Religious Beliefs in Collaborative Environmental Governance: Evidence From Indonesia

Collaborative governance is often advocated as a way to address ‘messy’ problems that individual stakeholders cannot solve alone. However, whereas stakeholders’ participation brings a broad range of response options to public decision-making, the complexities of the perspectives at stake may also lead to conflicts and stalemates. This is especially true in collaborative environmental governance, where conflict is common and stakeholders’ interdependence in more than one arena tends to be frequent. Based on a longitudinal field study, we explore how to break stalemates in collaborative environmental governance when they occur, and move the collaboration towards a shared decision. The successful collaborative decision-making for the defence of Venice against floods represents our empirical setting. Our findings show that, in this context, the combined effect of three factors seems to be important to break stalemates and lead stakeholders towards a shared decision in collaborative environmental governance: stakeholders’ reactivation, fear of marginalization and leaders acting as orchestrators.

Background
Social capital is frequently invoked as a reason for engaging in collaborative environmental governance. Yet we have a limited understanding of how collaborative environmental governance mobilizes different types of social capital and how the advantages and costs of social capital accrue for different groups of people. Explicit measures of social capital, such as through social network methods, will help build an understanding of how social capital facilitates collective processes and for whom.
Methods
We reviewed highly cited articles in Web of Science and Scopus using “social capital” as the search term to identify foundational and emergent social capital concepts. In the context of collaborative environmental governance, we operationalized these social capital concepts with network measures drawn from our expertise and highlighted existing empirical relationships between such network measures and collaborative outcomes.
Review results
We identified two different camps of social capital concepts - one based on social relations that could be readily operationalized with social network measures and the other based on actor characteristics that can further contextualize network data. Relational social capital concepts included social relations among actors; the collective social setting in which relations are embedded; and the advantages and costs that social capital confers to individuals and the collective. Social capital concepts based on actor characteristics included socio-cognitions (e.g., trust, norms, identification with a group, shared meanings) and community engagement (e.g., group membership, civic participation, volunteerism). Empirical evidence using social network approaches to measure social capital reveals patterns in relationship building that influence collaborative and other sustainability outcomes.
Discussion
Social network approaches described here may help define and quantify the social capital mobilized by collaborative governance. Additional research is necessary to track the social capital of collaboratives over time, link it to outcomes, and better understand the social justice implications of collaborative governance.

