Learning from practices — implications of the “practice based approach” for forest and environmental policy research Max Krott, Lukas Giessen ⁎ Chair of Forest and Nature Conservation Policy, University of Göttingen, Germany abstract article info Article history: Received 11 March 2013 Received in revised form 29 April 2013 Accepted 29 April 2013 Available online xxxx Keywords: Epistemology Ontology Constructivism Interpretivism Objectivism Positivism Analytical policy analysis With the book publication “Forest and Nature Governance — A practice based approach” (Arts et al., 2013, Eds.) the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group of Wageningen University, The Netherlands demonstrates its high aspirations of developing a new research approach. This article aims at discussing the methodological and conceptual contributions of the book to the field of forest and environmental policy research and proposes perspectives for further developing this methodological approach. It finds the “practice based approach” being an innovative, theoretically sound concept, which is able to produce valuable and “thick” empirical results. The approach is also found offering a plethora of possibilities to link up to analytical policy research. Yet, the approach will require further elaboration, especially on questions regarding the role of definitions, its contribution towards explaining social phenomena, and concerning the use of normative orientations in some of the empirical cases. The future challenges of the approach lie in either moulding a niche for further developing it independent from other schools, or in influencing mainstream approaches through theoretical innovations or surprising em- pirical results. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Background and objectives Recent forest and environmental governance research suggests a “turn” in research towards practices (e.g. Schatzki et al., 2000; Turnhout et al., 2012; Mert, 2009, critically Giessen, 2012). With its joint book publication “Forest and Nature Governance — A practice based approach” (Arts et al., 2013, Eds.) the Forest and Nature Conserva- tion Policy Group of Wageningen University, The Netherlands demon- strates its high aspirations of developing a new research approach. This paper aims at discussing the methodological and conceptual contri- butions of the school of thought to the field of forest policy research and proposes perspectives for further developing this methodological approach. 2. A theoretically and empirically sound concept Forest policy research is not poor in formulating new scientific ap- proaches or paradigms. From the early beginning of the discipline in the 18 century on nearly every professor in a leading position designed and formulated his own approach (Steinsiek, 2008; Wiersum et al., 2013). What can a researcher in forest policy learn from such new “paradigms” one following another? Do they reflect progress made or do they demonstrate the opposite: that no new concept will be long-lasting? Are these different concepts a huge tool box offering rich alternatives on how to conduct meaningful and sound theoretical and empirical research or are they a graveyard of flawed approaches? And finally does forest policy research have a tendency to split into many small islands of “true” concepts or is there an evolution toward a common basis? The “practice based approach” is a good example to discuss these questions because the book presented by Bas Arts et al. (2013) from his Wageningen group has a unique strength: it neither merely presents a theoretical concept, nor does it provide empirical cases only. It com- prises both, a sound presentation of the school of thought and recent and well elaborated cases of research following this new approach. Never before in forest policy research were a basic concept and relevant cases of research put together as thoroughly as in this new book. 3. Rich and sound empirical results The nine reputable empirical cases offer the chance to look at the very results the “practice based approach” is able to produce. This is a valuable starter to look into the added value of the new approach, be- cause the greatest contribution of forest policy analyses to science and practice are its empirical findings about forest and nature conservation governance. It is not feasible here to evaluate all nine case studies presented in the book. Discussing a few examples might be sufficient, while the selection follows the summarising chapter written by the editors themselves (Behagel et al., 2013 p. 243-255). An important common feature of the cases is to analyse the steering of the “collective behavior of others” (ibid., p. 244) in the fields of forest and nature governance. Empirically the case studies go far into the field, either in the Netherlands, in developing countries or at the global level Forest Policy and Economics xxx (2013) xxx–xxx ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: mkrott@gwdg.de (M. Krott), lgiesse@uni-goettingen.de (L. Giessen). FORPOL-01087; No of Pages 5 1389-9341/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2013.04.013 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forest Policy and Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/forpol Please cite this article as: Krott, M., Giessen, L., Learning from practices — implications of the “practice based approach” for forest and environmental policy research, For. Policy Econ. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2013.04.013