The Transformation of Global Environmental Governance: Analyzing the Shapes, Causes and Consequences of a Growing Institutional Complexity

Abstract

Transboundary environmental domains are a particular case in point of institutional density. Their material intricacies, their overlaps with other policy fields and their quickly moving evidence bases have given rise to complex constellations of power, interests, cognitions, norms and discourses. These constellations, in turn, are mirrored in an increasing fragmentation or complexity of global environmental governance efforts. It thus does not come as a surprise that research on global environmental governance took an early interest in institutional fragmentation, regime complexes and polycentricity. Some research traditions, e.g. on interactions among environmental institutions, took their beginning over twenty years ago. These pioneering efforts led us to today’s consensus that a thorough understanding of an intergovernmental or transnational environmental institution is not possible without taking its wider governance environment into account. But the more scholars achieved in bringing complexity into environmental governance studies, the more they came to recognize the considerable need for stronger theoretical foundation, systematic empirical analyses and cross-disciplinary fertilization. First, with some notable theory-generating exceptions, most of the analytical frameworks on complexity in in environmental governance are conceptual and typological in nature. While our concepts acknowledge the existence of ‘complex’ governance systems, most of our theoretical and methodological approaches still treat them as ‘complicated’ systems, i.e. we still analyse them by decomposing them into individual institutions, processes or interactions. Second, most empirical studies concentrate on specific questions in a much larger research agenda. While providing important insights on the emergence and management of complex environmental governance systems, institutional complexity matters in many other ways. It may alter, for instance, aspects of legitimacy, accountability, (de-)politicization, agency and power within and across environmental policy fields. We are largely lacking (comparative) empirical analyses, let alone research programmes, on these and other questions. Against the backdrop of these theoretical and empirical challenges, this panel offers novel lenses to analyze core aspects of institutional complexity along the following questions: What is the institutional state of play in certain environmental policy fields? How can we conceptualize and map a complex environmental governance system and its change over time? What are causes of institutional complexity in an issue area of environmental governance, and how can we theorize, explain and understand them? Which beneficial or restrictive consequences does institutional complexity imply for the legitimacy, accountability, or effectiveness of individual institutions or entire environmental regime complexes? Which actors, preferences or narratives are empowered in a complex environmental governance system, which ones are disadvantaged? And what are suitable and realistic management options? Panelists discuss and develop conceptual and theoretical frameworks to address these questions, based inter alia on social network analysis, critical constructivism, discourse and narrative analysis, institutional interaction and interorganizational-relations approaches. To illustrate their frameworks and critical analyses they refer to different environmental policy domains (climate change, forestry, fisheries, pollution, biological diversity, freshwater). They also venture into the nexus between environmental governance and other policy domains like security, health and trade, thereby building connections to other panels in this section.