Tears from an onion: Layering, exhaustion and conversion in British Columbia land use planning policy

Most previous studies of policy change in the BC resource and environmental sectors have stressed the importance of exogenous factors, notably the changing profitability of key industries, such as forestry; the appearance of new actors and policy ideas; and the domestic and international linkages so ably exploited by ENGOs. Without denying the importance of these factors, this case study of BC's integrated land use policy illustrates the weight that policy legacies bring to bear on the path of policy transformation. This study explores the interplay of the processes and outcomes of policy change by comparing the processes and outcomes of three consecutive regime transitions in BC land use policy. The transitions suggest a complex relationship between layering, exhaustion, and conversion, in which layered elements that are pushed to the background of the policy regime can either be allowed to die or be brought back to become the centrepiece of a policy transition that takes place without the appearance (and associated political costs) of novelty.