Can Beliefs Act as Institutional Filters? – Investigating Rules, Beliefs and Coordination in Different Watershed Management Situations

Different policy process theories emphasize different factors that impact how actors coordinate their actions in a common pool resource problem situation. They largely agree upon the fact that actors coordinate to impact policymaking, to design policies, and to solve social-ecological problems. While the Institutional Analysis and Development framework (IAD) developed by Ostrom puts a strong emphasize on institutions, i.e. formal rules as well as rules in use; the Advocacy Coalition Framework developed by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith sees shared beliefs and ideologies as drivers for coordination. In this article we analyze both, institutions and beliefs, and investigate whether beliefs can act as filters for rules that strongly impact how actors behave in complex watershed management. Water policy is an ideal case, because different water quality problems (such as micro- and macro-pollutants) put authorities and user at different levels under pressure. In this complex multi-level and transboundary governance setting, coordination between actors to solve the problem seems key. In order to derive more generalizable conclusions, we compare three cases along the Rhine River in Europe including Germany, Luxembourg, France and Switzerland and the New York City Watersheds in North America. We apply methods of social network analysis to investigate the relative impact of institutions, beliefs and both together in order to impact the creation of coordination in the respective watersheds.