Street level bureaucracy in response to environmental pressure. Insights from forestry and urban green space governance in Poland

Abstract

Forestry and urban green space governance experiences rapid changes due to bottom up environmental pressure and top down changes of legislation. To deepen our understanding of crafting preferable environmental reactions towards environmental pressure, we introduced the perspective of environmental street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) and explored it using Oliver’s strategic response framework. Drawing from case studies on the governance of the moose and urban green space in Poland, we investigated the complex and mediating sphere of SLB “policy intentions” in environmental governance. We argue that SLBs can distance themselves from new expectations if these are perceived as “socially constructed” and potentially disturbing for SLBs’ professional routines. Such limited or moderated reactions can be a coping mechanism of SLBs trying to balance a complex landscape of various, even contradictory pressures. Our findings break the monolithic-type image of a ‘decision-maker’ into complex web of interrelations between administrative units and political structures. They also suggest a need of new forms of environmental (post-) bureaucracy to reinforce social trust and to deal with ambiguities of nature.

Keywords

Environmental governance social movements organizational studies urban green space public officials wildlife management environmental conflicts

Introduction

One of the challenges of environmental governance results from increasing social awareness of the negative consequences of environmental problems (Macnaghten and Urry, 1998; Riley et al., 2002; Scerri, 2009). Environmental social actions (protests, grassroots initiatives, lobbying) triggered by this social awareness often entail pressing environmental administration to produce adequate policy responses (Bommert, 2010; Della Porta and Andretta, 2002) through new regulations, to enforce existing laws, or to produce educational activities, collectively referred to as ‘environmental pressure’. Some scholars criticize environmental public administration for being far from those citizens’ needs and for replacing democratically elected representatives in an illegitimate way (Fischer, 2000; Wilson and Swyngedouw, 2015). In their view, reformed administration should rather be “facilitating citizens’ deliberation and setting up or structuring public contexts that help citizens organize their own discourses” (Fisher, 2000: 231). Additionally, numerous international initiatives and laws, such as the Birds and Habitat Directives or the Aarhus Convention, support a more proactive and facilitative environmental administration.

In reaction to such pressure and critique, some sectors of environmental governance have undertaken essential organizational changes. Two examples extensively covered by the environmental governance literature are the responses of forest managers and city administration towards environmental pressure from social actors. The former needed to respond to pressures to balance timber production with nature protection and to strengthen public participation in decision-making. The approaches adopted to integrate multiple objectives included forest certification (Cashore et al., 2004), integrative forest management (Kraus and Krumm, 2013), sustainability practices (Sharma and Henriques, 2005) such as pollution control or ecosystem stewardship, and social forestry (Maier and Abrams, 2018). In the case of city administration, their responses to problems such as air pollution and climate change and the resulting environmental pressure from groups of citizens, environmental NGOs and urban movements in support of green cities (Birch, 2008) included creating such initiatives as the one million trees campaign (Campbell, 2014), urban forestry (Konijnendijk et al., 2006), and green infrastructure (Benedict and McMahon, 2006). New initiatives such as the ones above are often combined with participatory forms of environmental urban management such as environmental stewardship (Connolly et al., 2014).

Before organizations respond to environmental pressure, there is the rarely explored complexity of choosing and designing adequate strategic responses. Studies of institutions and organizations suggest that the organizational responses of administrative units to social pressure can vary from manipulation to acquiesce (Oliver, 1991), which is illustrated by the strategic reactions towards national biodiversity policies (Hiedanpää et al., 2015). Some public policies were criticized as roll-out environmentalism – not committed directly to meeting social and environmental expectations, but to redirecting policy responses towards growth and competitiveness (Béal, 2012; Rosol et al., 2017). Tahvilzadeh et al. (2017) suggest that environmental postulates such as sustainability may degrade into a pure discourse without identified measures and real environmental effects. Finally, there is some suspicion regarding participatory modes of decision-making often applied in forestry and city management as they can translate into post-politics “managed by experts and legitimated through participatory processes in which the scope of possible outcomes is narrowly defined in advance” (Wilson and Swyngedouw, 2015: 6). Such processes obscure real democratic struggles and antagonisms rather than tackle them.

The literature on organizational studies points to several factors that influence the willingness and capacity of organizations to strategically respond to a particular external pressure (here an environmental one). Those studies, to a lesser extent, explore the perspective of environmental street-level bureaucrats (SLBs, Lipsky, 2010) who can influence the reactions of public administration towards environmental pressure. However, existing studies on SLBs in environmental governance are mainly focused on the implementation of various (national and international) regulations at a regional or a national level. They mostly neglect the role of SLBs in shaping organizational reactions towards direct or indirect environmental pressure. Thus, the aim of this article is to fill in this gap by investigating two case studies from Poland: (1) protests against tree logging in Warsaw and (2) social demands regarding increased moose protection. Our goal is to answer two specific questions: 1) How do SLBs perceive their role in shaping environmental policy accompanied by environmental pressure? 2) How do SLBs shape their relationships with other actors of environmental governance?

In the following parts of the paper, we outline the theoretical background of our research: the literature on strategic organizational reactions towards environmental pressures, the concept of SLBs, and the way SLBs can mediate organizational reactions to environmental pressure. This is followed by the methods section, after which we introduce two case studies. We then discuss the findings concerning SLB reactions towards pressure from environmental social actors and SLB supervising organizations. The final section presents the key conclusions.

