To compare national sustainable development programmes with the EU environmental action programme "Towards Sustainability" in order to examine what effect the EC programme is having at the national level and to map country-specific differences in the pursuit of sustainability. The intention is to examine to what degree environmental sustainability in Europe depends on the formation of participatory institutions that coordinate and mediate between different actors, and to help designing such new environmental institutions.

The project analyses the impact of sustainable development programmes, developed at EU and national levels (particularly in Ireland, Germany, Italy, UK, France and Spain) on the conditions and organizational forms of interaction between different collective actors such as business, scientists, policy makers, environmentalists. This interaction occurs in various forms of coordination, e.g. environmental impact assessment, mediation procedures, and political dialogue, in which agreement on common norms, values, and bodies of knowledge is necessary for consensus to emerge.

The project consists of the following :

i) an examination of how policy-makers and the other above mentioned collective actors are using ideas and norms of sustainability as a consensual "frame" which defines the rules of their interactions;

ii) an examination to what degree these sustainability programmes have been successful in shaping the cultural and technical meanings and norms that actors must respect in the way they conduct their mutual interactions, and in the policy outcomes they can reach;

iii) an enquiry as to whether the need for sustainability requires the building of new institutions with a conflict-resolving and norm-building power and assessing the extent to which such institutions have been formed in Europe.