Complementary combinations of instruments and participants are increasingly assumed to produce better governance outcomes than single instrument or single party approaches. However, it is still unclear whether and how new collaborative governance instruments can be effectively implemented in the same policy domain as traditional ‘command and control' approaches (CAC). Drawing on 60 interviews, the paper evaluates the interaction between CAC and water collaborations in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The paper finds that a significant barrier to achieving cohesion between CAC and collaboration is the ‘worldview’ of regulators, who eschew collaboration as ineffectual or incompatible with CAC. The paper also identifies three different relationships between CAC and collaboration, and offers recommendations on how we can better achieve cohesive implementation between the ‘new’ and ‘old’ within environmental governance systems.
