incorporates, at a formal level, various channels for public access to the policy-making process.

Turning to modes of policy application, unlike the British, the Germans employ a much more rigid system of legally imposed environmental standards, uniform across industries and which are institutionalized at both federal and state levels of government, based on the Precautionary Principle (das Vorsorgeprinzip). Weale (1992b:177) notes a culture of deference to technical expertise in dealing with environmental issues, and in fact, this method of policy implementation has been accused by some of lacking in public accountability, and hence legitimacy (Rose- Ackerman, 1995:71).

Sources of change in the German system of environmental regulation can also be traced to internal and external factors. The most important internal factor contrib- uting to change has been the unification of East and West, which has, on the one hand, created a whole set of clean-up problems for the country, and on the other, led to a loss of dumping grounds. This helps explain why, in the context of the European Union-the major external source of change-Germany has actually been pushing for the continuation of waste exportation for recycling purposes, especially within Europe (OECD, 1993c:190-1; Zito, 1994:66).

The contrast between Britain and Germany in terms of regulatory systems is summed up by Brickman, Jasanoff, and Ilgen in their study of chemical regulation in Europe and the United States:

Britain and Germany differ strikingly in their preference for law and formality in defining regulatory relationships. The British carry flexibility to the extreme, developing policy wherever possible through close, informal contacts among government officials and private groups. Flexibility characterizes policy outcomes as well, with guidelines, recommendations and informal persuasion substituting as far as possible for statutory orders and prosecution. The Germans, by contrast, insist on a precise formulation of public and private regulatory responsibilities, usually by means of statutory instruments. The national bias towards precision is reflected both in the consultation process, which tends to be more structured and formal than in Britain, and in the use of numerically exact standards for chemicals in the workplace and pesticide residues. (1985:53)59

58 The German electoral system is a mixed system: while some representatives are elected on a first past the post system, the rest are elected according to a proportional list system, thus allowing for elected representation on both an interest/ideology basis and a territorial basis.

59 Weale puts this contrast slightly differently: "From the point of view of Ger-man policy, the British BPEO [Best Practicable Environmental Option] looks often as though it confuses the claim that there is no evidence of environmental damage with the claim that there is evidence that there is no environmental damage. From the British point of view, the German principle of precaution looks like assuming that there is a risk and being prepared to control it, even though there is no evidence to warrant the conclusion" (Weale, 1995:2 1).



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Thus, there are important ways in which these two systems-Britain and Ger- many-differ in terms of regulatory style, most notably in terms of policy application, and in the nature of their political institutions, which in the German case allow for a greater degree of access by environmental groups to the policy-making process, and greater institutionalization of environmental responsibilities. These differences are summarized in Table 5.

Going back to my second hypothesis, I argue that these differences provide significant leverage for explaining the different levels of engagement in thewaste trade by each country: in the case of Britain, the argument is that groups that would oppose legal importation of wastes are excluded from the policy process, while those that support such importation have privileged access. Furthermore, the institutionalization of the privatization/deregulation ethic during the Thatcher years gave private businesses more leeway to engage in waste importation as a way of enhancing competitiveness.

With respect to the German case, it has been pointed out that its high levels of waste exportation are a puzzle in view of its reputation as an environmental "white knight," and the strength of its environmental movement. My response to this lies in the importance of the divide between domestic and international environmental politics: Germany's record is strong in terms of strictly domestic environmental issues, and in international issues that affect its own environment (Gordon, 1994); hence it would be extremely unlikely for Germany to become a net importer of wastes. However, once wastes are exported, their effects are not felt in the generating country; hence there is little incentive to reduce exportation. In waste exporting countries with strong environmental movements, it is more likely that policies will be directed at waste reduction, which is where, in the absence of other sources of change, changes in levels of waste exportation would originate.60

Alternative Explanations of Britain's Waste Importation Propensity

The Economic Nationalist Explanation. Montgomery's argument about the importance of state calculations of risks and benefits from waste importation is certainly powerful with respect to explaining why less developed and middle-income countries (which tend to lack waste management infrastructures) import as little waste as they do, considering their economic situation (Montgomery, 1995). However, there are certain problems with applying it to two similarly situated countries such as Britain and Germany.

The benefits accruing to the British government from legal waste importation are easy to quantify: one estimate puts revenues in 1987 at ?1.2 billion (Montgomery, 1990:316). Furthermore, according to the British government, the

TABLE 5. A Comparison of British and German Regulatory Styles

Patterns of Access Inclusive Exclusive

Rigid Germany Mode ofApplication

Flexible Britain

60 The cynical counterexplanation of this phenomenon is that the prevailing (non-Green) government can use waste exportation as an easy way to satisfy societal concerns about the effects of waste disposal on its own communities.




hazardous waste importation business is an important contributor to the country's balance of payments, hence providing an incentive for the government to encourage this trade through issuing import permits (Vallette and Spalding, 1990:35 1).

