There is no shortage of adjectives in the ‘from government to governance’ literature. One characteristic binds these seemingly unique approaches to governance together. They have been developed not in a traditional hierarchical top-down manner with a central governmental actor designing, implementing and enforcing regulation, but in a heterarchical manner with local governments, businesses and citizens working together to address societal risks through innovative governance arrangements.
This paper steps away from the definitional debates about these adjectives, and is more interested in the performance of real-world governance arrangements that fit one or more of these approaches. In particular the paper is interested in the role of (local) governments in these governance arrangements. In order to better understand these roles it studies a set of 58 experimental/collaborative/localised/new/heterarchical governance arrangements that seek to improve the environmental sustainability of the construction industry in Australia, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore and the USA.
