One Step Forward and One Step Back. State regulation of environment and sustainable development through the use of the Education Act, school curricula and syllabuses (1990-2010)

The aim of this sociology of law-orientated article is to analyse and describe legislative and regulatory processes concerning the task given to schools focusing on environment and sustainable development. We are describing the policy-making processes in this field from 1990 to 2011. The study involves key interviews and
content analysis of national policy documents as well as legal sources, in order to describe and categorize legal norms that society, through its political and administrative institutions, highlight in school activities.
The article takes a starting point in a model developed by Lindensjö and Lundgren, who used the terms arena of formulation and arena of realization, to illustrate what is happening with policy at national level. The policy-making processes and their
results are in the end interpreted and understood through a perspective based on the concept of inertia and path dependence. It is evident as a result that the legal changes on the national political level are not hindering the continuing policy-making
development and enactment of sustainable development on the professional administrative national arena.