Theoretical background

The literature on institutions and organizations suggests that organizational responses of administrative units have various forms (Zald et al., 2005), and that there is a strategic procedure for choosing certain reactions. The literature particularly covers two issues regarding this decision-making process: (1) whether the organization responds or not – covering the continuum from resistance to adaptation (Hiedanpää et al., 2015), and (2) how advanced the reaction is – from routine adjustments to shifts of the whole organizational logic (Hall, 1993). According to Oliver (1991), organizational reactions can be shaped by the willingness and ability of an organization to conform to its institutional environment as influenced by five institutional factors: cause, constituents, content, control, and context. Table 1 includes questions that translate these factors into environmental governance issues.

Table 1.

Choosing the organizational strategic response towards environmental pressure.

Factors influencing strategic response	Questions regarding the organizational strategic response towards environmental pressure
Cause	Why is the organization being pressured to conform to environmental pressure?
Constituents	Who is exerting environmental pressure on the organization?
Content	To what norms or requirements is the organization being pressured to conform?
Control	How or by what means is the environmental pressure being exerted?
Context	What is the organizational, institutional, and discursive context of the environmental pressure?

Source: Own elaboration based on Oliver (1991: 152).

To investigate the role of environmental bureaucrats in developing responses to environmental pressure, this paper draws on the concept of street-level bureaucracy and street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) developed by Lipsky (2010) and then elaborated in environmental governance literature. The perspective of SLBs helps to track the mediating potential of bureaucrats considering the impact of their activities and perspectives. SLBs are civil servants of public units who “interact with citizens in the course of the job and have discretion in exercising authority” (Lipsky, 2010: XVII). In environmental governance, SLBs can include, for instance, the staff of environmental agencies, environmental inspectors, park rangers, foresters, and hunters. All those professions practically implement environmental policies and have daily contact with so-called “beneficiaries” – all humans and non-humans influenced by SLB operations. The relationships between SLBs and their beneficiaries are discussed in the literature. For example, Fineman (1998) highlights a certain imbalance of power between SLBs and their beneficiaries in favor of the SLBs. Environmental governance literature also provides some insights into the perceptions SLBs hold of other actors in the field and vice versa. Winter (2002) found that the attitude of municipal level SLBs towards a target group can influence the way migration and agri-environmental policies are implemented. On the other hand, the perception of SLBs by other actors can also affect the bureaucrats’ attitude toward policies (Fineman, 1998; Maier and Winkel, 2017).

Lipsky (2010) suggests that SLBs usually make many decisions on the spot and need to deal with various external and internal constraints such as people’s reactions, shortages of resources (time, finance), and ambiguity of regulations. By dealing with those challenges on a daily basis, SLBs often have a certain “discretion in determining the nature, amount, and quality of benefits and sanctions provided by their agencies” (Lipsky, 2010: 13) and some autonomy from their supervisors. Those two features – autonomy and discretion – determine that SLBs are decisive administrative structures in interpreting policy for their beneficiaries and in defining what the achievable results of particular policy are. Professional assessment of implemented policies as well as beliefs and values at an individual and collective level are key parameters to consider. Winter (2002) shows that the way SLBs assess the usefulness of policy instruments influences policy implementation. According to Crook and Ayee (2006), a positive attitude of SLBs to policy can facilitate its implementation even under unfavorable conditions. Sevä (2015) suggests that the understanding of policy, or the evaluation of its clarity and coherence, among SLBs is among the main factors affecting the mediating role of SLBs. Furthermore, as shown by Maier and Winkel (2017: 26), in the case of forestry SLBs in Germany, general support for core policy values (e.g. nature conservation) can vary among individuals within the same organization, and these differences can result in diverse implementation practices of bureaucrats. However, as Kaufman’s (1986) classic analysis of the US Forest Rangers revealed with regard to personal values of SLBs, while recognizing the diversity of these values, public organizations are be able to enhance unity and conformity of their employees’ perspectives, e.g. through trainings, setting internal procedures and hierarchical structures.

Environmental governance literature also points to the growing complexity of power relations between various actors that influence the autonomy and discretion of SLBs. Maier and Abrams (2018) show that in US forestry, there is a growing dependence of forestry SLBs on external non-agency stakeholders who can play the role of veto players. Catney and Henneberry (2012) report, based on the case of land contamination in England, that because of rising social control, urban bureaucrats can manage discretion and try to displace or diffuse responsibility to avoid being blamed for decisions. Despite this, many studies provide strong evidence that SLBs focus on keeping their authority and a preferable level of discretion (Fineman, 1998; Juntti and Potter, 2002). Consequently, in some cases, SLBs perceive newly introduced mechanisms of cooperation with external actors as constraining their daily operations (Crook and Ayee, 2006; Maier and Winkel, 2017; Trusty and Cerveny, 2012). On the other hand, Niedziałkowski et al. (2018) show that attitudes toward participation in groups related to environmental public administration transcend positive/negative dichotomy and include a pragmatic perspective on participation.

