There are few more sensitive or important policy areas in the world today, and that means this book is a hugely relevant and timely one. Written by practice-oriented political scientists from various universities in Europe and the rest of the world, this book is a testimony to both policy and the evolution of policy analyses over the last 25 years. On the basis of empirical observations all contributions have attempted to develop new conceptual perspectives for environmental policy analyses which furthermore can be generalized and applied to other policy fields.

Zusammenfassung
Having had the opportunity of receiving considerable public money (mainly from the Swiss National Science Foundation) for numerous en- ronmental policy studies in Switzerland and abroad during the last 25 years, I have decided to put the results published mainly in German and French but also in English in many scientific journals, monographs and book sections in a single book on behalf of my students, younger sch- ars interested in policy analysis dating from the period of the first en- ronmental policies, and my friends teaching this subject in Switzerland and abroad. The criteria used to select the fifteen contributions were their impact on the scientific debate at the time of their publication, their validity for p- sent conceptualizations of policy analysis in the field of the environment, 1 and their contribution to the development of policy analysis as a whole . Moreover, the selected contributions mainly focus on empirical appli- tions in the field of environmental policies or the interface between en- ronmental and non-environmental policies. Some have led to concrete p- icy recommendations of which most have been partly implemented since, at least within my own country. This research also sometimes addressed regional political administrative arrangements leading to administrative reforms and new strategic directions of implementing agencies.

Inhalt
Classics still valid?.- Environmental Policy (2002).- Approaches to an Effective Framework for Environmental Management (1993).- Formulation and Implementation of Air Quality Control Programmes: Patterns of Interest Consideration (1982).- Explaining Differences in the Performance of Clean Air Policies: An International and Interregional Comparative Study (1986).- Institutional Change.- Evaluation of the Federal Office of Environmental Protection: Across Two Levels of Government (1996).- New Institutional Arrangements for a New Generation of Environmental Policy Instruments: Intra- and Interpolicy Co-operation (1995).- Regulatory Change and Institutional Rearrangement: Building New Policy Arenas for Ecologization of Agriculture, A Comparative Analysis of Programmes in France and Switzerland (1987).- Emergence of New Analytical Concepts.- Distributional Issues in Regulatory Policy Implementation the Case of Air Quality Control Policies (1986).- A Policy Monitoring Concept for Promoting the Conservation of Biodiversity (2001).- Environmental Capacity Building in Switzerland (1997).- Ecobusiness and the State-Analysis and Scenarios (1996).- New Readings for the 3rd Millennium.- Rationality Changes in Clean Air Policies (19602000) (2000).- Institution Building for Sustainable Urban Mobility Policies (1999).- Natural Resource Quotas and Contracts A New Institutional Regime for our Common Resources (2000).- Institutional Regimes for Natural Resources: An Innovative Theoretical Framework for Sustainability (2007).