Risk calculations are, however, infinitely more problematic, and to assume that a government can rationally calculate these, in the absence of external pressures, and weigh them against the potential benefits is to make a rather large leap. However, from a strictly environmental viewpoint, it seems that the risks to Germany from waste importation are possibly even less than those to Britain, given the relative quality of their disposal facilities (see section below), with no reason to assume that the financial benefits would be any lower; nor would it seem that levels of public opposition to waste importation differ significantly between the two countries.

This raises the question of the utility of a rational actor/state-centric approach to this issue. Governments do not act in a vacuum when making policy decisions, and a point that is often overlooked in the debate over the extent of government intervention in an economy is that public officials themselves are also constrained by their own regulations and institutional structures. Their degree of openness to or insulation from different societal pressures, and concomitantly, their powers to affect courses of action chosen by these actors, varies significantly across countries. Take the example of Britain: as argued above, business interests-such as the waste disposal industry-enjoy privileged access to the environmental policy-making process, while its flexible mode of policy application gives government officials less power to directly intervene in a decision a firm makes, say, to import hazardous wastes; furthermore, paraphrasing Weale's argument (Weale, 1995), in the absence of proof of environmental harm, the tendency is to take no action toward restricting imports.

Thus, this account is of limited explanatory power here: first, it cannot explain why countries that differ little in objective assessments of costs and benefits differ so radically in their engagement in the waste trade. Second, with reference to the state-centricity of this argument, I argue that government policy cannot be under- stood separately from the network of rules and regulations that govern state-society relations in these countries.

Comparative Advantage in Hazardous Waste Disposal Facilities. It was argued that countries with higher spare disposal capacities, once domestic needs had been met, would import more wastes. There are a number of problems involved in assessing total disposal capacity for each country. One of the most important is that much of the available data, with the exception of Great Britain and the Netherlands, looks only at the amount of waste disposed of each year, broken down by type of technology, and says nothing about overall capacity. One way around this is to assume that most European countries operate close to full capacity. This assumption can be justified to the extent that despite large increases in hazardous waste production, most industrialized countries are actually reducing their disposal capacities, especially landfill sites, as this type of technology has fallen very much out of favor as property becomes more in demand and public fears grow (Hilz and Ehrenfeld, 1991). The basic implication of this assumption is that few countries within Western Europe have the surplus capacity that would enable them to increase imports from other countries.61 Data derived from the ISWA study concerning

G IIt is not clear from the data to what extent waste imports might be substituted for domestic wastes if the price were r-ight. If it were to tuLr-n out that domestic and foreign wastes were easily substitutable for each other, this would imply greater elasticity in waste disposal capacities.



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numbers of waste treatment facilities and disposal capacities are shown in Table 6.62 From this data, and that in Tables 2-4, it can be surmised that Britain does not have a significant amount of excess capacity once its domestic needs have been taken care of. With reference to Table 6, which looks at the approximate number of disposal facilities across Europe, the UK actually ranks below Germany in number of facilities, although this again does not say much about total capacity. Thus, I conclude that total disposal capacity is not a powerful variable in explaining Britain's propensity to import wastes.

As can be seen from Table 6, European countries employ a large number of disposal technologies. By comparing them, we can start to evaluate the British government's claim that Britain imports hazardous wastes because its disposal facilities are superior to those of other countries.

Starting with Britain, studies show that most of its own and others' wastes are disposed through landfill. One study (Wilson, 1987) puts the figure at 85 percent in 1985, and the OECD puts it at 70 percent in the early 1990s (OECD, 1994b: Fig. 4.3). This figure is supported by Hildyard: "[A]ccording to the Hazardous Waste Inspectorate, there are 4,202 landfills in England and Wales, of which an estimated 1,145 are licensed to take hazardous wastes. In addition to those landfills, there are some 737 land based disposal facilities, including 99 storage sites, 53 lagoons, 5 'reception' pits and 14 mine shafts" (Hildyard, 1986:225).63 Furthermore, the majority of landfills in Britain are "dilute and disperse" sites, that is, "[unlined] landfills that are built over permeable soils in order that their wastes can seep out of the site-on the assumption that they will be broken down and rendered harmless as they filter through the underlying soils" (Hildyard, 1986:226). The British practice also includes co-disposal, whereby hazardous wastes are mixed with other types of wastes, usually in unknown quantities, following the principle that hazardous elements will be neutralized through reaction with elements present in the other wastes, a practice viewed with great skepticism outside the UK ( Piasecki and Davis, 1987:193; Postel, 1987:13).

