Paul F. Steinberg

In this book, Steinberg[1] discusses the importance of both formal and informal rules in determining environmental policy. Although policy and social norms may not seem like particularly glamorous topics, they directly impact environmental outcomes. Early in the book, he explores this concretely by looking at how different policies impact the locations on the migration route of the environmentally threatened cerulean warbler.

Rules are all around us. Even when we think we are at our most free—on our own property or in the wilderness, perhaps—that freedom is mediated by a web of rules which define and implement property rights. These rules may sometimes seem like they are as fundamental laws of nature, but they differ from nation to nation and change within nations over time. Rules can be changed.

But should rules be changed? Perhaps we live in the best of all feasible worlds. Perhaps we have already found the best compromise between many competing possibilities. Steinberg discusses multiple reasons, including incomplete information and the challenge of collection action problems, which indicate that there is good reason to believe that we can improve the rules of the Earth.

How can rules be changed? One of the most important points of leverage for change is nations. Nations remain the primary source of rules over most of the land on earth. However, they are not the only source of relevant rules. Supra-national sources of rules from international treaties to makers of more enforceable rules such as the EU also have important rule making power. And more and more, we are seeing power decentralized to local communities, both rural and urban. Anyone who wants to achieve incremental change needs to think vertically and understand how they can change rules at all of the relevant levels.

Changing the rules is not enough though. The formal rules of society are built on top of informal norms and routines. To maintain social change, formal rules need to be changed side-by-side with changing the minds of those in society and the routines of the institutions that impact the implementation and enforcement of those rules. This requires building broad coalitions which include those who support the rules for the "wrong" reasons.

However, rule makers should consider how permanent they want rules to be. Today's innovative rule becomes tomorrow's obsolete constraint. Rule makers should consider a hierarchy of permanence for rules and build in flexibility for rules which may need to change as the world around them changes.

Finally, the book discusses the idea of super rules. Changing the rules directly is not always the most effective way to enact change. Super rules are the rules that control how rules are made. It can be easier to change the super rules than to change a rule to directly get a desired effect. However, changing super rules also have broader effects, so they can be harder to control. What, concretely, are examples of super rules? Two examples are changing how decisions are made and changing who is involved in decision making. For examples, rules allowing citizens to act as environmental monitors bring a broader set of stakeholders to bear on looking for environmental misbehavior but also open the door to potentially spurious legal challenges. (That particular example seems to have been a net good though!)

Overall, this book was a fascinating look at environmental policy from a systems thinking lens. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in how to effectively advocate for change in environmental policies. I also recommend it to those who are interested in systems thinking and want to see it applied in a a concrete context.


[1] Disclosure: I took a class from Steinberg my senior year of college.
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