Participation improves environmental governance – but not always. Findings from a large-n case survey meta-analysis

Despite a proliferation of research on participatory and collaborative approaches in environmental governance, the effectiveness of such approaches is highly contested, and there is only limited knowledge on ‘what works’. One major reason for this lack of consolidated knowledge lies in the dispersed nature of empirical research in the field, which is dominated by single or small-n case studies. In this paper we report on a large-n meta-analysis (case survey) of 250 cases of public environmental decision making from 22 different countries. In conducting our case survey, we draw on the rich qualitative data contained in a large universe of case studies of (more or less) participatory environmental decision-making processes. The rationale is to make this qualitative information comparable by transforming it into quantitative data, which will support statistical analysis and yield new insights. To this end, a comprehensive coding scheme was developed, comprising 315 unique variables, defined on the basis of theoretical insights from environmental governance and related disciplines (Newig et al. 2013). Each case was assessed independently by three coders, followed by a joint discussion to compare and discuss diverging codes. Overall inter-coder reliability is high. First analyses, relying on principal component analyses, correlations, and regression analyses conveyed a general tendency for the ‘intensity’ of participation to correlate highly with both environmental provisions of outputs and social outcomes of decision-making processes. Separating participation in various dimensions, we arrive at a more nuanced picture. Positive environmental outcomes are strongly related to who participates. However, rather than untargeted inclusion of non-state actors the representation of particular interests, such as conservation or sustainable resource usage, shows strong correlations with positive process outputs. Regarding power and authority, our analysis indicates greater effects when power and actual influence on outputs is delegated to participants. The communicative dimension of participation resonated particularly strong with the social outcomes of the decision-making processes, such as conflict resolution and capacity building. Geographically, significant differences appear concerning implementation. For example, collaborative governance in North America appeared significantly stronger related to actual action on the ground than in Europe. We further employ advanced statistical methods (e.g. GLM, SEM) and procedures to test hypotheses of participatory governance and environmental effectiveness. We focus on key mechanisms identified in the literature and focus on the role of actors and power distributions, knowledge, communication patterns and capacity building for various independent variables including environmental quality, implementation, and social outcomes. To add to the understanding and validity of these mechanisms special attention is paid to contextual factors such as the specific (national) policy and societal background, or the environmental resource or issue at stake. Results in particular point at the interplay between various mechanisms and factors highlighting that the effects of participation are result to complex configurations of mechanisms working in various ways. The work thereby stands to contribute theoretical and practical insights in the field of environmental politics and governance, as well as developing rigorous methods for gathering evidence from the dispersed array of studies in the field.