TABLE 6. Commercial Hazardous Waste Treatment and Disposal Facilities, 1987, by Technology

Incineration Physical/Chiemical Landfill

Austria 1 n/a n/a Denmark 1 1 1

West Germany 17 23 22

France 10 8 13

Netherlands 3 5

Sweden 1 2 4

UK 4 16 35

Source: Forester and Skinner (1987:Table I 1). Numbers are approximate. In addition, the UK has 50 surface disposal sites, 14 mine shafts used for disposal, and 9 land farms. The Netherlands is listed as having 2 land farms in operation.

62 Separate studies in Forester and Skinner (1987) yield the following data on disposal capacities for the UK and the Netherlands: Great Britain, 1984 (Wilson, 1987): Incineration: 65,000 tonnes p.a.; Chemical: 300,000 tonnes p.a.; Landfill: 3.74m tonnes; Sea dumping: 260,000 tonnes. Wilson estimates that in 1984 the UK was operating at close to full capacity. The Netherlands (den Ouden, 1987): Rotary kilns: 90,000 tonnes p.a.; Co-incineration: 70, 000 tonnes p.a.; Landfill capacity: 230,000 tonnes in total.

63 Although it is unclear exactly how many of these are in current use. See World Resources Institute, 1987, for an analysis of the problem of abandoned waste dumps in Europe.




The British government has until recently defended the policy of relying on landfill as the primary means of waste disposal, arguing that the practice is safe, and used only for low-level toxic wastes, even though the practice is coming increasingly under fire elsewhere, as the U.S. experience with Superfund shows.64 On the other hand, Sandra Postel quotes a 1986 report by the UK's Hazardous Waste Inspectorate which "paints a grim picture of actual practices, and concluded: 'if we have avoided major problems with co-disposal landfill in the UK, the Inspectorate considers that in some cases this is due more to luck than judgment'" (Postel, 1987:13). The UK also has at its disposal a number of incineration and physical-chemical treatment plants, which are reserved for the most toxic wastes, although Allen (1992:171) argues that British licensed incinerators would actually be illegal in other West European countries, such as Denmark.65

In comparison with the rest of Western Europe, owing to its high population density, most of the Continent now avoids the landfill method of waste disposal. Germany disposes of 15 percent of the three to four million tons of "special wastes" produced each year by incineration, 35 percent by chemical-physical treatment, and the remainder through secure landfill (Defregger, 1983:16). Denmark disposes of its wastes through a single, integrated facility-the huge Kommunekemi (community chemical) plant, which detoxifies and destroys the waste that goes through it (Piasecki and Davis, 1984). France disposes of roughly a third of its wastes through incineration and physical/chemical treatment, slightly less than that through special landfills, and the rest through in-house treatment, upgrading, and incineration at sea (Leroy, 1987).

Thus, cross-country comparison reveals that Britain's disposal facilities are on the whole inferior to those found in most of Western Europe, alarmingly so, in fact. The effect this has on propensity to import depends on which story one accepts about how level of disposal facilities affect importation. The fact that Britain offers relatively cheap disposal facilities is probably a powerful explanatory variable for explaining why waste generators decide to export to Britain, but it is not necessarily so powerful if you are looking at decisions made by governments to issue import permits for legal importation of hazardous wastes. One can assume, at least in the case of an industrialized democracy, that governments have a wider set of objectives than simply making money from waste importation: for example, they know they will be responsible in the long term for cleaning up contaminated sites; also, the electoral consequences of environmental damage from such sites, especially if such waste were foreign in origin, would be devastating. Thus, I would argue that this variable is more important in explaining why countries export to Great Britain, and much less so in explaining Britain's propensity to import.

Looking across Europe, studies show a varied pattern of disposal plant ownership.66 In Germany, most disposal plants, such as the Ebenhausen plant in Bavaria, the subject of many case studies on disposal technology, are owned and operated by the Ldnder governments. Denmark goes even further, and operates a public monopoly system: all companies are required to send their wastes through the integrated Kommunekemi disposal facility. In Britain, on the other hand, more than in any other West European country, the vast majority of waste disposal plants are owned and operated by companies in the private sector in fierce competition

64 Anothef argument often cited is that Britain has a very favorable geological structure for the absorption of pollutants, with resilient soils and extensive tidal waters. This has led the UK government to encourage industrial location to take advantage of theses factors (Golub, 1994). On the other hand, it is not clear to what extent these factors are ouLtweighed by factors such as population density and intense land use.

