Policy feedback and self-reinforcing and self-undermining processes in EU biofuels policy

Abstract

This article traces European Union (EU) biofuels policy development from the late 1990s through to 2015, demonstrating the effects of the early multiple rationales for biofuels in generating both self-reinforcing processes of policy continuity as well as self-undermining processes of policy discontinuity. It argues that features of the EU political and institutional context – most importantly, institutional imperatives for a consensus across multiple EU decision-making bodies and the provision of institutionalised opportunities for policy reviews – are deeply implicated in both self-reinforcing and self-undermining feedback processes. The shift in the balance away from self-reinforcing feedback processes to self-undermining processes after 2009 is explained by the interaction of biofuel interpretive feedbacks with contextual changes, including processes of knowledge accumulation regarding the negative environmental impacts of food-based biofuels.