How Procedural Designs Shape Capacity to Comply: an Illustration from Agri-Environmental Schemes

In response to the challenges posed by fragmentation of habitats and loss of native biodiversity, climate change adaptation and mitigation, diverse agri-environment schemes (AES) have been initiated all over Europe, with the aim of fostering agricultural ecosystem service delivery. Examples of diverse AES include horizontal (i.e. between farmers) and vertical (i.e. between value chain levels), practice-based and result-based, collective and individual agreements. However, relatively little is known about the functioning of these arrangements in relation to their procedural design. This paper aims to provide insights on whether and how the procedural design can affect the capacity to comply to these schemes. We are particularly interested in whether higher degrees of collaboration between governance actors involved in the design process result in better outcomes. Indeed, recent research has indicated that collaboration can potentially improve environmental regulation and performance compared to more traditional command-and-control approaches (Gunningham, 2009; Gerlak et al., 2013; Scott 2015; Ansell et al., 2017). A promising tool for investigating the institutional conditions that shape the degree of collaboration within an agri-environmental governance arrangement is the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, developed by Elinor Ostrom (1990; 1999; 2005; 2011). Several scholars have applied the IAD framework to collaborative governance arrangements to determine how rules at different levels of action shape structure of collaboration and recently much of the scholarly development of the IAD has offered a systematic approach to analyze procedural policy designs, generating a considerable body of work. Against this background, this paper applies the IAD framework to investigate the relationship between procedural design and collaboration within agri-environmental governance arrangements. The aim of the paper is to advance theoretically by developing hypotheses on which elements of the procedural design are conducive to collaboration and on how they affect the capacity to comply of the participants to the schemes. The paper first discusses how we can think of and measure successful implementation of the AES. Then, it builds up the theoretical argument on how the procedural designs can lead to collaboration and on whether and how the procedural elements of such collaborative governance arrangements can lead to better outcomes, with a focus on compliance. The paper uses illustrative examples from existing agri-environmental schemes (such as the targeted catch crop scheme in Denmark) to apply the Institutional Analysis and Development framework in order to assess how institutions shape the design and implementation of the schemes in more or less collaborative governance arrangements. The final explanatory model will include configurations of rules that we expect to play an important role in shaping the collaboration among participants within the arrangements.