Researchers in the Tyndall Centre – a partner in the LIAISE Consortium – have been awarded the 2011 Harold D. Lasswell Prize for their analysis of the little studied but politically vital practices of climate policy evaluation in Europe. The prize, which is awarded to the best article in each volume of the international journal Policy Sciences, is named in honour of Harold D. Lasswell (1902-1978), who founded the field of policy analysis in the 1950s.

The paper offered the first systematic cataloging of the emerging patterns of climate policy evaluation undertaken across the European Union. According to one of the lead authors, Professor Andrew Jordan, “the most striking finding of the paper was just how undeveloped and unsystematic are most current evaluation practices. Great efforts have been made to inform and understand policy making procedures in Europe, but most evaluation of policies already in place remains piecemeal and lacks much input from stakeholders”. This is an academically intriguing finding with potentially important implications for the everyday practices of climate policy evaluation.  Andrew and one of the co-authors of the paper, Dr Tim Rayner, are currently extending their analysis to look at the evaluation of more innovative climate policies.

Professor Jordan said that he started to suspect that the paper was making waves when it immediately shot to the top of the journal’s ‘most downloaded’ list. It is currently the third most heavily downloaded paper in the journal’s entire forty five year history.

A monetary award of $500 is provided by the journal’s publisher, Springer, to the awardees.

For more information on the article ‘The evaluation of climate policy: theory and emerging practice in Europe’ by D Huitema, A Jordan, E Massey, T Rayner, H van Asselt, C Haug, R Hildingsson, S Monni and J Stripple please click on the weblink below.