65 OECD figures also show that in the early 1990s Britain was still disposing of around 10 percent, or 250,000 tonnes, per year of "special wastes" through dumping at sea (OECD, 1994b:Fig. 4.3).

66 See Laurence and Wynne, 1989, Piasecki and Davis, 1987, and Linnerooth and Davis, 1987.



KATE O'NEILL 711

with one another.67 Therefore, it appears there is a close correlation between ownership and importation, at least in the British case.68 Yet, I am hesitant to ascribe independent explanatory weight to facility ownership, chiefly because it is necessary to explain why these plants are privately owned in some countries, and publicly owned in others. Facility ownership is, I would argue, a function of the general regulatory culture of a country; hence this argument can be subsumed into the more general regulation-based explanations.

Concluding Analysis To conclude, Britain is one the world's largest legal importers of hazardous wastes because its regulatory system creates a climate extremely conducive for its waste disposal industry to engage in these practices. These firms, quite obviously, import wastes for profit; the more interesting questions arise when asking what enables them to engage in waste importation despite high levels of public opposition, and what the factors are that affect the decisions of public officials when issuing importation permits.

This article demonstrates that institutional factors-the style and structure of environmental regulation in Britain-provide the most powerful explanation of this phenomenon. Broadly speaking, such factors work by shaping the range of options available to actors within the system, in terms of the goals they pursue, and the means of pursuit, as well as the degree of access they have to the decision-making process. First, Britain has a fragmented regulatory structure: responsibility for waste disposal rests with local authorities, creating a coordination problem, compounded by the increased scarcity of (and uncertainty over levels of) funds from central government. That local authorities rely on the waste disposal industry for a part of their revenues, and do not have jurisdiction over where the wastes disposed in their areas come from, is one factor that enables firms to engage in waste importation. Second, Britain's regulatory style is one that allows for close cooperation between government and business, to the exclusion of other interests, and its flexible mode of policy application allows for a looser, case by case application of environmental standards. Stepping back into the broader political context in which hazardous waste regulation is set, we see a pattern of political institutions that reinforce this trend, further influenced by the pro-free market ideological outlook of the British government throughout the 1980s, and into the 1990s: this, in particular, encouraged the development and expansion of a privatized and highly competitive waste disposal industry, thus helping explain why waste importation into Britain rapidly increased throughout the 1980s. The corresponding constraints that Britain's style and structure of environmental regulation have placed on government actions have been dramatically illustrated in recent years by the failure, so far, to implement a ban on waste imports announced in 1991, a policy upheld by the EU Waste Regulation of 1993.69 This procrastination can be related not only to active, and successful, lobbying efforts by the leading waste importing companies, but also to an inability to coordinate, and even monitor the actions and decisions of Britain's many and various waste regulation authorities.

67 According to Greenpeace, mostwaste imports to Great Britain go to a few large companies: Leigh Environmental, West Midlands (26%), ReChem International, Pontypool and Southhampton (23%), Lanstar Wimpey Waste, Leigh Environmental and PJ Collier, Manchester (39%), Cory Waste Management, Cleanway & Max Recovery (Vallette and Spalding, 1990:354).

68 On the other hand, something of a counterfactual is provided by the Danish case, which has a large, centrally managed and publicly owned disposal facility, but, at least according to the OECD figures for 1989, had quite a high level of net imports (though not repeated in 1991).

69 See ENDS Report 231 (April 1994), 233 (une 1994), 241 (February 1995), and 256 (May 1996) for reports of this saga.




On the international level, Britain's regulatory structure differs significantly from those of its partners in Western Europe. Germany's regulatory system, for example, is one more permissive of waste exportation than importation. In an international system where states are extensively linked, especially through trade and other economic agreements, differences in domestic regulatory systems are important in determining flows of goods and services; thus, an understanding of these differences helps explain why some countries are net importers of hazardous wastes, while others are net exporters.

The explanatory power of this argument is greater than alternative explanations. The most significant alternatives are: comparative levels of disposal technology, and cost-benefit calculations by state actors. The basis for the first argument is that Britain imports wastes because its disposal facilities are superior to those of the countries it imports from; however, empirical analysis showed that, in fact, Britain's facilities are substantially inferior to those of its West European partners, thus making it an attractively cheap option for waste exporters, but significantly raising the environmental risks posed to local populations: the factor that should play a key role in determining government decisions in this area. This is why the second explanation also does not work: there is no basis for believing that the net benefits from waste importation are any higher for Britain than for Germany. On a more general theoretical level, I also argued that by "black-boxing" the state one ignores the fact that governmental actors do not take decisions in a vacuum, and that they, too, are constrained by prevailing modes of environmental decision making-in the British case, the flexible "best practicable option" mode dominates.