Greetings! As we enter the second quarter of the year, we are thrilled to present the second issue of the Policy Studies Journal (PSJ). This issue features 10 top-notch research articles that cover various topics related to policy theory and substantive policy domains. Before diving into the details of the articles, we would like to share some exciting news related to PSJ operations. First, in February, we established a strategic partnership with the Seoul National University (SNU) Graduate School of Public Administration (GSPA) in South Korea. Along with PSJ's existing relationship with the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, this new partnership will help strengthen mutual scholarly collaboration and promote policy research in South Korea and beyond. Second, due to the nuances of the existing production model, we decided that Policy Theory and Practice (PT&P) will be a rolling special collection within PSJ. Many policy researchers cannot afford to publish their works in a new non-indexed journal, and now they can publish under the PSJ's impact factor. By introducing PT&P as a special collection, the PSJ will significantly increase both the number of articles it publishes and the range of subject matter it covers while upholding its fundamental mission of advancing policy theory. We are confident that this new model will benefit emerging scholars and, most importantly, better serve the needs of the policy community. Third, in April, we successfully hosted the PSJ Policy Scholar Reception at the 80th annual Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) meeting in Chicago. It saw a large turnout of policy scholars and resulted in many meaningful exchanges. The reception was made possible by the generous financial support of Dr. Michael D. Jones (University of Tennessee-Knoxville), Dr. Paul Teske (University of Colorado-Denver), and others, and we are very grateful for their support. Fourth, we are pleased to announce the launch of a new manuscript submission platform called Research Exchange (ReX), which will provide authors with a more intuitive and streamlined process for submitting their work. The ReX platform will integrate with PSJ's existing ScholarOne manuscript management system. So, those authors who have already submitted their manuscripts through ScholarOne will not experience any changes to the peer review workflows. Now, let us turn our attention to the 10 exceptional research articles included in this issue. The first four articles focus on Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) (e.g., Chen & Flink, 2022; Fernández-i-Marín et al., 2022; Meza, 2022), covering topics such as political institutions, policy disasters, international politics, a systematic review of research priorities in China, and the role of political parties and prime ministers in shaping the executive lawmaking agenda in Australia. In the lead article, “Political Institutions, Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, and Policy Disasters,” Fagan (2023) puts forth a theory about how political institutions relate to policy disasters. According to what is predicted by PET, the author suggests that systems that accumulate errors more easily will have a higher volume of policy disasters. Systems with a greater number of veto players and lower levels of information flow will also experience more policy disasters, but the impact of information flow on this outcome will be greater than that of veto players. The author tests this theory by analyzing data on financial crises, natural disasters, and technological disasters in 70 countries over 60 years. The results confirm that systems with limited information flows and more veto players have a higher risk for policy disasters. In the second article, “The Calm Before the Storm: A Punctuated Equilibrium Theory of International Politics,” Joly and Richter (2023) argue that the field of International Relations (IR) has not given enough consideration to PET and investigate the causes of stability and change in international politics and how these dynamics work at both the domestic and international level, as well as how they interact with each other. They demonstrate that various indicators of international politics, such as troop deployments, foreign aid, and international trade, exhibit a leptokurtic pattern of change. This pattern characterizes Punctuated Equilibrium, whereby countries typically experience periods of relative stability with incremental changes in behavior, punctuated by sudden, large-scale changes that overthrow existing policies. Their analysis reveals that institutional friction plays a significant role in comprehending policy changes within the IR context as well. Next, in their article, “What Do We Know About the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory in China? A Systematic Review and Research Priorities,” van den Dool and Li (2023) suggest that the PET theory, which is usually applied to democracies, can also be tested in autocratic states. They argue that authoritarian regimes may experience less institutional friction, but more restrictions on information flow, making them a unique case for testing the theory's mechanisms. To broaden our understanding of PET and the policy process beyond democratic states, the authors review 88 research articles on PET written in Chinese. Contrary to the PET literature in English, most Chinese studies on this subject are qualitative and have a weak operationalization of PET's core concepts. The reviewed studies confirm that policymaking in China follows a punctuated equilibrium pattern, but there is limited evidence for more intense punctuations when compared with democracies. The authors recommend that future PET research on China should use long-term data sets and more carefully examine institutional friction and information processing by policymakers. The authors also suggest that conducting more international exchange and comparative research is necessary to enhance our comprehension of the policy process in autocracies like China. Lastly, in their article, “The Executive Lawmaking Agenda: Political Parties, Prime Ministers, and Policy Change in Australia,” Gibbons and Evans (2023) analyze 3982 Australian bills introduced from 2000 to 2017 to see if PET's theoretical postulations are applicable to Westminster systems. They find that while the policy content of executive lawmaking agendas remained mostly stable, changes in prime minister had a larger impact on Australia's executive lawmaking agenda, compared to changes in the governing party. The authors use the comparative policy agendas approach to analyze government bills in Australia, providing insights into executive lawmaking priorities during a turbulent period in Australian politics. The next two articles relate to the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) (e.g., DeLeo & Duarte, 2022; Derwort et al., 2022; Dolan, 2021; Fowler, 2022), examining the infeasibility of implementing a national ban on live poultry sales in China and exploring the relational coupling of multiple streams of policy in the context of tackling COVID-19 infections in German abattoirs. In her article, “The Multiple Streams Framework in a Nondemocracy: The Infeasibility of a National Ban on Live Poultry Sales in China,” van den Dool (2023) uses the MSF in a case study about the sale of live poultry in food markets in China, which is a major concern for preventing epidemics. By analyzing Chinese policy documents, news articles, World Health