Adaptation in Collaborative Governance Regimes

Environmental Management (2014) 54:768781 DOI 10.1007/s00267-014-0334-7

Adaptation in Collaborative Governance Regimes

Kirk Emerson Andrea K. Gerlak

Received: 10 October 2013 / Accepted: 7 July 2014 / Published online: 30 July 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract Adaptation and the adaptive capacity of human and environmental systems have been of central concern to natural and social science scholars, many of whom characterize and promote the need for collaborative cross-boundary systems that are seen as exible and adaptive by denition. Researchers who study collaborative governance systems in the public administration, planning and policy literature have paid less attention to adaptive capacity specically and institutional adaptation in general. This paper bridges the two literatures and nds four common dimensions of capacity, including structural arrangements, leadership, knowledge and learning, and resources. In this paper, we focus on institutional adaptation in the context of collaborative governance regimes and try to clarify and distinguish collaborative capacity from adaptive capacity and their contributions to adaptive action. We posit further that collaborative capacities generate associated adaptive capacities thereby enabling institutional adaptation within collaborative governance regimes. We develop these distinctions and linkages between collaborative and adaptive capacities with the help of an illustrative case study in watershed management within the National Estuary Program.

Keywords Adaptation Adaptive capacity

Collaborative governance Collaborative capacity

Institutional adaptation

Introduction

In the last few decades, we have witnessed the emergence of new kinds of governance systems working at different scales, across jurisdictional boundaries, and engaging multiple levels of government as well as nongovernmental stakeholders (Frederickson 1999; Jun 2002; Kettl 2002; Agranoff and McGuire 2003; Weber 2003; Koontz et al. 2004; Heikkila and Gerlak 2005; Gerlak et al. 2013). These new cross-boundary settings have become the proving ground for the evolving practice and study of collaborative governance. Collaborative approaches promise better coordination and integration of authorities (Bingham and OLeary 2008) and are connected to participatory forms of governance that often include stakeholder engagement and public deliberation (Leach and Sabatier 2005; Cooper et al. 2006; Fung 2006). In environmental and natural resource arenas, diverse multi-partner governance arrangements have been created to represent hybrid combinations of state, market, and community-based systems, including co-management, publicprivate partnerships, and private-social partnerships (Agrawal and Lemos 2007).

At the same time, there is growing attention to...