SLBs are responsible for the implementation of legislation and authorities’ decisions in practice and, consequently, they are often under double pressure: from their supervisors and decision-makers and from the beneficiaries. In forestry management, Maier and Abrams (2018) point to the fear of being trapped between administrative challenges and litigation. SLBs need to consider both supervising organizations, which expect implementation of the required indicators (e.g. financial, effectiveness), and external actors, whose cooperation is necessary to meet new environmental objectives. In urban governance, Crook and Ayee (2006) highlight that SLBs need to deal with a vicious circle of past carelessness that discouraged city residents from collaborating with the public administration. In response, SLBs often introduce some coping mechanisms and routines that streamline daily work. For instance, Fineman (1998) indicates several rituals and improvisation of environmental inspectors connected with bargaining and field-level interpretations during their job, e.g. assigning their beneficiaries “homework”, using prosecution as a last resort, or applying formal language in official correspondence to keep beneficiaries at a distance. Similarly, Winter (2002), exploring the SLB role in immigration control and agri-environmental governance at the municipal level, describes the coping mechanisms of SLBs: rationing services, creating routines by classifying clients into several categories, and using a so-called “creaming” or “cherry-picking” strategy (Vedung, 2015), i.e. favoring the most promising/easiest/fastest cases from those subjected to their duties. SLBs enjoy some autonomy when implementing legal rules because it makes their duties more “manageable” or “workable” within the limited resources of public administration. In some cases, however, such “internal improvisations” enable SLBs to lionize the field (Fineman, 1998: 971): keep a distance from supervising and legislative structures, rely on “well-tested assumptions that have always guided their everyday practice” and, therefore, pay less attention to new laws, policies, or organizational changes.

Patterns of SLB reactions are culturally and contextually anchored and therefore should be analyzed considering local conditions (Peters, 2002; Styhre, 2007). Peters (2010) suggests that there is a certain specificity of bureaucratic structures in Central and Eastern Europe, rooted in previous political experiences. In the past, SLBs in this region experienced parallel structures of ruling political parties that monitored state governance to assure its conformity with dominant paradigms. This could lead to SLBs’ caution towards politically driven structures and the need for assuring greater autonomy and discretion for SLBs under new political arrangements. He also points to the strongly negative evaluation of public bureaucracy in the former communist countries because of its role under the previous regime. Szczerski (2004) implies that the valuation of Polish public administration may depend on social attitudes toward the free market and towards the 1989 system transformation. Finally, most of the Central and Eastern European countries were oriented towards joining the European Union. This required the implementation of acquis communautaire, which directly translated into new obligations and expectations for environmental bureaucracy. All these characteristics could shape social expectations towards public administration, its role in environmental governance, and preferred reactions to social pressure.

Considering the above, SLBs should be treated as active participants of environmental policymaking whose perspective on this process is well worth studying. SLB theory can potentially help to identify causal mechanisms influencing SLB actions and strategies. Table 2 presents the factors influencing organizational strategic reaction when the active role of SLBs in environmental governance is incorporated:

Table 2.

Potential influence of SLBs in choosing an organizational strategic response towards environmental pressure.

Factors influencing strategic response	Potential influence of SLBs
Cause	Understanding and interpreting environmental pressure
Constituents	Attitudes towards target groups
Content	Core beliefs and values at individual and organizational levels
Control	Assessment of autonomy and discretion
Context	Assessment of SLBs’ position “in between” various expectations, assessment of possible resources, possible coping mechanisms

Source: Own elaboration based on Oliver (1991: 152).

Methods

The main task of this study is to explore how SLBs interplay with organizational constraints and environmental pressure. Consequently, a case study approach based on qualitative data was a convenient research strategy (Yin, 1994). We reanalyzed data collected within two other projects regarding protection of the moose and urban trees. We consider these cases as fairly typical regarding environmental pressure towards conservation issues (protection of charismatic animals, preserving nature against destruction). Because of this, we chose them to observe common reactions of SLBs to such pressure. Despite differences regarding the object of protection and administration involved, the cases share several characteristics which suggests analyzing them together: (1) the administrative structure is dispersed with no dedicated units devoted to the particular issue of the moose or urban trees respectively (SLBs have many other commitments); (2) the status of the managed issue is covered by general laws on environmental protection leaving some space for the autonomy and discretion of SLBs; (3) SLBs need to deal with the complexity of contemporary environmental governance with varying systems of knowledge competing with each other (including lay knowledge and expertise in biological conservation/forestry/urban greenery). Because of that, practices and processes captured in those two cases can be viewed as illustrative for other environmental governance studies of similar characteristics.

The data was collected in 2016–2018 and involved desk research (approx. 60 items including press releases, official documents, web sites, and grey literature) supplemented with semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in moose governance (five interviews) and urban green space management (four interviews). Desk research was useful in mapping crucial elements of environmental pressure and organizational reactions and in developing a list of potential interviewees. To identify interviewees we also used snowball sampling. Semi-structured interviews allowed us to explore the frames used by our interviewees when interacting with social actors. Through additional open-ended question, leaving space for interviewees’ articulation, we were able to explore such phenomena as meanings, identities and personal interpretations of events (Galletta, 2013). In the urban greenery case, we also observed three public debates related to the topic to gather information about a real-time interplay between SLBs and other actors – ways of communicating, shared and opposing meanings and reactions to each other. This research method was already tested in SLB analysis in environmental governance (Fineman, 1998; Konczal, 2017). Combining interviews with the data from debates allowed us to cover the variety of actors involved: seven environmental public officials from regional/city administration, four foresters (three from the State Forests Holding, SFH, and active hunters; one from Warsaw Municipal Forests), four scientists, three environmental activists, one national park ranger, and one environmental public official at the central level. Interviews took 30–150 minutes and were assisted by an interview guide with open-ended questions regarding main challenges, actors involved, and actions taken either regarding moose policy or concerning tree logging. The interviews were transcribed and anonymized. We analyzed the collected data by means of research-derived thematic coding. This coding strategy is particularly useful for comparative studies to cover a distribution of various perspectives on a certain phenomenon (Flick, 2011). We used coding ‘themes’ (e.g. events, practices/tactics, meanings, relationships/interactions, and conditions or constraints) developed by Gibbs (2008) that were directed at answering our research question. As the original subject of the conducted studies concerned broader and more general environmental policy-making, we treat our results as promising for further development.