Organization (WHO) data, and other sources, the author demonstrates that despite the danger to public health, and even though high-level Chinese government officials support it, a national ban on live poultry sales has not been implemented because it is not technically possible, financially feasible, or compatible with current beliefs and practices. The author claims that although China has an authoritarian government and lacks political pluralism, the proposed policies of the policy elite are not always implemented while suggesting that further research should explore these ideas in different policy domains and in other authoritarian regimes. In the next article, “Relational Coupling of Multiple Streams: The Case of COVID-19 Infections in German Abattoirs,” Möck et al. (2023) argue that the COVID-19 outbreaks among employees in the German meat-processing industry, combined with the Work Safety Control Act introduced in July 2020 to safeguard these workers, served as policy windows to introduce related measures from an MSF perspective. However, the authors further argue that this is not enough to understand the agenda setting process and suggest the examination of the coupling of streams within related policy windows. The authors use the concept of relational coupling to analyze the text data from German mass media to identify entrepreneurial activities. The results of their discourse network analysis show that there were two key stages in the agenda setting process: first, there was an initial problem brokerage without coupling of core policies, and then all the different streams were coupled together based on a focusing event. The authors suggest that understanding relational coupling provides a better understanding of the agenda setting process in MSF. The final four articles in this issue are linked to environmental governance broadly (e.g., Deslatte et al., 2022; Dobbin & Lubell, 2021; Haider & Teodoro, 2021; Henry et al., 2021), covering issues such as justice in collaborative environmental governance, the environmental governance in China, policy attributes shaping climate policy support, and reaching negotiated agreements amidst belief divergence in environmental governance. In their article, “Drivers of (In)Equity in Collaborative Environmental Governance,” Dobbin et al. (2023) analyze how well collaborative groundwater planning in California addresses the needs of small and rural drinking water users who are vulnerable. The authors use various types of data and the Boosted Regression and Classification Trees (BRCT) method to determine factors that may influence this planning process, such as collaboration, representation, elite capture, stakeholder engagement, and problem severity/salience. The authors claim that all these factors have a meaningful impact on the equitable planning process; however, the effects of these factors can be complex and may vary depending on the policy context and outcome. As such, the authors suggest that it is necessary to analyze collaborative governance systems from diverse contexts to gain a better understanding of how to promote social and environmental equity in decentralized reforms. Next, in their article, “Environmental Governance in China: The Effects of Policy Clarity, Career Concerns, and New Appointed Officials on Pollution Control,” Sun et al. (2023) examine how policy clarity and high-powered incentive systems work together to influence organizational performance in the context of environmental governance in China. They use data from the city-level Report on the Work of the Government from 2004 to 2015, along with a Difference-in-Differences (DID) design. The authors discover that when policy clarity and high-powered incentives are present, local officials are more likely to comply with environmental protection measures, resulting in better environmental outcomes. The authors also find that newly appointed Party Secretaries in cities play a crucial role in improving environmental regulation policies and propose a typology based on the principal–agent theory to explain how China succeeded in environmental governance in recent decades. The authors provide practical implications for those looking to improve the effectiveness of environmental governance. Policymakers can design effective policies to address complex problems like climate change by considering how citizens' preferences for different policy options impact their level of support. When it comes to climate change policies, the costs and benefits at both local and global levels can influence public opinion on policy approaches. In their article, “Policy Attributes Shape Climate Policy Support,” Coleman et al. (2023) explore how citizens' views on climate policies are influenced by their perception of conditional cooperation, distributive concerns, and different levels of government. The authors utilize data from Sweden and conduct a conjoint experiment to alter the level of government, policy type, and targeted group. Their findings show that individuals are more likely to support policies when costs are shared widely. Furthermore, they discover that support for climate policies depends on whether other government units at different scales adopt them. This suggests that unpopular climate policies could become more widely accepted if they have a binding policy structure and if the cost-sharing happens at higher levels of government. Coalition conflicts in policy processes often occur due to differing beliefs, resulting in policy gridlock. Decreasing belief divergence may allow for negotiation and policy change, but this can be challenging to achieve. Collaborative governance is a suggested approach to reduce conflict to a manageable level, enhancing the potential for negotiations and policy changes without necessitating belief changes. In their article, “Mitigating Conflict with Collaboration: Reaching Negotiated Agreement amidst Belief Divergence in Environmental Governance,” Koebele and Crow (2023) examine how belief divergence can cause policy conflict and how collaborative governance can be used to mitigate such conflicts while analyzing the beliefs of two opposing coalitions involved in a 10-year-long environmental governance process that ended in a negotiated agreement. By analyzing longitudinal survey and interview data, the authors find that the beliefs of different coalitions start to differ more as the process progresses. This is mainly because one coalition's beliefs become stronger and more reinforced. Nonetheless, the authors identify some collaborative approaches that can facilitate negotiated agreement despite the increasing divergence of beliefs. These findings could be useful for policy researchers studying conflict mitigation in environmental governance and for designing more effective collaborative processes in high conflict context. In conclusion, we hope that this collection of articles inspires new ideas and meaningful discussions in the broader policy community. We invite you to read and engage with this issue and look forward to your feedback. As always, we would like to express our utmost gratitude to everyone involved in the publication of this issue, including the authors, reviewers, and editorial staff. We continue to appreciate your support and assistance as we strive to provide a high-quality platform for scholarly discourse in policy studies. We wish you all success and happiness in the coming months and look forward to seeing you again in the next issue of PSJ in August! PSJ Editorial Team.

