Removing the Thorn from New Governance’s Side: Examining the Emergence of Collaboration in Practice & the Roles for Law, Nested Institutions & Trust

46 Pages Posted: 14 Apr 2010 Last revised: 21 Apr 2018

See all articles by Cameron Holley

Cameron Holley

UNSW Sydney, Faculty of Law, Connected Waters Initiative Research Centre, Global Water Institute; University of New South Wales (UNSW) - UNSW Law & Justice

Date Written: January 10, 2010

Abstract

New Environmental Governance (NEG) is emerging around the globe, and aims to overcome the limitations of the interventionist state and its market alternative to offer more effective and legitimate solutions to today’s most pressing environmental problems. A range of defining and innovative principles, not least collaboration, underpins these aspirations. Yet, a variety of scholars have questioned NEG’s faith in “collaboration”, suggesting that free riding and high transaction costs mean NEG will come up against extensive, if not insuperable, difficulties in practice. Others counter that NEG can overcome or avoid these cooperation problems, typically through clever institutional design, to have widespread value in managing environmental problems. These debates go to the heart of whether NEG is a viable and convincing approach to public problem solving and are far from being resolved. In particular, what have been lacking from these debates are insights from empirical investigations of NEG collaborations in practice. Responding to this issue, this article draws on 80 interviews with key government and non-government stakeholders across 3 diverse NEG case studies to empirically examine the conditions that support the emergence of collaboration and their relative effectiveness.

The article investigates a range of under-researched or controversial mechanisms, including penalty “default” rules, nested governance institutions, building trust, and somewhat uniquely, the direct use of law. The analysis reveals that these and other conditions were able to foster collaboration, but with varying degrees of success. This leads to the identification of recommendations for policy makers and scholars regarding fostering the emergence of successful collaboration. These recommendations fall into the following four “groups” of conditions: the severity of environmental problems; structures for supporting and funding collaborations; cooperation inducing incentives (regulatory and economic); and in most, but not all cases, trust. The article also provides some important lessons for theory, including descriptive and normative insights on the “default hybridity” thesis regarding the relationship between law and new governance. The article also reflects on the above normative debates and argues that while some aspects of the findings may be viewed as supporting claims that NEG is best limited to narrowly constrained or unique circumstances, the cases suggest a more sanguine view of NEG is actually justified.

Keywords: Law and New Governance, Environmental Governance, Collaboration, Penalty Defaults, Hybridity, Trust, Nested Institutions, Environment Improvement Plan, Neighbourhood Environment Improvement Plan, Regional Natural Resource Management

Suggested Citation

Holley, Cameron, Removing the Thorn from New Governance’s Side: Examining the Emergence of Collaboration in Practice & the Roles for Law, Nested Institutions & Trust (January 10, 2010). Environmental Law Reporter, Vol. 40, No. 7, pp. 10656-10686, 2010, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1589779

Cameron Holley (Contact Author)

UNSW Sydney, Faculty of Law, Connected Waters Initiative Research Centre, Global Water Institute ( email )

UNSW
Sydney, New South Wales 2052
Australia

University of New South Wales (UNSW) - UNSW Law & Justice ( email )

Kensington, New South Wales 2052
Australia

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
122
Abstract Views
1,467
Rank
414,524
PlumX Metrics