Is It Possible to Investigate the Future with Knowledge from the Past? A Conceptual Framework to Study Institutional Adaptive Capacity

Abstract

The following chapter presents the conceptual and methodological approach of this study, both relying on the theoretical foundations of vertical and horizontal governance, institutions and adaptive management of water resources. In that, we enrich multi-level governance with insights from institutionalism, to untangle its dynamics; and from adaptive capacity, to derive a typology for water governance frameworks. In this chapter, we present the challenges posed by identifying the determinants of institutional adaptive capacity across governance scales. To this end, we combine theory and data-driven approaches to arrive at own determinants and categories in an iterative fashion. We thus distil a final set of five categories of hypothesised determinants: (a) government and governance; (b) infrastructure; (c) information management; (d) human and social resources; and (e) finances and risk. Based on the prevalence of determinants of adaptive capacity and their interactions across scales, a typology of four different governance frameworks is proposed: resistant, reactive-incremental, proactive-incremental and adaptive. We show how the different adaptation strategies and measures allow identifying the type of framework in place by using semi-structured expert interviews from across a representative sample of formal and informal institutions dealing with water resources management in the case studies of the Po River Basin in Italy and the Syr Darya River Basin in the Kyrgyz Republic.