ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION IN THE NEWGLOBAL ECONOMY: THE IMPACT ON INDUS-TRY AND COMPETITIVENESS by Rhys Jenkins,Jonathan Barton, Anthony Bartzokas, Jan Hesselberg and Hege Merete Knutsen, 2002. Elgar. £75.00 (hbk). ISBN 1 84064 540 7

Concerns over the impact of environmental regulationson industrial competitiveness have emerged as one of thebitterest sources of dispute between government, indus-try and NGOs in the past two decades or so. Witness, forexample, the furore in the run-up to the North AmericanFree Trade Agreement (NAFTA), where US businessesand labour unions voiced fears about the flight of manu-facturing industry and jobs to weakly regulated pollution‘havens’ in Mexico, or, more recently, opposition frombusinesses and leading trade associations to the UK government’s Climate Change Levy.

Against this background, it is timely that Rhys Jenkinsand colleagues should critically re-examine a debate that,despite over two decades of research, remains mired incontroversy. The basic premise of their book, Environ-mental Regulation in the New Global Economy, is twofold.The first is empirical and based on the observation thatthere has been an unambiguous increase in the share ofpollution-intensive industries in developing countries,coinciding with a period of industrial restructuring at the global level and regulatory tightening in developedeconomies. The second, meanwhile, is methodologicaland suggests that neither firm- nor national-level studiesare well suited to generating clear conclusions about therelationship between competitiveness and regulations.Instead, this is best approached at the industry level,which allows changes in industrial location to be studiedwithin the context of broader structural, market and regu-latory dynamics that combine to shape competitiveness.

The book opens with three chapters by Rhys Jenkins.The first provides a brief overview and synthesis of keyissues that underpin contemporary debates about envi-ronmental regulations, globalization and industrial loca-tion. This is followed, in the second chapter, by a survey

of existing conceptual and empirical studies on the rela-tionship between environmental regulations and com-petitiveness. These are shown to have produced a mixedset of results that provide support both for and againstthe idea that environmental standards have a negativeimpact on competitiveness. However, rather than dis-missing these works outright, Jenkins suggests that theambiguity in existing studies may be little more thanindicative of the fact that the relationship between regu-lations, competitiveness and industrial location may befar from clear cut. Instead, there are sound reasons forsupposing that it may vary according to the nature andcircumstance of the industrial sector in question, a pointexplored in some detail in chapter 3.

This conceptual discussion sets the scene for the mainpart of the book, which comprises in-depth case-studiesof industry dynamics in three pollution-intensive sectors.Thus, in chapters 4–6, Jonathon Barton provides adetailed account of the iron and steel industry, followedin 7–9 by an excellent case-study of the leather tanningsector by Jan Hesselberg and Hege Merete Knutsen,while chapters 10–12 complete the empirical section with an examination of the fertilizer industry by AnthonyBartzokas. The studies broadly follow a similar structure.Following a description of the environmental, marketand structural features of the sector, the authors analysethe recent experience of producers in, first, EuropeanUnion states and, second, a selection of industrializingand transition economies. Spanning more than 220 pages,the case-studies are detailed and will no doubt appeal tothose with a more general interest in corporate environ-mentalism or industrial restructuring at the global level. Moreover, for those daunted by this weight ofempiricism, each of the sectoral studies finishes with aneat summary.

The work concludes with a chapter by Rhys Jenkins,who, as in previous works, proves adept at drawing keylessons from diverse and often complex empiricism. Two,in particular, stand out. First, although evidence from thecase-studies supports the idea that environmental regula-tions have indeed contributed to the shift of industrialactivity from developed to developing countries in certain

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European EnvironmentEur. Env. 13, 240–243 (2003)

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Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Eur. Env. 13, 240–243 (2003)

instances, this has been far from universal. Rather, it hasbeen context specific, depending on, amongst otherthings, the country, sector and even the nature of the firmand its position in the production chain. Second, chal-lenging the influential ‘win–win’ logic of Michael Porter,the author concludes that little evidence can be found fromthe sectors to support the argument that environmentalregulations can enhance competitiveness. In fact, in thehandful of cases where firms have made investments that contribute to both economic and environmental per-formance, this has predominantly been driven by the pro-fit-motive as opposed to externally imposed regulations.

