There is hardly any other natural resource as inherently complex as water. Water provides a large diversity of ecosystem services (irrigation, cooling, drinking, support for biodiversity, hydropower, etc.) that are often in conflict with each other. Furthermore, water is an important resource for other sectors such as health, energy, or agriculture. With increasingly important consequences of climate change and biodiversity loss, not only the protection of water resources and water-related ecosystems becomes increasingly important, but also the protection from water gains importance as well, for example, through flood protection measures. Such measures, in turn, can have consequences again for drinking water provision, agricultural land use, or the state of ecosystems (Jaramillo et al. 2019). Thus, water governance is complex, and network concepts and measures allow us to grasp some of that complexity as well as ways of addressing it (Angst 2018).
Due to its substantive importance for life, and due to the interest in studying this sector given the different challenges that arise therein, water has always been a key policy sector for studies of the policy process, public administration, and environmental governance. Research on governance and management of water resources has thus traditionally contributed to new developments in the broader fields of public policy, public administration, and governance studies, and beyond (Weible and Sabatier 2005; Feiock and Scholz 2009; Berardo and Scholz 2010; Pahl-Wostl et al. 2010; Lubell 2013; Sabatier and Weible 2014; Bodin 2017; Berardo and Lubell 2019).
Not surprisingly, a significant proportion of these approaches have relied, explicitly or implicitly, on concepts and measures related to networks. The governance of complex resources such as water calls for a variety of relevant actors to interact, which ideally allows one to take into account the different usage- and protection-related interests toward water, coordinate across politico-administrative boundaries, and include knowledge from different sectors, including public, private, as well as scientific actors (Maag and Fischer 2018). These interactions across diverse categories of actors can be fruitfully analyzed as networks, and with related concepts and measures. Furthermore, because formal political institutions have a hard time addressing issues that span political or sectoral borders, as is the case with water, (informal) networks of collaboration and information exchange among actors are even more important (Galaz 2007; Ingold et al. 2016; Lubell and Edelenbos 2013). Networks are thus not only a relevant conceptual and methodological approach to analyzing water governance, they are also an empirical reality, and often an aspirational goal of stakeholders that want to address pressing water-related issues in a holistic fashion.
Why This Book?
Currently, water governance and management is facing severe challenges due to climate change, biodiversity loss, increasing urbanization, and/or population growth. We are confident that by studying water with the help of network concepts and measures, we can advance our knowledge in these arenas and provide a contribution to successfully tackle these current and future challenges.
The book addresses the issue of water and its management and regulation from a holistic perspective. This means that it covers both the complexities in terms of the different issues, aspects, policy problems, policy sectors, and substantive questions related to water governance, and the complexities that the involved set of actors (state officials, public administrations, scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private firms, lobbying groups, and others) are facing when dealing with the overlapping issue of water. Whereas different chapters deal with different water-related issues, from more specialized issues such as fisheries or water quality to more general issues such as watershed management or subsystem governance, all chapters deploy the same particular lens of analysis. They all rely on a network perspective and apply specific concepts and measures of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to grasp the complex interactions among the large diversity of actors, institutions, and issues related to water governance. Bodin and Prell (2011) have emphasized the importance of analyzing environmental and natural resource questions based on concepts and methods of network analysis. Whereas all chapters deal with water and involve a network approach, their theoretical focus varies, although network concepts per se could themselves be regarded as the theoretical background in many chapters. Similar books that rely on one single theoretical framework are Feiock and Scholz (2009) with the Institutional Collective Action Framework, or Weible et al. (2016), featuring country-focused chapters dealing with hydraulic fracturing and applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework.
This book is relevant to different types of academic audiences, including students, researchers, and teachers interested in natural resource governance and environmental policy-making. These issues are increasingly important in many university departments and related curricula, including interdisciplinary studies. The book will thus be of interest for students interested in water-policy and environmental governance; it provides input appropriate for introductory classes as well as resources and examples for more specialized seminars. Presumably, Chap. 2 where conceptual foundations related to water governance and networks are presented can serve as an important introductory text for teaching. The nine case study chapters represent first-hand examples of water-related policy and governance issues, but also of high-level academic research on the issues, written by some of the leading water governance and network scholars in the world. Finally, our concluding considerations on comparability, generalizability, caveats, and related open research questions can provide inspiration to the current and future generations of water governance scholars and SNA practitioners.
