Multi‐level governance, network governance, and, more recently, experimentalist governance are important analytical frameworks through which to understand democratic governance in the EU. However, these analytical frameworks carry normative assumptions that build on functionalist roots and undervalue political dynamics. This can result in a lack of understanding of the challenges that democratic governance faces in practice. This article proposes the analysis of democratic governance from the perspective of multiple political rationalities to correct such assumptions. It analyses the implementation of the Water Framework Directive in the Netherlands as a paradigmatic case study by showing how governmental, instrumental, and deliberative rationalities are at work in each of the governance elements that it introduces. The article concludes by discussing the implications of a perspective of multiple political rationalities for the understanding and promotion of democratic governance in practice.

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We propose that a practice-based approach to environmental policy can help consolidate theoretical understanding of and empirical focus on practices in IPA. Doing so counteracts a tendency to privilege knowledge and discourse in IPA and environmental policy analysis. We draw on multiple strands of practice theory to inform three sensitising concepts: situated agency, logic of practice, and performativity. These concepts provide the analytical tools to investigate how social order and social change originate from the entanglement of meaning and action in practice. We illustrate these concepts by applying them to practices of community forest management in the countries of Ethiopia and Tanzania. Our analysis suggests that a practice-based approach is able to offer nuanced and empirically grounded accounts of political struggles and democratic practices. Its potential is especially strong in cases where policy-making and policy ideas and outcomes are less clearly linked to argumentative processes. We conclude by arguing for further inclusion and consolidation of practice-based approaches within the tradition of interpretive policy analysis.

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