Within those methods which aim at
understanding and explaining governance emergence , a distinction is
made between those approaches that assume that it is possible to
generalise beyond a single case, and those that do not. On the one
hand, there are anthropological and ethnographic approaches that assume
that this is theoretically not feasible.
For
example, Mosse (2006) in a case study of water management institutions
in southern India finds that collective action is correlated with the
presence of ceremony and rituals surrounding village water tanks. He
argues that the causal mechanism behind this relationship can only be
understood through understanding the meaning and symbolism of local
institutions, which requires indepth anthropological methods. Such an
understanding of causal relationships is not generalisable beyond the
case study because it depends on location and historically specific
processes. Based on these findings, Mosse criticises the social capital
approach (e.g. Putnam 1994), which relates quantitative measures of
institutions, e.g. the number of associations in a study unit, to
levels of collective action. Although such a relationship may hold in a
particular case, in fact it would in the villages Mosse has studied,
generalising to other cases without understanding the causal processes
may lead to flawed interventions and mal-adaptation. Results from these
approaches can thus only inform adaptation policy development for the
particular case analysed.
On the other hand,
approaches from new institutional economics (NIE), which have made
significant and extensive contributions to the natural resource and
water management literature (e.g., Hagedorn et al. 2002; Bougherara et
al. 2009), and frameworks for institutional analysis (Ostrom 2005) and
analysis of the governance of socio-ecological systems (Folke et al.
2005; Ostrom 2007, 2009) assume that insights can be generalised beyond
single case studies on a higher level of abstraction. While the
abovementioned assumption of complexity making prediction difficult
limits the generalisable conclusions from any particular study about
which institutions lead to which outcomes, the accumulation of evidence
has led to conclusions about general characteristics of
social-ecological systems that can be related to desirable outcomes.
Examples
of such generalised insights are the “8 design principles for
sustainable resource management” (Ostrom et al. 1999),
“principles of adaptive governance” (Dietz et al.
2003), or “institutional prescriptions for adaptive water
governance” (Huitema et al. 2009). These principles
are, however, intentionally left very abstract and thus difficult to
make operational and verify empirically across differing contexts.
Thus, in relation to adaptation, these prescriptions provide input
regarding institutional attributes that enhance the adaptive capacity
of actors faced with climate risks. These general prescriptions need to
be supplemented by contextual knowledge when implementing adaptation
interventions. The fact that the prescriptions remain general and
require contextualisation differentiates the approach from that of
policy design which assumes that outcomes can be predicted ex ante.
Exemplary methods and tools
| Name | Description | References
|
| Informal network analysis
| Pelling et al. (2008) address the question of which social and institutional factors have led to the emergence of informal networks in public organisations. Active informal networks are assumed to be beneficial for adaptation. They look at integrated environmental policy making across different sectors in Wales. They find evidence for factors which have promoted the emergence of the shadow network, such as the promotion of the "Team Wales" identity, and the tendency for long careers with little out migration fostering long-term relationships.
| Pelling M, High C, Dearing J, Smith D. 2008. Shadow spaces for social learning: a relational understanding of adaptive capacity to climate change within organisations. Environment and Planning A 40: 867-884.
|
| Design principles for community-based natural resource management
| Ostrom et al. (1999) addresses the question of which variables lead to the self-organisation of communities for the management of natural resources, such as, fisheries pastures and forests . A framework taking an action situation as the unit of analysis describes the governance system in order to synthesise lessons from a large number of cases. 8 design principles are found to promote self-organisation.
| Ostrom, E., Burger, J., Field, C. B., Norgaard, R. B. and Policansky, D., 1999: Revisiting the commons: local lessons, global challenges, Science, 284 (5412), 278-282.
|
