Policy feedback and self-reinforcing and self-undermining processes in EU biofuels policy

Abstract:

This article traces European Union (EU) biofuels policy development from the late 1990s through to 2015, demonstrating the effects of the early multiple rationales for biofuels in generating both self-reinforcing processes of policy continuity as well as self-undermining processes of policy discontinuity. It argues that features of the EU political and institutional context – most importantly, institutional imperatives for a consensus across multiple EU decision-making bodies and the provision of institutionalised opportunities for policy reviews – are deeply implicated in both self-reinforcing and self-undermining feedback processes.

The shift in the balance away from self-reinforcing feedback processes to self-undermining processes after 2009 is explained by the interaction of biofuel interpretive feedbacks with contextual changes, including processes of knowledge accumulation regarding the negative environmental impacts of food-based biofuels.