Networks of agri-environmental policy implementation: a case study of Englandʹs Countryside Stewardship Scheme

An increasing amount of land in England is managed through agri-environment schemes such as the Countryside Stewardship Scheme (CSS). The levels of public funding, and the largely experimental status of these initiatives, demands on-going critical evaluation of scheme performance. Based upon information collected during a 3-year programme of environmental monitoring and evaluation of CSS (1997–2000), this paper focuses attention on the implementation of CSS agreements. It argues that understanding of this process needs to take into account a diversity of actors, and in contrast to previous ‘participation studies’ should not be viewed as the product of agreement holders (AHs) acting in isolation. In doing so, the paper draws on actor network theory, to conceptualise the implementation of the CSS as a process involving the active construction and evolution of an actor network, initiated by Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (the government department that runs the scheme), into which AHs and a host of other entities (both human and non-human) need to be enrolled in order for the desired environmental outcomes to be realised and sustained. A number of areas of contestation and instability in the implementation process are revealed through the actor network analysis, allowing a series of recommendations to policy makers to be identified.