Deliberative governance in synergy with government: a case study of credible environmental improvements in the Dairy Gateway, USA

Abstract

This article examines a case of deliberative governance in the Dairy Gateway Project in the Northeast of Wisconsin, USA. In this project government, academic researchers, farmers and environmental organizations built cooperative voluntary networks to improve the quality of water, air and soil. They introduced dialogue, learning and stewardship as alternatives to governmental ‘command and control’. At three types of meetings a broader group of participants deliberated about the interpretation of these concepts. The study of these interpretative struggles in the form of boundary work demonstrates that participants considered dialogue and learning in networks a credible new way to cooperate, and that in most cases they accepted farmers as stewards of the land. However, they all wanted government to audit this stewardship. Hence, deliberative governance emerged in synergy with government.Point for practitionersReflective conversations about boundary concepts, for example ‘stewardship’, can help to overcome environmental conflicts. This concept aligns incompatible discourses. When boundary concepts are introduced, participants in networks of, for example, farmers, environmentalists and governmental actors are challenged to think about new solutions. Moreover, they are encouraged to rethink the role of government. Deliberative settings, in which facilitators pay special attention to the quality of the conversations, enable this rethinking. In these conversations adversarial actors can empathically disagree. As a result, participants start negotiating credible solutions and establish what role government has to have.