Besides academic contributions, this book also aims to provide practice-relevant recommendations. To gather network data, we are dependent on information from practice: only through the access to official documents and expert judgments are we able to draw networks between actors, institutions, and issues. Designing a network of actors in charge of managing the resource water also means highlighting lacunae where important links are missing. There are more and less efficient and effective ways of collaborating, interacting with each other, or exchanging information. This book sheds light on how different actors in different countries, regions, from different sectors, and related to different water issues, interact. We hope that these examplesâand our subsequent discussion in the conclusionâprovide practitioners with new ideas on what approaches can work in what contexts. Thus, the practical implications discussed in the chapters and at the end of the book will hopefully be relevant to scholars that aim to have an impact beyond academia, and, more importantly, to many water-related practitioners in public administrations, NGOs, international organizations, and so on.
Summary of Case Study Chapters
This book focuses on different aspects of water governance through the lenses of network concepts and measures. Besides this introduction, a conceptual chapter, and the conclusion, this book contains nine case study chapters that each emphasize different aspects of water governance and rely on different network concepts and measures. The first three case study chapters focus on network fragmentation and clustering within networks of water governance. The subsequent three case study chapters present ways to overcome this fragmentation and reduce clustering. Finally, the last three case study chapters focus on centrality, and thus on specific actors that drive water governance (see Table 1.1).
Table 1.1
Chapter overview
Chapter authors | Water issue | Case study region | SNA ties | SNA concepts and measures | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2.1 Fragmentation in water politics | |||||
2.1.1 | Robbins & Lubell | Conservation/Spiny lobster fishery | Honduras, Caribbean | Communication, familiarity | Network segregation and social capital |
2.1.2 | Hollway | International water treaties | Global | Conflict, cooperation | Activity and network change over time |
2.1.3 | Angst & Fischer | Swiss Water Policy | Switzerland | Actorâissue involvement (bipartite) | Modularity; two-mode centrality |
2.2 Fostering collaboration in complex systems | |||||
2.2.1 | Mancilla & Bodin | Water basin management | Brazil | Coordination, shared beliefs | Homophily and heterophily |
2.2.2 | Koebele et al. | Water basin management | USA, Lake Tahoe | Collaboration, shared beliefs | Polarization, centrality |
2.2.3 | Herzog & Ingold | Water quality, micro-pollutants | Rhine catchment: Basel, Moselle, Ruhr | Collaboration | Cohesion, centrality, clustering |
2.3 Key actors in networks | |||||
2.3.1 | Ebrahimiazarkharan et al. | Water quality and quantity | Iran, Thalaghan watershed | Cooperation, trust | Cohesion, centrality, clustering |
2.3.2 | Olivier et al. | Watersheds management | USA, New York watershed | Actorsâprotocol (bipartite), joint protocol | Network rules and social capital |
2.3.3 | Bell & Henry | Water sustainability | USA, Arizona | Event co-participation | Centralities |
This introduction first lays out the rationale of the book. It then provides summaries of all chapters, before offering an overview of the substantive water issues covered by the chapters, the geographical areas concerned, the network ties analyzed, and the network concepts and measures that each chapter relies on. It finally discusses the different research questions addressed by each chapter and presents the structure of the overall book.
Chapter 2 lays the conceptual foundations for the book and discusses water governance, network concepts and methods, and their interrelationship. It does so by referring to the case study chapters and the elements studied therein. After systematically presenting the complexities of water governance and the ways water issues are typically governed and managed, the chapter discusses the contributions of network concepts to understanding these complexities, as well as ways to overcoming problems that arise from such complexities. The chapter then systematically presents types of nodes and ties of networks, before providing a short explanation of the most basic network analytical concepts on micro-, meso- and macro-levels of networks. It finally covers certain methods for sta...