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Turning New Public Management theory into reality

Within the literature of governance and policy making in the context of planning, the notion of performativity is specifically conceptualized as the self-fulfilling property of performances – such as story-telling – that shape public reality. One specific stream of performativity researchers – dominant in the realm of organization studies – focuses on the enactment of academic theory into reality. We contribute to this idea of bringing theory into being by conceptualizing purposive performative agents who strive to enact a specific theory in reality. Our paper demonstrates through which mechanisms the theory of New Public Management has shaped the reality of public governance at the will of one powerful performative agent. Using a perspective based on performative struggle, our interpretative case study – focused on a large policy process – exhibits how New Public Management doctrine gains influence at the expense of other public management theories. In conclusion, we claim that our findings offer a potential perspective for understanding through which dynamics certain agents aim to shape the public realm in alignment with their preferred theoretical propositions.

Merkus, S., & Veenswijk, M. (2017). Turning New Public Management theory into reality: Performative struggle during a large scale planning process. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 0263774X16689370.

 

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The Tragedy of the Grabbed Commons

Rural populations around the world rely on small-scale farming and other uses of land and natural resources, which are often governed by customary, traditional, and indigenous systems of common property. In recent years, large-scale land acquisitions have drastically expanded; it is unclear whether the commons are a preferential target of these acquisitions. Here we argue that the contemporary global “land rush” could be happening at the expense of common-property systems around the world. While there is evidence that common-property systems have developed traditional institutions of resource governance that make them robust with respect to endogenous forces (e.g., uses by community members), it is less clear how vulnerable these arrangements are to exogenous drivers of globalization and expansion of transnational land investments. In common-property systems, farmers and local users may be unable to defend their customary rights and successfully compete with external actors. We define the notion of “commons grabbing” and report on an exploratory study that applied meta-analytical methods, drawing from the recent literature on large-scale land acquisitions and land grabbing. Informed by political economy and political ecology approaches, we coded selected cases on the basis of acquisition mechanisms, claims and property rights, changes in production system, and coercive dynamics, and explored the interactions between the different variables using association tests and qualitative comparative analysis. We found that the majority of the cases included in this analysis (44 of 56) could be examples of commons grabbing.

Dell’Angelo, J., D’Odorico, P., Rulli, M. C., & Marchand, P. (2016). The Tragedy of the Grabbed Commons: Coercion and Dispossession in the Global Land Rush. World Development.

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The Politics of Land Use in the Korup National Park

Recently, the call to combine land change science (LCS) and political ecology (PE) in the study of human-environment interactions has been widely discussed by scientists from both subfields of geography. In this paper, we use a hybrid ecology framework to examine the effects of conservation policies on the environment and the livelihood of the people of the Korup National Park (KNP). Using techniques in both PE and LCS, our results show that conservation policies, politics, and population are the primary drivers of environmental change in the KNP. We conclude by arguing that a deeper understanding can be garnered by combining LCS and PE approaches to analyze and contribute to the people and parks debate.

Siewe Siewe, J. M. Vadjunec1 and Beth Caniglia (2017) The Politics of Land Use in the Korup National Park. Land 2017, 6(1), 7

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Performing and orchestrating governance learning for systemic transformation in practice for climate change adaptation

Barriers to climate change adaptation might not lie so much in ‘gaps’ in scientific or technical understandings but rather in the complexities of social, institutional and cultural transitions in climate change governance. Effective responses to complex environmental issues seem to require ‘co-learning for systemic governance transformations’. However, this process remains poorly understood. This article analyses the performance and orchestration of governance learning for systemic transformation in practice, drawing on examples from the international climate change adaptation and water governance (CADWAGO) project. We show that in these examples the interplay of ‘separating’ and ‘connecting’ is central to transforming governance in the European water management landscape. The article concludes that an orientation to boundary work and co-production of knowledge contributes to scientific narratives that can inspire meaningful connective action and move complex socioecological systems into a more sustainable trajectory.

van Bommel, S., Blackmore, C., Foster, N., & de Vries, J. (2016). Performing and orchestrating governance learning for systemic transformation in practice for climate change adaptation. Outlook on Agriculture, 45(4), 231-237.

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Analysing institutional change in environmental governance: exploring the concept of ‘institutional work’

Understanding how institutions change is critical to improving environmental governance at all scales. In this paper we explore the concept of ‘institutional work’ within broader theorising about institutional change and evolving governance. Institutional work focuses on the role of actors in creating, maintaining, or disrupting institutional frameworks (Lawrence et al., 2009. It is a concept that has been proposed in the organisational studies literature, and offers promising opportunities for pushing forward thinking on institutional change, which remains one of the most pertinent but challenging topics for strengthening environmental governance in a complex and rapidly changing world. In this paper, we rethink and redefine institutional work to make it fit for use in the context of multi-actor, multi-level environmental governance. We survey key theories about institutional change in the literature, and argue that institutional work should have a central place within this theorising. Drawing on these insights, we argue that institutional work should involve both the actions taken by actors, as well as the resulting effects. We identify a critical need for attention to the multi-actor nature of institutional work in environmental governance, including its fundamentally political character, the cumulative effects of action taken by multiple actors, and communicative and discursive dimensions. More attention also needs to be given to the temporal dimensions of institutional work such as the recurring and sequential order of actions. Overall, the concept of institutional work opens up new possibilities for tackling the longstanding challenge of institutional change in environmental governance.

