Collaborative Water Resource Management: Defining/Evaluating Policy Process “Integration” for Effective Participation and Efficient Policy Outputs

Abstract

Water Policy and Management means more than environmental protection. To satisfy material and immaterial needs, water regulation should reflect the interactions between various resources and the link between the use and the protection of the resource water. Water Resource Management thus concerns various sectors and transcends different decisional and implementation levels while collaborative modes integrating various stakeholders were designed to take this complexity into consideration. In Policy Analysis and Governance literature, conceptual tools have been developed to study such collaborative modes of governing within multiple levels. Scholars talk about horizontal actors’ integration where political authority can be reallocated sideways from the state to non-state actors, often through non-hierarchical and negotiated exchanges between different types of actors. Still the questions remain how to assess “integration” in water policy processes and what impact “integration” has on policy outputs and outcomes. This panel invites scholars conceptually, methodologically and empirically addressing the question of “policy process and interest integration” in water policy processes. We enhance the discussion about the state of the art as well as future developments in water policy research with a special focus on collaborative governance modes, the integration of local communities, and sustainable resource management.

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