Environmental policy as democratic proclamation and corporatist implementation: A comparative study of environmental taxation in the electricity sector in the Nordic countries as of 1994

The Nordic countries generally rank as one of the forerunners of environmental policies and figure in the front line with the most ambitious policy goals in international fora. However, since effective environmental action, for instance through environmental taxation, generally puts a burden on industry, a unilateral introduction of environmental measures by one or a few nations may seriously affect their industrial competitiveness, given an open and competitive economy. Given their persistent and often unilateral avant-garde environmental engagement, the paper discusses how the Nordic countries deal with this dilemma. Theoretically, the paper seeks an answer by recursion to Rokkan's famous distinction between functional and electoral/numerical politics. Empirically the paper finds support for the Rokkan perspective through a systematic analysis of Nordic environmental taxation policies, documenting that the two channels of policy making do indeed produce different results that are compatible with a dual-policy solution to the prisoners' dilemma of avant-garde environmental politics.