Is collaborative governance effective for air pollution prevention? A case study on the Yangtze river delta region of China

The coastal zone environment is facing challenges such as marine pollution, biodiversity loss, and the decline in ecological functions. To address these complex and interlinked environmental problems, it is particularly important to build an effective collaborative governance network for the coastal environment. The aim of this study is to explore the functioning of the collaborative governance network for the coastal environment, analyze the interactive relationships among different stakeholders, and examine the structure and functions of the governance network. First, this thesis reviews the relevant literature on coastal environmental governance, elaborates on the theories of collaborative governance and network governance, and constructs the theoretical research framework. Subsequently, the Dongtou area in Wenzhou, a typical representative of cooperative environmental governance in the coastal zone of the East China Sea, was selected as part of an exploratory case study. The role positioning and interaction modes of different actors such as local governments, social organizations, enterprises, and citizens in the governance network were analyzed in detail, and the relationships between network nodes, the network structure, and network functioning were investigated. Subsequently, it was found that a successful cooperative governance network for coastal environmental protection is based on the joint action of four operational mechanisms: the trust mechanism, coordination mechanism, learning mechanism, and guarantee mechanism. Based on the above analysis, this paper summarizes the key elements for building an efficient collaborative coastal environmental governance network and proposes strategies to improve the efficiency of governance. This study introduces a novel framework for analyzing the structural and functional aspects of collaborative governance networks that combines a social network analysis with qualitative insights. This methodological innovation enables a more comprehensive understanding of network’s functioning mechanisms, and also contributes to the theoretical literature on environmental governance by identifying key factors that determine the success of collaborative networks. It offers actionable recommendations for policy makers and practitioners, emphasizing the importance of building solid relationships with stakeholders and leveraging their resources to achieve sustainable environmental outcomes.

This study attempts to examine how urban agglomerations establish sustainable environmental collaborative governance. To achieve this goal, the qualitative comparative analysis method is used to explore the conditions and models for urban agglomerations to establish environmental collaborative governance, with 12 urban agglomerations approved by the Chinese authorities as examples. Based on the collaborative governance framework, this paper proposes six starting conditions that affect the establishment of urban agglomeration collaboration: vertical intervention, horizontal cooperation, leadership attention, governance capacity, initial pollution, and economic governance. The interaction of these conditions was tested in the practice of environmental cooperation in urban agglomerations. The results show that horizontal cooperation, leadership attention, and economic governance are necessary conditions for the establishment of urban agglomeration cooperation. The authority-driven mode, capability-driven mode, and pressure-driven mode can promote cooperation. Vertical intervention, governance capacity, and initial pollution constitute the external and internal driving forces of urban agglomeration cooperation. These findings supplement the literature on urban agglomeration collaboration and provide policy makers with insight into sustainable urban agglomeration collaborative environmental governance.

