Policy Analysis for Sustainable Development: The Toolbox for the Environmental Social Scientist.

Purpose – The paper seeks to propose the basic competencies of environmental social scientists regarding policy analysis for sustainable development. The ultimate goal is to contribute to an improvement of educational programmes in higher education by suggesting a toolbox that should be integrated in the curriculum.Design/methodology/approach – Starting from the basic research questions regarding governance for sustainable development, five methods are identified capable of answering the following questions: reconstruction of policy theories; stakeholder analysis; impact assessment; cost‐benefit analysis; discourse analysis. Relevant information was collected through a literature review and practical experience by the authors.Findings – These include: minimum content of the toolbox with methods of policy analysis for sustainable development; examples of how the toolbox can be applied; strengths and weaknesses of the methods; specification of competencies of environmental social scientists active in the ar...

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