Eco‐Social Policy Integration as a Process: Towards a Processual Understanding of an Ascending Concept

ABSTRACT Despite a growing awareness of the interrelation of environmental and social sustainability issues and the need to tackle them in integrated ways, few efforts have been made to develop an analytical framework of eco‐social policy integration. In particular, a theoretical link to the broader social science debate on policy integration is missing. This paper aims to contribute to closing this gap by suggesting an analytical framework for a processual understanding of eco‐social policy integration through critical engagement with the literature on policy integration from an eco‐social perspective. In particular, it takes Candel and Biesbroek's four dimensions of policy integration as a point of departure, proposing to move beyond it in at least three ways: taking the integration of the social and the environmental sectors rather than a cross‐cutting policy problem as the analytical entry point, disentangling the who and what in processes of policy integration and analytically differentiating between a material and a symbolic dimension inherent to all actors and institutional elements involved in processes of policy integration as well as to the policy elements that are being integrated. Additionally, the paper highlights the importance of analyzing processes of policy integration in light of the different stages of the policy process, as well as the multiple governance levels on which such processes play out. The paper thus contributes to analytically strengthening the concept of eco‐social policy integration and disentangling its various dimensions, while exploring the role different elements of the policy integration process play in shaping its form and strength.