How Administrative Traditions Shape Policy Experiments in European Nature-Based Solutions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. To ensure accuracy, brevity, and attractiveness of the title, please revise the title and shorten its length.
2. Please enhance the abstract section with a description of the empirical results of the article as well as the writing contributions.
3. The literature throughout the text needs to be further updated, and the current literature cited in the text is too early in the year to reflect the results of academic research in the field in recent years, and the article is not persuasive.
4. The introduction section lacks logic. Please clearly present the logic of the writing of the article. The background of the article, the purpose of the study, the results of the study, and the contribution of the study need to be clearly presented.
5. The second part of the article shows the conclusions as well as the findings of different scholars and integrates the conclusions of different scholars in tandem, which is a good measure. However, the literature cited in the second part needs to be updated, and literature that is too old does not reflect the latest findings of academics in recent years.
6. How Administrative Traditions Shape Policy Experiments？Reading through the contents of the entire text, no conclusions were found that would answer this question. Please illustrate this question through specific empirical research methods.
7. The layout of the chapters throughout the text needs to be further adjusted. After reading through the whole article, I feel that the article is too redundant and lacks logic, please delete unnecessary content and add to the empirical research section.
8. The content of the policy recommendations section is not very much linked to the conclusions of the article. Please provide targeted policy recommendations in the light of the conclusions reached in the article.
9. Please standardize the formatting of references; some references appear unnecessarily underlined.
10. A large number of sentences in the text are very wordy, please revise the sentence structure of the text in its entirety to ensure that the reader reads it succinctly. In addition, issues such as grammatical errors throughout the text need to be corrected.
11. The layout of the article table also needs to be tweaked to make it look better.
12. If the author wants to write a review article, please strengthen the logic as well as the persuasiveness of the article's presentation.

The authors can briefly answer the comments. Hope to receive your response quickly.

Author Response

We have responded in depth to each and all of the reviewer comments in the attached 'manuscript' and response to reviewers 'proforma'. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It is striking that the concept of empirical experimenter is not linked to nature-based solutions in the context of policy development. Furthermore, it is recommended that they cite recent documents or reports from international bodies such as the European Union. 
Assess whether these decisions on policy experimentation are also based on science.
The authors do not include the research question, which is a critical element in systematic reviews.
The authors should include a clear methodology of the procedures used to conduct a systematic review.
For example, what were the inclusion and exclusion criteria based on the transitional approaches they refer to, the Nordic tradition, the Reechstaat tradition and the Westminster tradition.
It is also unclear how these 3 traditions are linked to the climate crisis and nature-based solutions.
The authors should explain which databases they used to systematise information, what kind of information, and how they are linked to e.g. Conceptualisation of heterogeneous approaches in terms of the variables 1) history, 2) culture and 3) governance experiences.
The selection and screening process should be described.
The authors should include a table, showing all the documents that have been reviewed, and which ones have been selected for reporting in the present study.
Finally, they should indicate the limitations of the study and its implications for the development or proposal of public climate policies linked to nature-based solutions.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English writing could be improved

Author Response

We have responded in depth to all reviewer comments in the attached 'manuscript' and 'proforma of responses'.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper makes the case that implementation of nature-based policy experiments, as described in the literature, are contingent upon the administrative systems.  The paper is likely to be of limited interest to readers of Sustainability as little information is presented about the nature-based policy experiments.  The lion's share of the paper is dedicated to discussing the history of public administration and the different styles of governance in European countries.  There might be a good audience for this paper in journals such as Public Administration Review and Policy Sciences but the sustainability content is too minimal to be of interest to Sustainability.  

Author Response

Thank you for this comment and reflection on our paper. We agree that there might have been multiple venues for an interdisciplinary paper of the kind we have presented here and hope for publication in Sustainability. Especially where it speaks in many places to public administration theory and practice. That said, as an interdisciplinary journal that crosses many boundaries, and due to the subject of EU NBS which lie at the empirical heart of this paper, we feel that this is paper that sits well within the remit and interests of the readership of Sustainability. Indeed, similarly to a previous environmental-governance paper we published in Sustainability, these are exactly the kinds of discussions and interdisciplinary contributions that cross the boundaries of politics, environment, and governance that many readers go to this journal for. 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have included recommendations for improving the manuscript.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your positive feedback.