Coordinating the New Environmental Governance (1): Whether and How does all Innovation in Governance Result in Cohesive Systems of Environmental Governance?

Abstract

Over the last decades the governing of environmental problems has witnessed significant changes. Command-and-control has made place for less-coercive governance interventions and voluntary programs; governments are no longer the sole architect of environmental governance interventions and actively collaborate in networks with businesses and civil society representatives; and, traditional regulation is now only one of the many instruments in the governance toolbox that is supplemented with competitive grants, labelling schemes, and other experimental governance instruments (Gunningham; Jordan). Normally these novel governing actors, governance approaches and instruments do not replace existing actors, approaches and instruments but are added to it. This may be referred to as a mechanism of layering (Thelen) or bricolage (Howlett). Current scholarship is highly aware of these processes, but has thus far paid less attention as to whether and how the outcome of such mechanisms results in cohesive systems of environmental governance. This panel brings together a group of scholars that seeks to better understand how different innovations in systems of environmental governance interact in real world settings. Questions that drive this panel are, among others, how does a series of novel governance instruments interact with existing regulatory frameworks in a system of environmental governance? To what extent are different governance networks able to self-organise in order to achieve societal desirable outcomes? What role does the state have in ensuring cohesion in innovations in systems of environmental governance, if any? Is there a saturation point where too much layering or too much bricolage results in an unworkable system of environmental governance?

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