Case studies: Environmental pressure towards moose protection and against tree logging

The moose (Alces alces) is the largest member of the dear family (Cervidae). It is considered a charismatic species and a resource for wildlife-based tourism and hunting (Lovelock, 2008). The Polish moose population constitutes the most-western edge of species’ range in Europe (Raczyński and Ratkiewicz, 2011). Since 1945 it has predominantly been a ‘game species’ – the status regulated by the Hunting Law (1927, 1952, 1959 and 1995 are all versions of a given legal act which are adequate in this case) and implemented by the Polish Hunting Association in cooperation with the State Forests Holding under the supervision of the Ministry of the Environment. Two former organizations manage most of the hunting grounds in Poland and foresters and hunters employed by those organizations are considered SLBs for this case. The Ministry determines a list of game species and specifies when hunting can be done during the year. Game status usually involves hunting management and focuses on maintaining the population of the game species at a particular level, which is supported by monitoring, breeding, and feeding.

In the case of moose management in Poland, environmental pressure was focused on ensuring protection for this game animal. Hunting moose was temporally suspended in 2001 after the drastic decline of the population caused by overhunting in the 1980s and 1990s (Raczyński and Ratkiewicz, 2011). During 19 years of the moratorium (2001–2020), number of moose increased from less than 2,000 to around 20,000. As moose can cause significant damage in forest plantations, the preferred organizational response of SFH towards the recovering moose population was to reinstate hunting (Wawrzyniak, 2018). The organization took some formal and discursive steps in this direction, using both official and unofficial means to influence decision-makers at the Ministry of Environment. They shared data on forestry losses and collisions with moose on the roads, organized seminars and financed research on managing moose populations. However, the government officials decided not to cancel the hunting ban because of environmental pressure from wildlife biologists and environmental NGOs. Those groups emphasized the importance of this charismatic species for nature and tourism and expressed a lack of trust in the sustainability of hunting practices, which had driven the moose population to the brink of extinction in the first place. They demanded that SFH redesign their priorities to accept the costs of moose damage in forests and establish a monitoring system for moose that would involve wildlife biologists and NGOs.

In 2009 the Ministry commissioned a long-term strategy of moose management and, for the first time, various perspectives were represented. The writing team, led by a biologist from the University of Białystok, included also other biologists and representatives of State Forest Holding and Polish Hunting Association. Their work was accompanied by several controversies and finished with a dissenting voice of the foresters and hunters. The final document of 2011 did not follow the suggestions of foresters and hunters to restore hunting on regular terms. It provided for a limited hunting in 4 regions, preceded by 3–5 years of partial protection. Also, it proposed establishing of an expert group with representatives of different stakeholders advising the Minister of the Environment and guiding moose management. Although the strategy was not practically implemented it became a reference point for the environmental actors. The environmental pressure was successful in publicizing attempts to restore hunting and effectively mobilized public opinion against two such initiatives of the Minister of Environment in 2014 and in 2017. Consequently, the hunting ban is still in place while SFH deals with the consequences of growing moose populations and seeks opportunities to restore moose hunting (e.g. by lobbying). In terms of the organizational reaction, strategy of SFH can be perceived as a resistance to environmental pressure in the form of necessary adjustments while distancing itself from the main policy course.

The second case study concerns social protests against tree logging in Warsaw. Such protests against reducing urban greenery are common for many Polish cities and the Warsaw case can be treated as illustrative of the wider social phenomenon. According to the land use documents, approx. 25% of Warsaw is covered with urban greenery. It consists of: urban forests (15% of the city area), unmanaged fields covered by greenery (5%) and parks, green squares, and allotment gardens (5%). In 2007–2016 around 205,000 trees were removed and around 245,000 planted in the whole City.

Due to several legal and administrative conditions, urban green space in Warsaw is jeopardized by land development that significantly grew after the 1989 transition and then after EU accession in 2004, which were followed by inflow of funds for new public and private investments and deregulation of land use planning (Niedziałkowski and Beunen, 2019). Past neglect in green space management and observed effects of climate change also negatively influenced urban green space and contributed to the need for increased tree removal (Environmental Protection Program for the Capital City of Warsaw for the years 2017-2020 with a perspective until 2023, 2017). These challenges are reflected in struggles over tree felling. Environmental pressure in this case involved local protests against tree logging and new greening activities, such as creating bottom up inventories and involving external dendrologists to monitor administrative decisions (Putkowska-Smoter, 2020). The social actors were mainly informal local citizen groups collaborating with environmental and urban NGOs and scientists. They pressed local administration to a) limit tree logging to the minimum possible, b) enlarge the sphere of public debate and public participation in green space decision-making, c) establish coherent and long-term policies for urban green space protection and development.

