Is Environmental Management Really More Collaborative? A Comparative Analysis of Putative ‘Paradigm Shifts’ in Europe, Australia, and the United States

David Benson, Andrew Jordan and Laurence Smith
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David Benson: Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk NR4 7TJ, England
Andrew Jordan: The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk NR4 7TJ, England
Laurence Smith: Centre for Development, Environment and Policy, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London WC1H 0XG, England

Environment and Planning A, 2013, vol. 45, issue 7, 1695-1712

Abstract: It is a truism that environmental management has experienced a significant change in the locus of governing, in which centralised forms of steering have been gradually replaced by more collaborative management approaches organised at the ecosystem scale. Whereas much research capital has been expended on informing their design and promoting their uptake, surprisingly little systematic comparative empirical research exists on the precise nature and extent of what is often described as a ‘paradigm shift’ in governing. We address this gap by examining how one issue often deemed to require deeper ‘collaboration’, namely, catchment management, has been addressed in three comparable federal political systems: the European Union; the USA; and Australia. On the basis of a fresh and more comparable account of the forms and modalities of collaboration, we reveal that, although collaboration has undoubtedly grown in recent decades, its depth and extent remains highly variable both across and within the three cases. We also examine what these subtly different geographical ‘contours of collaboration’ imply for future research and practice.

Keywords: governance; collaboration; central control; catchment management; paradigm shift; federalism; neoliberalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:45:y:2013:i:7:p:1695-1712

DOI: 10.1068/a45378

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