The Development of Czech Environmental Policy 1990-1995

Abstract

The Czech Republic is used as a case study to examine the link between the development of environmental policy & the more general social & economic development of a postcommunist society. The initially progressive arrangement of environmental agencies & procedures of the early 1990s, which were in tune with concurrent development in the West, was abandoned because of the arrested expansion & diversification of the policy community. The ethos of environmental policy making in the early 1990s, which was a consequence of the special circumstances of that period, could not be maintained because there was no sufficiently strong social group underpinning & advocating these changes. This is documented by the inability of journalists to grasp & further communicate complex environmental issues & by the nonexistence of a social stratum corresponding to the 'new middle class,' from which Western environmental groups draw their support.