China has successively set goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, aiming to transform to a green and low-carbon economy. Collaborative environmental governance (CEG) is an important way to achieve this transformation. To improve collaborative environmental governance, the study of the evolution of the collaborative environmental governance network (CEGN) is necessary. In this study, the CEGNs in different periods in Guizhou Province, China are established based on social network analysis. Then, the evolution of environment governance policy implementers’ functions in the network is investigated by two-dimensional (breadth and intensity) matrices. Moreover, the evolution of core implementers’ functions and its impacts on the operation of the network are analyzed based on the network stability. The results show that the network size, frequency of collaboration, and cohesion have gradually increased, and the network structure has changed from a loose pattern to an expanded and balanced system. Implementers such as the governments of municipalities (prefectures) (MGs) and counties (districts) (CGs), urban management committee (UMCs), and municipal (prefecture) ecological environment bureaus (MBEEs) have played leading and coordinating roles at different phases. However, the cohesion of the network is low, indicating a low level of collaboration. This study integrates the collaborative governance theory and social network analysis, which provides a new way for the study of CEG. In addition, the CEG effect is evaluated by analyzing the evolution of the CEGN, which provides a reference for the CEG policy making in developing regions.

Conceptualizations of local knowledge in collaborative environmental governance

Institutional externalities emerge when actors, such as individuals, government agencies, and firms, participate in multiple policy forums to address shared social–ecological dilemmas. These externalities occur when decisions or actions in one forum generate unintended consequences for actors' capacities to contribute to the functions, operations, or decisions of other forums. This study investigates institutional externalities in collaborative environmental governance by asking: How do institutional externalities manifest in collaborative interactions aimed at addressing watershed dilemmas, and what factors drive these externalities? Employing a mixed‐methods design that integrates secondary document analysis, a survey, and interviews, the study uses the Cuyahoga River Watershed (CRW) in Ohio, USA, as an empirical case. A conceptually grounded methodological framework was developed to quantify the externalities experienced by actors participating in multiple policy forums. Findings indicate that the governance structure within the CRW generates modest positive institutional externalities. This outcome may be explained by the concentration of governance in a small number of central forums within the CRW, the differentiated functions among forums, and the double‐edged roles of some forums, which can simultaneously facilitate collaboration and impose coordination burdens. The outcomes are also shaped by forum's type, mandates and the functional scope of forums. Additionally, assessing institutional externalities through multiple indicators provides a more nuanced understanding of collaborative dynamics than single indicators. This study advances our knowledge of institutional externalities in collaborative governance. Furthermore, it provides policymakers and resource managers with insights into designing effective and efficient governance structures for watersheds and other natural resources.

Investigating the intention to participate in environmental governance during urban-rural integrated development process in the Yangtze River Delta Region

Collaborative forest governance arrangements have been viewed as promising for sustainable forestry because they allow local communities to participate directly in management and benefit from resource use or protection. Such arrangements are strengthened through social learning during management activities that can enhance capacity to solve complex problems. Despite significant research on social learning in collaborative environmental governance, it is not clear how social learning evolves over time, who influences social learning, and whether learning influences management effectiveness. This study investigates how social learning outcomes change over time, using an in-depth study of a community forest in Canada. Personal interviews, focus group meetings, and participant observation revealed that most participants started engaging in community forestry with limited knowledge and learned as they participated in management activities. However, as the community forest organization became effective at complying with forestry legislation, learning opportunities and outcomes became more restricted. Our results run contrary to the prevalent view that opportunities for and outcomes of social learning become enlarged over time. In our case, learning how to meet governmental requirements increased professionalism and reduced opportunities for involvement and learning to a smaller group. Our findings suggest the need to further test propositions about social learning and collaborative governance, particularly to determine how relationships evolve over time.