Environmental Regulation in the New Global Economy is awelcome addition to an analytical debate that has all toooften been based on weak empirical foundations. It is notperfect. Despite the obvious importance of firm charac-teristics in differentiating the impact of regulations, thereare only limited attempts to theorize the nature of these.This is a shame since, given the considerable depth oftheir case material, there would appear to be considerablescope for advancing theoretical and empirical debates in this area. Similarly, the absence of comparable dollarestimates of compliance costs across sectors and countriesis an important omission in a book centrally concernedwith the impact of regulations on competitiveness. These,however, are relatively minor complaints. Overall, this isan accomplished work that will be of interest to studentsand researchers in a number of fields ranging from eco-nomic geography to strategic management, and onehighly recommended by the reviewer.

Richard PerkinsDepartment of Geography and Environment,

London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

Published online in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/eet.321

HAVE GREEN PARTIES BECOME PART OF THEESTABLISHMENT?

THE EVOLUTION OF GREEN POLITICS. DEVELOP-MENT AND CHANGE WITHIN EUROPEAN GREENPARTIES by Jon Burchell, 2002. Earthscan, 202 pp, £15.95(pbk). IBSN 1 85383 752 0

In this book the author gives an overview of aspects of development and change of Green parties in Europe,in particular four of them – Die Grünen in Germany, Miljöpartiet de Gröna in Sweden, Les Verts in France andthe Green Party in the UK. The book is useful for readerswho seek information on the history of these parties andtheir relationships with other parties as well as on char-acteristics of the party and electoral systems of Germany,Sweden, France and the UK. In addition the author offersintroductions to a number of issues regarding develop-

ment and change of Green parties as well as to relevantliterature on these issues. For these reasons this book canbe recommended.

The author has, however, greater ambitions. His prin-cipal claim is stated: ‘This book presents an in-depth, thematic, comparative approach to the analysis of Greenparty development and change questioning whether theprocess of Green party evolution has resulted in the ideo-logical dilution of green ideals and objectives’ (p. 2), or inother words, ‘Do Green parties still represent an alterna-tive “new politics” stance encapsulating the anti-partysentiments of the new social movements, or does Greenparty development represent the incorporation of thegreen challenge within the established party systems ofWestern Europe?’ (p. 2). Furthermore, he claims that ‘Intackling these questions, the book presents two primaryinnovations within the study of development and changeamong the European Green parties. Firstly, it demon-strates that a clearer understanding of the experiences ofdevelopment and change can be gained by refining exist-ing aproaches to Green party analysis via a more effectiveincorporation of analytical tools utilized within politicalscience research into more long-standing political parties’(p. 2) and ‘The second innovative dimension lies with thecomparative framework utilized within the book’ (p. 3).

According to these claims, the author sets himself thetask of answering questions of great interest, both inempirical and theoretical terms. When, in addition, sucha work is published by a publisher that specializes insocial science literature on environmental issues, one ispleased to accept the invitation to review it. I shalladdress the author’s first claim and in so doing alsocomment on his theoretical approach, how he uses hisanalytical tools and his selection of data.

In line with standard analytical currency among polit-ical scientists who are carrying out empirical research onparties and party systems, the author states that whileGreen parties may represent an alternative approach toparty politics, they nevertheless face many of the samepressures and constraints that have confronted the moreestablished political parties across Western Europe. It is,however, surprising that the author claims to be innova-tive by presenting a picture of Green party developmentand change ‘. . . which balances internal pressures con-cerning the specific characteristics and style of the Greens,with external pressures emerging from the systemiccontext within which the parties are forced to compete’ (p.3). Elaborate contributions on such balancing processeshave been presented in empirical and theoretical work inorganizational studies since the classic works by T.Parsons, P. Selznick and J. Thompson. In fact, the assump-tion of the existence of such balancing processes has beenone of the founding assumptions of organization theoryfor 40 odd years.

The author notes that country specific institutionalcharacteristics make for broad disparity in political