Finally, there are three main sources of change now coming into play which could potentially affect Britain's propensity to legally import hazardous wastes. The first is that the international regime governing the waste trade is undergoing a significant transformation in terms of attempting to implement a ban on North-South trade in wastes, with the concomitant attempt to apply the principle of self-sufficiency in waste disposal to the countries in the North. While this does not directly affect Britain's regulatory system, the regime, if effective, will force many Western countries to rethink their waste disposal, and waste generation policies. If the regime is effective, then we are likely to see an increase in waste importation by developed countries and also a decrease in transfrontier movements of wastes.overall. If, on the other hand, the regime is not effective, then illegal waste transactions are bound to increase. Furthermore, some argue that we could then see the relocation of industries to countries with less stringent regulations in order to dispose of their wastes more cheaply.70

Changes in the scope of EU environmental policy and domestic changes in British regulatory practices are interrelated, in the sense that the latter is to a large part a result of the former. Two factors are currently shaping actions taken at the European level. One is what might be termed a philosophical shift, whereby attempts are now being made to combine free trade policies with environmental protection, in recognition of the environmental interconnectedness of the European countries (Jupille, 1996). The other is a change in the scope of European directives, which are now seeking to move beyond their previous functions of coordination and monitoring, standard setting, and capacity enhancement toward national regulatory harmonization. This process is as yet in its infancy; however, Britain, which, as mentioned earlier, is seen as the "dirty man of Europe," is treated as the "bellwether" state for these efforts. Several authors (Buller, Lowe, and Flynn, 1993; Weale, 1995) argue that the very differences that have existed for so long among the member states in terms of regulatory style are going to pose the greatest obstacle to regulatory

70 See, for example, Puckett, 1994.



KATE O'NEILL 713

harmonization and to the ultimate effectiveness of supranational regulation; Weale goes so far as to argue that they might ultimately be the greatest source of strength for European environmental policy, providing blueprints for the policy learning process.

Legislation has been enacted in Britain in recent years that could have a profound impact on its propensity to import hazardous wastes. In March 1995, the British Chancellor announced a new tax on landfill sites, which could raise disposal costs by 50 percent.71 More fundamentally, the British government is in the process of introducing a system of integrated pollution control governed by a central environmental protection agency along the lines of that in the U.S., and regulatory standards are becoming more common than BPM techniques of regulation in certain issue areas-air pollution control, for example.72 This process of change is, however, proving to be "vaster than empires, and more slow" in terms of implementation (Weale, 1992a; Jordan, 1993; Carter and Lowe, 1995). It is as yet, however, not clear whether EU environmental policy overall will continue toward "ecological modernization" (to use Weale's term) for the member states, or whether ultimately it will have to restrict itself primarily to controlling transboundary pollution and resulting externalities, narrowly defined.73 One can hope that the arguments above concerning waste disposal and the waste trade have shown that the borderline between international environmental issues-as the trade is generally considered to be-and domestic issues-as waste disposal is considered-is not always easy to draw.

The above analysis suggests two main directions for further research. The first is to apply the hypotheses about domestic systems of regulation to other advanced industrialized countries, for example, the member states of the OECD. Such a cross-national comparative approach takes as its central premise the need to understand effects of different systems of environmental regulation on international outcomes.74 The second is to trace the ways the changes mentioned above are playing out over time, thus introducing a more dynamic element to the analysis; namely, whether or not changes in waste importation or exportation patterns can be related to previous institutional changes. This would also give an indication of how effective the international waste trade regime is likely to be, as well as provide some insights into the progress and pitfalls of international regulatory harmonization in the European Union.

More generally, the exploration of this particular empirical anomaly-Britain's high propensity to import hazardous wastes-raises broader questions about the domestic factors that shape specific national responses to environmental risk and degradation. The importance of regulatory differences has been downplayed in the existing international environmental politics literature so far, and the hazardous waste trade is a particularly interesting issue for scholars concerned with these questions, raising as it does the issue of why some countries are more willing to take on more environmental risk than others.

71 This tax, Britain's first "green" tax, was implemented in October 1996 (ENDS Report 258, July 1996). 72 From a talk by David Cuckson, Head of the Environmental Law Group, Stephenson Hai-wood, UK, March 28,

1995. 73 For a discuLssion of recent and emerging patterns in the "patchwork" of European regulation, in the face of

different national traditions and interests among the member states, see Heritier, 1996. 74 The policy implications of this approach could be especially useful for the design of regulatoi-y systems in middle-

and low-income countries, a task given a high priority by many international organizations.




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