Taking 286 cities above the prefecture level in China as the research object and the research period from 2003 to 2019, through the two-way fixed effect model, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of the city level on environmental collaborative governance. The threshold regression model is used to reveal the nonlinear relationship between urban levels and environmental collaborative governance and to analyze the phase characteristics of different urban levels for environmental collaborative governance. The results show that: (1) The city level has a significant role in promoting collaborative environmental governance. (2) The regression results of the three major sections show that the urban level promotion in the eastern region has the strongest promoting effect on the coordinated environmental governance, and the western region is the weakest. (3) The impact of the city level on collaborative environmental governance is nonlinear. When the city scale reaches a certain critical point, its impact on the collaborative environmental governance tends to intensify.

This dataset relates to the following thesis. Farmers, voluntary stewardship programs, and collaborative natural resource governance in rural Australia https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/19771 This dataset relates to the following publication. Farmers, voluntary stewardship and collaborative environmental governance in rural Australia https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/21492

In evaluating effectiveness for collaborative environmental governance arrangements, a key concern is describing not just the processes and actors that are a part of these systems, but also the impacts that these processes have on ecological and social conditions. Existing research delineates an emphasis on process variables over outcome variables, as well as the difficulties of demonstrating causal relationships between collaborative governance processes and ecological outcomes. In this paper, we examined how process and outcome criteria are used by sponsors, industry practitioners, and participants of collaborative environmental governance (CEG) arrangements in Canada's forest sector to ascertain effectiveness. We explicitly sought evidence from sponsors and industry practitioners of self-described effective forest advisory committees, anticipating that sponsors or practitioners might place greater emphasis than participants on outcome criteria over process criteria. We analyzed data from a nation-wide survey of forest advisory committee participants, conducted interviews with sponsoring agencies, and completed two in-depth case studies. We found that sponsors and industry practitioners, like participants, perceived a strong relationship between process and effectiveness. The perspectives of all participants helped us articulate ten key process criteria that they determined as essential for CEG. By including the insights of sponsoring agencies, our study provides both on-the-ground and management interpretations of process and outcomes as well as a nuanced approach to understanding the relationship between the two. However, we conclude that systematic evaluation approaches involving outcome-based criteria are still necessary and would provide a clear step towards encouraging accountability in CEG decision-making, both for sponsors and members.

Collaborative environmental governance is a prominent approach to natural resource governance in New Zealand. It is emerging in the Land and Water Forum, Canterbury Water Management Strategy, and the proposed Resource Legislation Amendment Bill. This article reviews political and economic theory to ask if collaboration is good for the environment in the context of the Land and Water Forum. Interest group and public choice theories offer cogent reasons for pessimism. Elinor Ostrom's and Guy Salmon's models offer reasons for optimism. I conclude that the most pertinent parts of Ostrom's model for New Zealand are her caveats. Her model applies to closed systems, not open systems such as rivers with down-stream effects like nitrate E. coli contamination. In open ecological systems, pessimism about local collaborative environmental governance is warranted unless decisions are shackled to strong and unambiguous national regulation. Without strong regulation, collaborative governance creates systems in which those not invited into the collaborative deliberation do not count. In natural resource governance, this dynamic will favour resource development interests over conservation. I conclude that collaborative environmental governance risks being less than democratic, less than fair, and less than good for the environment. Not surprisingly, optimists and pessimists would view the Land and Water Forum differently. Optimists would say that it is an incomplete application of a promising model. Unfortunately, ecological outcomes data to settle the question are rarely collected internationally and do not exist yet in New Zealand. Pessimists would say it was doomed from the start by power imbalances, displaced and subjugated environmental goals, and a fundamental lack of democracy. Such pessimists might say Fish and Game was wise to pull out in November 2015, but would have been wiser to pull out sooner.