The Contours of State Retreat from Collaborative Environmental Governance under Austerity

Abstract

Although the effects of public austerity have been the subject of a significant literature in recent years, the changing role of the state as a partner in collaborative environmental governance under austerity has received less attention. By employing theories of collaborative governance and state retreat, this paper used a qualitative research design comprised of thirty-two semi-structured interviews within the case study UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in the United Kingdom to address this lacuna. Participants perceived that the austerity period has precipitated negative changes to their extant state-orientated funding regime, which had compelled changes to their organisational structure. Austerity damaged their relationships with the state and perceptions of state legitimacy whilst simultaneously strengthening and straining the relationships between intra-partnership non-state governance actors. This case offers a critical contemporary reflection on normative collaborative environmental governance theory under austerity programmes. These open up questions about the role of the state in wider sustainability transitions.

Navigating or adding to complexity? Exploring the role of catchment partnerships in collaborative governance

“…Secondly, it is perceived that actors with a stake in a problem should work together to tackle it-a general trend towards collaborative governance. This is characterised by a commitment, at least rhetorically, to building shared missions, trust and discourse across state and non-state actors (Bordin 2017;Kirsop-Taylor et al 2020). It entails building coordination across and between levels (e.g.…”

“…The resources used to fund coordinators depends on the in-kind resources available from partners and sometimes grants from the public sector: the English partnerships can also access funding for coordinators from CaBA. A recent trend to reducing government budgets and finding efficiency savings with the UK public sector-so-called 'austerity' (Kirsop-Taylor et al 2020)-makes it harder to find these resources. However, all of our partnerships planned to continue funding coordinators.…”

“…Firstly, trends towards public sector austerity (as in the UK at the time of writing) may leave little resources for approaches that do not quickly deliver immediate government priorities. Kirsop-Taylor et al (2020) describe how austerity tends to encourage some responsibility to be devolved and shared to non-state actors, yet without fully enabling or empowering them. Additionally, modernity's expectations of certainty, prediction and control are still embedded in governance systems and society's expectations (Waylen and Blackstock 2017), even though complexity implies our governance will only ever be 'clumsy' (Verweij et al 2006) and 'hesitant and inefficient' (Strand 2002).…”

Research on the comprehensive evaluation of collaborative governance effect of environmental pollution in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration based on low-carbon constraints

“…In recent years, with the upsurge of research on collaborative governance of environmental pollution in China, there are also some sporadic research results abroad. According to Taylor et al (2020) 's research, due to the impact of western economic austerity policies, some countries that implement the environmental pollution collaborative governance have gradually formed a shrinking profile in the process of the environmental pollution governance; Sabrina et al (2021) analyzed the current situation of moose management in Sweden, put forward the idea of the environmental pollution collaborative governance in moose habitat, and analyzed the social and ecological effects of the collaborative governance; Jones and White (2022) analyzed the problem of environmental pollution governance in Phoenix city, Arizona, USA, and believed that there were obstacles to cooperative governance in the governance of the food-energy-water relationship, and advocated that the cooperative governance of this environmental pollution governance chain should be strengthened to promote the gradual improvement of the governance effect；Hnohuaan et al ( 2022) analyzed the antibody map characteristics of vibrio species recovered from surface water in southwestern Uganda, and believed that collaborative governance would improve the governance effect; Yandisia et al ( 2022) analyzed Thailand's food marketing policy, and believed that the impact of policy governance should be strengthened, and the implementation of cooperative marketing would improve synergy. Nicola et al (2023) analyzed collaborative governance in environmental pollution control cases in Australia and believed that collaborative governance of environmental pollution played an important role in improving the effectiveness of environmental pollution control.…”