Unpacking policy coherence: A network analysis of the EU policy mix for the circular economy

Policy coherence is a sought-after characteristic in cross-sectoral sustainability transformations. Despite the wealth of research on policy mixes and the urgent need to advance environmental sustainability in production and consumption cycles, only a limited number of studies empirically examine policy coherence in practice within policy mixes for the circular economy. To address this gap, our paper unpacks the EU's circular economy policy mix as a system of linked policies whose policy coherence is experienced by actors in the circular economy space, specifically in the electronics and ICT, batteries, automotive and critical raw materials sectors. The circular economy is an important area for studying policy coherence because it has been subject to a significant increase in policy adoption, all while the mainstreaming of circular economy practices remains insufficient at the EU level. Combining a top-down and bottom-up approach to populate the policy mix, we use network analysis to assess the synergies and conflicts among the policies in the mix through the surveyed experiences of 36 business actors. We find that on average the EU's circular economy policy mix exhibits a medium-to-high average degree of coherence. At the same time, however, our results show that the coherence between policies is not uniform within the mix as there is a diverse degree of coherence among its policies. Looking closely into inter-policy coherence reveals several cases of medium-to-low coherence. Moreover, our results indicate that the EU's policy mix for the circular economy lacks clusters of policies, which reduces the resilience of the policy mix to external shocks. We conclude that more emphasis should be given to aligning the objectives of EU circular economy, industrial and climate policies, and to providing a coherent set of requirements for EU businesses.