In response, the city administration tried to better explain their policy and actions, as well as experiment with compromise solutions. In 2010–2013 it implemented an inventory of street trees. In 2015 the Warsaw City Council enounced a program of planting one million trees. Also, some changes in the administrative structure were introduced. Despite the fact that the City officially acknowledged its urban greenery as a broader Natural System of Warsaw (System Przyrodniczy Warszawy), until 2014 there were no dedicated tools and management practices to maintain it systematically. Instead, urban greenery was divided into several smaller ‘manageable’ categories such as urban park, urban forest, or street trees. These fragments of urban greenery belonged to the responsibility of around 20 city offices dealing for instance with transportation (street trees), investments (removal of trees due to land development) or cultural heritage (historical parks). This significantly lowered the priority of urban greenery as a ‘fringe issue’. In 2014, the City established a separate administrative position to manage urban greenery and in 2016 an entirely new public entity (Warsaw Greenery Authority) responsible for managing urban green space and water reservoirs. Still, conflicts over tree logging continue to appear and include controversies connected with the participation of citizens in urban greenery decision-making. Thus, the observed changes can be treated as oriented at mitigating environmental pressure while keeping control of the crucial elements of urban nature governance.

Results

We set out to investigate the organizational responses of the environmental administration to environmental pressure by tracking the perspective of SLBs on environmental governance. Therefore, the following analysis will present three different aspects of the way in which SLBs confront environmental pressure as described in the theoretical section: (1) understanding and interpreting environmental pressure and attitudes towards target groups, core beliefs, and values; (2) perception of SLBs’ position “in between” various expectations; (3) assessment of autonomy and discretion. When describing the evidence from both cases, treated as representative for wider activities of environmental SLBs, we will first seek common patters, and then point to identified differences.

Who are they? SLBs’ perspective on the sources of environmental pressure

The first recurring observation for SLBs is that environmental pressure is an integral element of today’s environmental governance because environmental issues are of greater public concern than they used to be. However, in the cases of both moose protection and tree logging, SLBs rather downgraded the role of environmental values as a source of environmental pressure in favor of some structural factors and the impact of social actors. From the SLB point of view, it was rather clear that media coverage (both traditional and social media) was the leading platform of environmental debate and the main transmitter of environmental pressure. They observed some general tendencies in public concern regarding environmental issues (sometimes referred to as ‘fashions’ or ‘trends’) that in their view resulted predominantly from media attention. The interviewees perceived environmental pressure largely as “socially constructed” (Hannigan, 2014). They associated its origin with the involvement of certain individuals or groups of interests than with the objective environmental problem. Forestry SLBs declared that the decline of the moose population had been recognized by their organization, which stimulated the 2001 moratorium. Notwithstanding, the issue appeared in the media a few years later due to actors entering the policy domain – environmental NGOs and wildlife biologists. Similarly, in the case of urban tree logging, SLBs claimed that their organizations had recognized the problem of losing urban green space and undertaken appropriate measures in advance of newly established urban movements and media getting involved: “There is a growing fashion for spending time in green areas, so if you go out there more, you notice that there is some rubbish or some trees have been felled. And it is a self-perpetuating force” (G1, city forester). Some statements indicated that SLBs perceived environmental pressure as an attack, which might have influenced their position. The interviewees observed that some actors used an aggressive tone or assumed the SLB had bad intentions. Shared stories on being accused of destroying nature, cynicism, or seeking personal interests revealed an emotional dimension of their daily work (Garot, 2004). This emotional labor (Hochschild, 2012) connected with the need to keep SLB’s emotions under control and in line with the image of objective professionals was something that SLBs often lacked adequate training to deal with.

SLBs in both cases recognized a number of actors who could exert environmental pressure. These include environmental NGOs, the scientific community, commercial experts, people or groups with political aspirations, and celebrities. Often, the interviewees called into question the competence of such actors and, consequently, the merit of their environmental pressure. SLBs tended to associate protests with the “wrong” understanding/image of nature and with the misunderstanding of the SLB’s role and duties. Forestry and urban SLBs usually agreed that the popular image of nature is mostly idealistic and sometimes oversimplified. They understood the idealistic attitude towards nature as focusing on the pleasant and beneficial aspects of nature: “People see trees at eye level, so they see mainly a large circumference of the trunk. And when a good-looking tree is removed, they simply remember the circumference of the trunk or the large stump after the logging. But rarely do people look up at what is happening in the crown, so they can't see that there were e.g. spontaneous breaks or a wood-decaying fungus” (G3, urban SLB). In SLBs’ view, this rosy image underplays existing collisions of interest in human–nature relationships and obscures the need to actively manage those collisions. According to the interviewees, it also contributes to a simplified vision of “natural” nature that works best without human intervention: “Hunting is a science and the art of decision-making in relation to wildlife. This is the ecological definition of hunting. Most people do not understand that” (M2, forester).

