Session 3. 7.

Collaborative watershed management has developed as a major mode of governance in the French context since the beginning of the 1990s. Local water commissions composed of the representatives of water users, state agencies and local governments are responsible for the definition and implementation of water managements plans at the watershed level. However, the effectiveness of such collaborative governance has been recently called into question.
The paper aims at identifying the drivers and barriers to collaborative watershed management in France. The analysis relies on a conceptual framework combining transaction cost economics and the SES (Social-Ecological System) framework. The Q-method is used for uncovering the perspectives of stakeholders involved in collaborative management in the case of the “Allier aval” river basin. A literature review as well as 9 exploratory interviews served for identifying a set of 39 statements regarding the factors favoring or constraining collective action in the “Allier aval” case. These statements were then classified by 33 interviewees representing the diversity of stakeholders involved. The application of the Q-method led to the identification of three distinct perspectives. The first perspective, mostly associated with environmental NGOs, highlights a lack of representation of water consumers and citizens as a constraint to collective action. The second perspective reflects mainly the views of state agencies and local governments. Here the importance of leadership and state support are more particularly stressed. The third perspective, associated with agricultural and industrial water users and local governments, also stresses the important role played by leadership while considering that the lack of a shared vision among stakeholders with regard to water sustainable management constitute a barrier to collective action. Beyond the identification of factors influencing the effectiveness of collaborative watershed management, the analysis provides insights into actions that may be implemented to address the identified constraints on collective action.

Keywords: Water governance; Collaborative management; SES framework; Q-method

The Japanese government has intervened in customary (Iriai-type) commons forests and fields (hereafter, “common forests”), mainly to promote timber-producing forestry in the industrialization era. This study examines how policy interventions since the 1960s have encouraged the groups holding common forests to obtain a more modern legal status, such as cooperatives or individual ownership, and organize themselves differently.
The Common Forests Modernization Act was enacted in 1966 (hereafter, “the Act”). The Act stipulates that prefectural staff may handle the complicated procedures of official registration, which are not required for customary Iriai rights, and that the registration tax shall be exempted or reduced. Since the enactment of the Act, approximately 30 to 40% of the 1.6 million ha Iriai-type common forests as of the year 1960 have been placed under modern types of ownership. However, since the late 1980s, the number of modernized customary forests has been low, indicating that modernization projects have stagnated.
We present the reasons for the stagnation and future visions for common forests in Japan. We argue that in addition to the low profitability of forestry in the post-industrialization era, anti-commons problems have hindered modernization. The government’s path-dependency and centralization tendencies have also contributed to this phenomenon. Furthermore, academia has had a relatively weak influence on policy formation. Drawing on the current trend of returning cooperative ownership to community organizations, we speculate on the possible or desirable future of common forests in Japan, which include non-modernized and modernized customary forests.

In the early 2000s, the issue of water resource management as a common good captured the attention of the Italian public, thanks to the efforts of the Italian Forum of Water Movements, one of the most heterogeneous, cross-cutting, and participatory social movements of recent decades. This movement reconceptualized the commons with the support of legal experts and water management specialists, theorizing that water, as a common good, is essential for meeting the fundamental needs of individuals and communities, both present and future, and should therefore be freely accessible to all. Based on this, the Forum argued that such resources should be managed directly by citizens, following principles of equity and social justice, rather than being governed by market mechanisms.
The Forum launched several initiatives aimed at institutionalizing the concept of the commons, including efforts to amend the Civil Code and the promotion of the 2011 referendum opposing the privatization of Italy’s water services. The remunicipalization of Naples' water utility in 2011 offered a concrete opportunity to test the model of water co-management by citizens and local governments, as advocated by the Forum.
This paper aims to trace the process of co-managing the water service in Naples, focusing on the collaboration between citizens and the local government from the early 2000s to the present. By applying the Explaining Outcomes Process Tracing Methodology, this study seeks to reconstruct the causal processes leading to the outcomes observed, using qualitative data collected through interviews and document analysis. The participatory governance experiment is then analyzed through Archon Fung’s Democracy Cube, a theoretical model that assesses who participates, how decisions are made, and how these decisions affect public action.
The investigation highlights the various attempts to implement the commons co-management model theorized by the Forum, explaining the experimental outcomes through an analysis of conflicts among local political actors and the challenges faced in applying an innovative decision-making model within a context marked by lobbying forces, clientelism, and a severe budget deficit that constrained infrastructure investment. This study provides useful insights into how polycentric governance models can be adapted to contexts characterized by economic and political constraints, thus strengthening the debate on the conditions necessary for the success of co-management in complex situations.

What shapes different forms of governance and their performance, and is the concept of hybrid governance (hybrids) a promising pathway for improving the outcomes of governance, e.g. in environmental governance? Understanding these issues will improve our knowledge for crafting better governance towards desirable outcomes. A natural place to start such work is polycentric governance. Thus, this paper aims to advance on unpacking the black box of coordination in polycentric governance. As it unfolded we found that based on our definition of hybrids as overlapping modes of coordination hybrids dominate empirically. Thus, our work maps distinct hybrids, explore their emergence and determining factors as well as analyze their performance. The paper suggests a positive approach to understanding hybrids. As starting point for conceptualizing hybrids s we use the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework which is strongly related to and therefore compatible with polycentric. We illustrate its application through engagement into five contrasting, illustrative cases in which we identified four different types of hybrids as starting points for further theorizing. We end on identifying types of hybrids and contextual factors shaping them. We suggest the identification of hybrids as future research agenda for unpacking the inner workings of polycentric governance. The paper is based on an edited volume developed among proponents of this abstract and a number of scholars in the field of natural resource governance. We suggest that hybrids are stratified across temporal scales and nested across different levels of institutional order, addressing day to day coordination which is nested in institutions in larger scales of societal organization that structure these modes . Beyond the three modes of governance that overlap in hybrids, we find that the distinction of formal, state-backed legitimization of governance as opposed to informal, community-backed legitimization of governance of component modes of coordination provides a further important dimension of hybrids. The emergence and performance of hybrids depends on social-ecological context configurations.