Climate adaptation in fragmented governance settings: the consequences of reform in public administration

“Take It or Leave It”: From Collaborative to Regulative Developer Dialogues in Six Swedish Municipalities Aiming to Climate-Proof Urban Planning

“…Investing in public-private interaction is expected to enhance legitimacy and effectiveness of governing climate change [2][3][4][5][6]. It can also, however, have unintended side-effects that rather reduce legitimacy, accountability and hamper implementation [1,7]. Assessing the benefits and limitations of various types of practical collaborations between public and private actors allows us to gradually identify what types of collaborative arrangements and implementation mechanisms best support the realization of climate goals [2,8].…”

“…Torfing et al writing extensively on the theory and practice of collaborative governance, summarize the challenges involved; involving corporate interests may "significantly boost the city´s governing capacity" but it also "puts it in a complex dependency toward the corporate sector" which may produce suboptimal results because of the extensive negotiations involved" [32] (p. 39). Den Uyl and Russel further illustrates how this can manifest itself in the form of deadlocks or inaction, impeding implementation [7].…”

Integrating Concerns with Climate Change into Local Development Planning in Cambodia

“…This is consistent with other empirical studies of adaptation and planning that have considered subnational levels. Along the vulnerable South Devon coast in the United Kingdom, lack of deliberation among stakeholders and resource constraints help explain the lack of action by local governments despite decentralized decision‐making power (Den Uyl & Russel, ). In the Hunter Valley, Australia, community‐based initiatives on reducing disaster risk were an important part of the adaptation responses, with limited resources explained by a lack of commitment by higher levels of government and conflicts with business actors and city councils (Forino, von Meding, & Brewer, ).…”

The Contours of State Retreat from Collaborative Environmental Governance under Austerity

“…Trust in this context relates to a belief in the reliability, truth or abilities of other governance partners; the sense that partners have a mission orientation that is well aligned strategically and practically, that they make decisions based upon discussion and effective communication; and that partners evidence commitment to the governance instruction to which they are partner. Governance based on these values and characteristics is increasingly considered a normative element of political theory [25][26][27] and the dominant organising modality for places of both greater and lesser degrees of public protection (see [21,[27][28][29]). However, the literature does tend towards prioritising governance's conceptual and explanatory value for designated and protected sites (e.g., [30][31][32][33]).…”

“…State retreat has been described as a multi-dimensional diminution of the state from (what is often considered) normative positionality, forms, and substance in collaborative governance, towards more basic forms and substance of engagement [48]. This can include state withdrawal from governance fora and decision-making processes [27,42], moving away from the 'collaboration ethic' implicit in normative governance theory [49] and, ultimately, 'rescaling' the role of the state in governance [25,43,50]. Thus, state retreat represents both a withdrawal from the intellectual life of collaborative governance as well as the practical activities of governance.…”