Who are we? Content and context of environmental SLBs’ work

Interviewed SLBs argued that they cannot follow “nature without intervention” expectations of environmental groups because there are also other important and sometimes contradictory expectations towards their work. Forestry SLBs pointed to the financial rules of SFH, which requires its local and regional structures to be financially self-sufficient. These rules prioritize the commercial activities of forestry management and impose reducing costs, e.g. from moose damage. Urban SLBs indicated that intensified logging is connected with past negligence and necessary for public safety. They also mentioned the expectations that urban green spaces can be convenient for various – sometimes contradictory – types of recreation, e.g. birdwatching and playing with dogs. In their view, increasingly difficult environmental conditions in the city (e.g. driven by pollution and climate change) pose an additional external threat to urban green space and affect its condition. Moreover, the majority of SLBs suggested that they cannot fully meet environmental expectations because of the complex bureaucratic context of their work, such as the division of duties between national or municipal units and the shortcomings of legal rules. SLBs also feel obliged towards the greater community – taxpayers, city inhabitants, or the general public – and these obligations, in their view, outweigh the specific demands of environmental groups. In this context, SLBs perceive that they must manage the “landscape of tensions” (Parker and Crona, 2012), which consists of conflicting expectations towards their organizations, e.g. a) serving both people and nature, b) being simultaneously flexible and strategically oriented, c) taking all risks while having a limited decisive power.

In the same vein, the interviewees referred to being “in between” bottom-up and top-down pressures and the challenges involved. Forestry SLBs pointed here to the pressure of being subordinate to the Ministry of Environment, and urban SLBs to the President of Warsaw and the City Council. Importantly, most of the interviewees were senior officials and their observations were based on at least a few terms in office for their supervisors. They observed that both the Ministry of Environment and the City Council preferred not to be in an open conflict with environmental pressure. SLBs also noted that during an electoral period, the supervising organizations preferred not to articulate openly that certain environmental demands were not possible to fulfil. Instead, according to the interviewees, they tended to prolong decision-making or introduce intermediate steps towards an open-ended direction. In the case of moose protection, this included the development of a long-term moose strategy in 2011 that was never implemented. In the case of urban green space, the City preferred not to share the information about logging or cancel some logging to prevent controversies. This problem was slightly more exposed in urban conditions, as activists were also potential voters. Indeed, the issue of protecting urban greenery was among the top subjects during 2014 and 2018 local elections – almost all election committees had developed their postulates in this area, and some committees had actually been formed as a result of protests against tree logging. For the Ministry of Environment, the connection between reacting to environmental pressure and electoral success was also important but more indirect: “In 2014, the minister yielded to pressure [and withdrew from the planned lifting of the moose hunting ban – authors]. Besides, it was the end of the previous government, so the governing coalition practically ceased to govern. I have the impression that it was without faith that it could be really introduced (M2, forester). Still, both SLB groups found dealing with everyday problems in such ambiguous circumstances very challenging and had trouble explaining the ambiguous positions of their supervisors to the stakeholders of environmental governance.

What can we do? SLBs’ attempts to control the field

Analyzed groups of SLBs felt competent in shaping strategic response towards environmental pressure based on their unique knowledge and understanding of the complexity of environmental governance: “Scientists give opinions and arguments but do not know how to consume them. This is the role of the forester and the manager of the hunting club, who must arrange them into a plan and consume this knowledge. And it takes place, in my opinion, in the form of so-called good management practices, which do not depend entirely on the law, but also on good intentions and a broad view of the problem” (M2, forester). As intermediaries between environmental activists and supervising institutions, they could “see the overall picture”. In their view, they well understood other actors’ objectives and strategies, informal rules in the field, as well as the shortcomings of existing polices. Moreover, they perceived themselves as adequately professionally trained to execute their duties, which, from their perspective, justified their autonomy and discretion. Because of that, they also felt in a position to critically assess both environmental postulates and the policies of their supervisors. They perceived their role as being to assure the maintenance of the most suitable approaches in environmental governance according to their balanced and professional judgment. Some interviewees even claimed that an SLB’s role in making unpopular decisions is particularly important as they are not directly dependent on electoral cycles. Accordingly, the SLBs strongly identified with their entities and their approaches towards environmental pressure, even though these approaches sometimes diverged from SLBs’ individual views on environmental issues.

To deal with the variety of interests and values, SLBs tend to develop “preemptive” relations with social actors. Both forestry and urban SLB declared that they are open to contact and cooperation with environmental actors, even those with opposite views. For instance, forestry SLBs participated in the collaborative development of a long-term moose strategy, although in the end, they did not agree with the general conclusions. Additionally, SLBs maintained professional contacts with opposing social and environmental actors – they knew each other and followed each other's actions. At the same time, they facilitated scientific and social communities that supported SFH’s views on moose hunting. Urban SLBs also maintained various professional relationships with environmental and social actors including regular day-to-day contacts, meetings dedicated to specific environmental issues, or collaboration during participatory procedures. Some of them were able even to establish strategic cooperation in order to manage social emotions towards tree logging. Additionally, they followed the expectations of environmental actors and involved professionals such as dendrologists or ornithologists. However, they frequently perceived such involvement either as enforced or as an unnecessary multiplication of costs or simply as an additional confirmation of the decision already taken.

