Evaluation of policy instruments for protective forest management in Austria

This paper is based on a research project studying policy instruments for natural hazards protection in Austria. It discusses two theoretical approaches concerning instruments for political control: policy analysis and systems theory. Because of the stronger empirical basis, policy analysis was applied as the theoretical framework of the study. The findings are discussed for explaining the three essential instruments which are presented in this paper: the regulation of protective forests (ban forests) as a regulatory instrument, a subsidy programme for the restoration of mountain forests as an economic instrument, and the restoration plan for mountain forests as an informational instrument. According to liberal principles, the regulations allocate the costs for mountain forest management to the forest owners and to the beneficiaries of the protective effects of the forest. To avoid conflicts, however, these regulations are not implemented. The forest authority chooses subsidies for the restoration of mountain forests instead. Planning instruments are rather used for legitimizing the subsidies than for rational planning. The evaluation shows that policies can be explained in a better way by the institutional setting and the interests and values of political actors than by the formal characteristics of policy instruments. Three major conclusions are drawn for the analyses of policy instruments: (a) in practical application, the informal functions of policy instruments are more important than their formal characteristics; (b) policy instruments must not be analysed separately as they are not applied independently from each other; (c) in policy research a typology of policy instruments is useful as a model of reference but must not be mistaken for either an explanatory or a normative concept.