Understanding transformations in rigid social-ecological governance: pluralism, power in networks of action situations and neo-institutional dialogues

To enable robust and just sustainability transitions, we need to understand how social-ecological systems (SES) respond to different governance configurations, considering their historical, institutional, political and power conditions. Governance and politics are inherently implicated in any effort to foster successful transitions, with pluralism (of method and of reality) as a key ingredient for success. In this paper, we present a pluralistic methodology for the integrated analysis of those conditions, drawing on a partial synthesis of 15-years’ case study research in the Doñana estuary-delta SES (Guadalquivir estuary, SW Spain). Doñana is characterized by rigid water governance and, more generally, by a SES rigidity trap. The presented methodology consists of a novel combination of insights from resilience thinking, neo-institutionalism (rational-choice, historical and discursive), and the role of power. Through an illustrative example of a hydraulic megaproject, our synthesis reveals a governance configuration characterized by strategic interactions among key actors posing no systemic risks in the short term. However, this pattern is vulnerable due to an underlying coordination failure among actors. This situation emerge from a pattern of uncooperative behavior that cannot be explained without considering historical evolution, discursive-institutional inertia and power dynamics. We argue that Doñana might be on the verge of a regime shift to a lock-in trap posing high sunk and trajectory-shifting costs. However, there is a high potential from latent pluralism to challenge current discursive-institutional dynamics and from well-preserved natural values to govern for nature. This, we argue, could create a new baseline governance configuration more prone to nurture the conditions for a sustainability transition.