Finally, the interviewed SLBs often expressed their preferences concerning strategic organizational reactions towards environmental expectations. Firstly, they preferred to keep their autonomy and the leading role in dealing with the “landscape of tensions” diagnosed above. In the case of moose management, bureaucrats preferred to keep moose management at the regional level rather than at the national one, which would involve external actors. In the case of urban green space, they were ambivalent towards attempts at expanding participation. In both cases, SLBs protected their autonomy and the leading role that apprehended a “rotten” compromise that would not satisfy environmental actors and would hinder SLBs’ work. Rather than limit their autonomy and discretion during participation, the interviewees preferred to improve information and communication to raise social awareness of the complexity of environmental governance and the role of SLBs. Some bureaucrats were convinced that if communication improved, environmental activists would change their demands to fit SLBs’ abilities and resources. In the moose case, this meant convincing the general public that moose hunting should return at least in some parts of Poland, while ensuring that foresters and hunters were better prepared to sustain the stability of the moose population. According to interviewed foresters, there was no alternative solution to environmental pressure. In the case of urban green space, the preferred solution was to openly inform people about logging and at the same time to make sure that all logging was necessary and limited to the minimum possible. Moreover, the urban SLBs had some ideas of how to redirect the environmental interest of citizens to other aspects of urban green space management such as the bottom-up greening of the city or preventing vandalism in greenery. Focusing on those areas of collaboration could be seen as “cherry-picking”. It is easier to manage and communicate joint greening initiatives or environmental stewardship that strengthen SLBs’ image than to meaningfully respond to protests against tree logging.

Discussion and conclusions

The main hypothesis of this article was that SLBs play an active role in shaping the strategic responses of their organizations towards social pressure. We have shown that SLBs can distance themselves from new environmental demands and expectations if these are perceived as “socially constructed” and potentially disturbing for SLBs’ professional routines. Our findings (Table 3) suggest SLBs not only play an active role in the implementation of environmental policy implementation, but also participate in mediating the impact of social pressure on organizational reaction. This helps to better understand the strategic choices made by SFH and the City of Warsaw as a response to environmental pressure.

Table 3.

Potential roles of SLBs in shaping the strategic responses of their organizations towards social pressure.

Factors influencing strategic response to environmental pressure	The positions of SLBs in the cases of moose management and urban green space	Foundations for possible organizational reaction
Cause	Environmental pressure understood as “socially constructed” by activists and media rather than concerning “real” problems.	Environmental pressure perceived as resulting from other actors’ interests rather than viewed as a justified social control over civil servants.
Constituents	The competence and understanding of nature among environmental activists viewed as limited. Mutual lack of trust.	Reluctance towards adjusting to environmental pressure. Preferred responses focus on enhancing social understanding through education and communication.
Content	Sense of professional expertise based on the practical knowledge and the unique perspective “from within”.	SLBs should play an active role in the critical evaluation of environmental pressure and in defining the achievable results of its implementation.
Control	The autonomy and discretion of SLBs evaluated as crucial for managing environmental complexity, especially in order to avoid “rotten” compromises.	A cautious approach towards increasing public participation in decision-making.
Context	Perception of SLBs as positioned “in between” various expectations. Environmental pressure viewed as one of many external pressures.	Reaction to environmental pressure depends on the dynamics in the “landscape of tensions”

By referring to Oliver’s (1991) factors influencing strategic responses to institutional pressure, we show the complexity of the potential influence of forestry and urban SLBs on the policies of their organizations. Some of the findings confirm earlier suggestions regarding particular factors. For instance, we confirm that tracking SLB interpretation of the environmental pressure and attitudes towards target groups can help with understanding not only policy implementation (see e.g. Sevä, 2015; Winter, 2002) but also policy choosing. In our cases, SLBs evaluated environmental pressures as closer to manipulation of public opinion by environmental actors and/or misunderstanding. Moreover, they perceived the competences and understanding of nature among environmental activists as limited and driven by distrust towards SLBs. As a result, strategic reaction preferred and supported by SLBs was to redefine environmental pressure through educational and communication activities rather than to fully adjust. On the other hand, SLBs did not reflect on social construction of their own approach and on possible interests of their supervising organizations, which could influence the policy to the same extent as interests attributed to the other party. This understanding is far from the idea of environmental pressure to be a legitimate source of social control over public authorities as postulated by the environmental bureaucracy critique (Fischer, 2000; Wilson and Swyngedouw, 2015) and parts of environmental legislation (e.g. the Aarhus Convention).

Our analysis shows that the attitudes of SLBs towards target groups were linked with their self-perception as professionals, practitioners, and policy “insiders”. Similarly to findings of Maier and Winkel (2017), urban and forestry SLBs would like to see their active role in checking and correcting the decisions of their supervisors, including organizational decision-making towards environmental pressure. This supports the suggestions of Fineman (1998) that SLB discretion and the self-sustaining rules of a daily operation could lionize environmental governance and complicate supervisors’ attempts at organizational changes. On the other hand, the findings also imply that in the context of growing complexity and the ambiguity of environmental governance, SLBs offer certain stability and the critical evaluation of emerging pressures, trends, and possible solutions.

Farther on, “control” factors – autonomy and discretion – proved to be on the top of forestry and urban SLB agendas. Indeed, treating environmental pressure as a threat to SLB performance might have influenced cautious attitudes towards environmental demands. However, our study explores bureaucrats’ arguments for SLB autonomy and discretion, which has so far been less investigated. The key finding here is that environmental SLBs perceive their role as professionals responsible for managing the “landscape of tensions”. Previous studies suggested that an excess of duties and limited resources are perceived by SLBs mainly as operational constraints (Catney and Henneberry, 2012; Maier and Abrams, 2018). In our cases, however, those limitations served the role of the actual argument for SLB autonomy in choosing pressure to react and/or balancing various (even contradictory) pressures. From this perspective, limited or moderated reactions towards external pressure seem to be another coping mechanism available for environmental SLBs. Moreover, it can also be a reaction towards recognized negative evaluation of the available policy instruments. As SLBs observed discrepancies between social expectations and the responses of supervising organizations (e.g. delaying decisions, limited information, unsatisfactory compromises), they preferred to keep their level of control in order to deal with recognized day-to-day consequences of such inaction.