The paper is published in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management

Beunen, R. & Patterson, J.J.  (2017) Institutional Change in Environmental Governance: Exploring the Concept of ‘Institutional Work’. Journal of  Environmental Planning and Management. Online first: DOI:10.1080/09640568.2016.1257423

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Assessing participatory and multi-level characteristics of biodiversity and landscape protection legislation: the case of Poland

This paper presents a comprehensive framework for analysing formal rules regulating the involvement of various actors in protected areas decision-making over time and apply it to Poland. Based on the analysis of legal acts and policy documents, it suggests that since the democratic transition started in 1989, the governance of Polish protected areas has been increasingly multi-level and participatory. However, different designations indicate different levels of involvement by non-state actors, with Natura 2000 standing out from the traditional protected areas. Regarding governance issues, establishing and taking management decisions were characterised by the greatest changes in actors’ involvement. While participation of non-public actors is still limited mostly to information and consultation, the involvement of non-state public actors of various levels increased significantly. The paper highlights the importance of a systematic analysis of legal rules as a starting point for empirical investigation of the governance of protected areas.

Niedziałkowski, K., Pietrzyk-Kaszyńska, A., Pietruczuk, M., & Grodzińska-Jurczak, M. (2015). Assessing participatory and multi-level characteristics of biodiversity and landscape protection legislation: the case of Poland. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 1-21.

 

 

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Practising environmental policy evaluation under co-existing evaluation imaginaries

This article examines what the co-existence of different evaluation imaginaries – understandings of what environmental policy evaluation ‘is’ and ‘should do’ – means for everyday evaluation practice. We present a case study in which we show how these different understandings influence the evaluation process as they are mobilized interchangeably. Though co-existing evaluation imaginaries broaden the repertoire and potential for innovation, practitioners also experience tensions as innovative ambitions conflict with institutionalized practices. We hypothesize that practitioners deal with these inconsistencies by decoupling approaches, intentions and outcomes from each other. In this way, innovation occurs in parts of the evaluation process while other parts follow a more traditional approach. For evaluation theory we argue the need to further explore how decoupling enables practitioners to deal with co-existing imaginaries. For evaluation practice we stress that articulation of societal expectations is indispensable to ensure the legitimacy of policy evaluation.

Kunseler, E. M., & Vasileiadou, E. (2016). Practising environmental policy evaluation under co-existing evaluation imaginaries. Evaluation, 22(4), 451-469.

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The role of institutional and stakeholder networks in shaping social enterprise ecosystems

This paper draws upon prior research that built a theoretical framework for the emergence of social enterprise ecosystems based upon biological evolutionary theory. It seeks to extend this previous research by practically applying the theory to the development of stakeholder and institutional networks across Europe. Data from in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups were analysed using Constant Comparison Method. Data were generated from discussions with 258 key stakeholders in 10 countries across Europe, exploring the historical, political, social, legal and economic factors that influence the patterns of social enterprise seen in each country. The results identify the emergence of four social enterprise ecosystem types (Statist-macro; Statist-micro; Private-macro; Private-micro). These are used to explain the differences found in each of the 10 country’s social enterprise ecosystems. The results are discussed in relation to evolutionary theory in social entrepreneurship and how ‘genetic’ and ‘epigenetic’ factors lead to the divergence of social enterprise ecosystems, and the impact that this has on the stakeholders and institutions that are present within.

Hazenberg, R., Bajwa-Patel, M., Mazzei, M., Roy, M.J. and Baglioni, S. (2016) The Role of Institutional and Stakeholder Networks in Shaping Social Enterprise Ecosystems in Europe. Social Enterprise Journal 12 (3)

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A Co-evolutionary Perspective on the Adoption of Sustainable Land Uses

This paper examines constraints and opportunities to enhance adoption of agroforestry for ecosystem and livelihood improvement in post-Soviet economies, using Central Asian countries as examples. Using a coevolutionary socio-ecological systems framework, it describes how development efforts, especially agricultural policies, under centrally planned regimes and under transition to market economies have changed environmental conditions, and how they affect peoples’ welfare. The paper then discuss agroforestry as a sustainable land use practice to address these issues. It present regional-specific and -suitable agroforestry practices, and discusses their potential. It founds that legacies from the previous period of central planning shape current land uses, institutions, infrastructure and decisions of farmers, and constrain development of agroforestry. By identifying opportunities and constraints of agroforestry, it provides recommendations for enhancing the use of agroforestry in Central Asia.

Utkur Djanibekov, Grace B. Villamor, Klara Dzhakypbekova, James Chamberlain and Jianchu Xu (2016) Adoption of Sustainable Land Uses in Post-Soviet Central Asia: The Case for Agroforestry. Sustainability 2016, 8(10), 1030.

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