Finally, our analysis of SLBs’ roles in implementing preferred policy directions highlighted the complexity of interactions between the legislative and implementation stages of environmental policymaking. It showed that SLBs strategically evaluated the power of external actors to influence the politics and the factors that can change those power relations. Recognizing the importance of insider knowledge, SLBs carefully observed relationships between environmental groups, supervising organizations, and other actors in the field. They tried to react in accordance with recognized patterns in order to secure preferred policy directions. Thus, we suggest that in the line of Guy Peters’ (2010) observations, bureaucracy can have its own “policy intentions” and environmental SLBs should be considered as active and, to some extent, independent actors in environmental policymaking. In our cases for instance, SLBs actively participated in both the legislative and implementation stages of environmental policymaking using available resources and coping mechanisms in order to influence other actors. These included the environmental activists exerting the pressure, the general public, who can strengthen the pressure, and supervising organizations who should react to that pressure. In the analyzed cases, SLBs took formal and informal actions to achieve preferred results, e.g. they proposed changes in legislation, established “preemptive” relationships with other actors, and educated them to promote SLBs’ professional knowledge and their point of view.

The figure of bureaucrats as active and mediating actors of policy formation can contribute to the ongoing debates concerning misfits of participatory governance and deliberative processes in the literature on environmental policy (e.g. Blühdorn, 2020; Sénit, 2020) and spatial planning (e.g. Conrad et al., 2011; van den Hove, 2006). It breaks the monolithic image of an actor called ‘decision-maker’, or ‘state/urban powers’ into complex web of interrelations between administrative units and political structures. We suggest that these actors can have their own policy agendas and preferences and because of this they should be treated as stakeholders and should openly articulate their interests. More generally, our findings imply that contemporary complexity and dynamics of environmental governance might need a new social contract on administrative structures or even some innovative forms of environmental post-bureaucracy (Johnson et al., 2009) or ecological democracy (Pickering and Persson, 2020), which could deal with such ambiguous issues as social trust, multiplicity of environmental discourses or social emotions over nature.

To sum up, this study provided insights into the complexity of reactions to environmental pressure at various organizational levels of environmental governance. It focused on the insider perspective of the front-line workers of environmental administration to explore why and how the organizational reactions can vary from those suggested by social pressure. The results discuss the universal challenges of choosing and crafting strategic organizational responses to environmental social pressure. On the one hand, addressing the environmental needs of general society seems to resonate with the professional ethos of civil servants. On the other hand, the recognized variety of pressures need to be filtered through possible resources and those beliefs and interests identified as core to organizational identity and operation. Thus, SLBs can find it particularly demanding to be both professionals that provide an accurate reaction towards new challenges, and actors being accused of a lack of knowledge and competence. Being pressured to react to all those expectations at the same time, SLBs perceive their autonomy and discretion as core measures to manage the observed “landscape of tensions”. Such an organizational perspective can go along with a rather cautious attitude to enhancing social participation in environmental governance and with preference to developing educational activities instead.

Additionally, the study shows that SLBs retain some level of distrust and distance themselves to a certain degree both from emerging social actors and supervising structures. This might support the hypothesis of Guy Peters (2010) that previous political experiences can still influence administrative reactions in Central and Eastern Europe. It would be interesting to see more studies of environmental SLBs from this region to evaluate this hypothesis comprehensively. Also, it would be worth enlarging future studies on environmental SLBs with the issues of trust and power relations between SLBs and other actors in the field, and not only their beneficiaries. A third recommendation for future studies would be to explore the issue of non-human actors in the work of environmental SLBs. One of the important aspects of SLBs’ concern about environmental pressure was promoting understanding of nature conservation (an active vs. passive role of humans in contemporary nature conservation). Some findings on similar topics have already been reported in other environmental SLB studies but to a limited extent. Thus, it would be worth exploring this problem in more comparative manners.

Footnotes

Authors’ note

Krzysztof Niedziałkowski is now affiliated to Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Polish National Science Centre for funding our research as well as the interviewees for contributing their time and sharing their thoughts on the investigated issues. Finally, we thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was financially supported by the Polish National Science Centre [PRELUDIUM grant number 2018/31/N/HS6/03357 and FUGA post-doctoral grant number 2015/16/S/HS6/00125].

ORCID iD

Renata Putkowska-Smoter

Renata Putkowska-Smoter is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences and a lecturer at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences (WULS – SGGW). She is particularly interested in ambiguity and ambivalence towards nature and environmental protection and how they influence to conflicts, governance and politics at local and national level.

Krzysztof Niedziałkowski is an assistant professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences and at the Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences. His research concerns socio-political determinants of environmental governance. He is interested in the development of environmental institutions over time and their relationships with social controversies regarding the use of natural resources. His work has been published in journals such as: Conservation Biology, Ecology and Society, Ecological Economics, Environmental Sociology, and Land Use Policy.

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