Partnership Governance and Sustainable Dev

Partnerships, Governance and Sustainable
Development
Partnerships,
Governance and
Sustainable
Development
Reflections on Theory and Practice
Edited by
Pieter Glasbergen
Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development and
Innovation, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Frank Biermann
Free University Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Arthur P.J. Mol

Wageningen University, the Netherlands
Edward Elgar
Cheltenham, UK Northampton, MA, USA
Pieter Glasbergen, Frank Biermann, Arthur P.J. Mol 2007

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Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Partnerships, governance and sustainable development : reflections on theory
and practice / edited by Pieter Glasbergen, Frank Biermann, Arthur P.J. Mol.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Sustainable development. 2. Public-private sector cooperation. I.
Glasbergen, P. II. Biermann, Frank, 1967 III. Mol, A.P.J.
HC79.E5P3575 2008
338.927dc22
2007029865
ISBN 978 1 84720 405 9

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
Contents
List of gures
List of tables
List of boxes
Contributors
Preface
vii
viii
ix
x
xiii
1. Setting the scene: the partnership paradigm in the making

Pieter Glasbergen
PART 1 PARTNERSHIPS AS COLLABORATIVE

ARRANGEMENTS: THE ACTOR PERSPECTIVE
2. The process of partnership construction: anticipating
obstacles and enhancing the likelihood of successful
partnerships for sustainable development
Barbara Gray
3. Sustainability through partnering: conceptualizing
partnerships between businesses and NGOs
James E. Austin
4. Partnership as a means to good governance: towards an
evaluation framework
Jennifer M. Brinkerho
29
49
68
PART 2 PARTNERSHIPS AS GOVERNANCE

MECHANISMS: THE INSTRUMENTAL
PERSPECTIVE
5. Enabling environmental partnerships: the role of good
governance in Madagascars forest sector
Derick W. Brinkerho
6. Environmental partnerships in agriculture: reections on the
Australian experience
Neil Gunningham
93
115
vi
Contents
7. Partnership as governance mechanism in development

cooperation: intersectoral NorthSouth partnerships
for marine biodiversity
Ingrid J. Visseren-Hamakers, Bas Arts and Pieter Glasbergen
138
PART 3 PARTNERSHIPS AND THE LIBERAL-DEMOCRATIC

GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE
8. Partnerships for sustainability: an analysis of transnational
environmental regimes
Philipp Pattberg
9. Democracy and accountability: the challenge for
cross-sectoral partnerships
James Meadowcroft
10. Bringing the environmental state back in: partnerships
in perspective
Arthur P.J. Mol
PART 4
194
214
THE FUTURE OF PARTNERSHIPS
11. Multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development:

does the promise hold?
Frank Biermann, Man-san Chan, Aysem Mert and
Philipp Pattberg
12. Multi-stakeholder global networks: emerging systems for
the global common good
Steve Waddell and Sanjeev Khagram
13. Conclusion: partnerships for sustainability reections
on a future research agenda
Frank Biermann, Arthur P.J. Mol and Pieter Glasbergen
Index
173
239
261
288
301
Figures
3.1
4.1
5.1
5.2
7.1
11.1
11.2
11.3
11.4
11.5
The collaboration continuum

Causal chain for partnerships contributions to
good governance
Typology of ENR policy strategies
Governance framework
Transactional model for partnership analysis
Issue areas of WSSD partnerships
Countries of implementation
Lead partner governments
Sectoral distribution of lead partners in 2003 and 2007
Number of partners from dierent sectors and major groups
vii
58
70
94
98
142
243
249
251
253
254
Tables
3.1a
3.1b
5.1
10.1
12.1
12.2
12.3
12.4
Collaboration motivation action framework: companies

Collaboration motivation action framework: NGOs
Elements of good governance
Two categories of partnerships
Organisations versus partnerships versus networks
Types of change in problem-solving initiatives
Indicators of third order change for individuals
The emerging global action norms
viii
52
53
100
221
268
271
272
283
Boxes
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
Partnership contributions to governance eectiveness

Partnership contributions to governance legitimacy
Accountability mechanism assessment targets
Partnership contributions to managing competing interests
and conict
ix
73
77
78
83
Contributors
Bas Arts is Professor and Chairman of the Forest and Nature
Conservation Policy Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
He is also Visiting Professor at the Europe College in Bruges, Belgium. His
current professional focus is on new modes of governance in global environmental politics (mainly regarding biodiversity, forests and climate
change).
James E. Austin is the Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business
Administration, Emeritus at the Harvard University Graduate School of
Business Administration. He was the Co-founder and Chairman of the
Harvard Business Schools Social Enterprise Initiative and a Co-founder of
the Social Enterprise Knowledge Network.
Frank Biermann is Professor of Political Science and Professor of
Environmental Policy Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit (Free University)
Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is Head of the Department of Environmental Policy Analysis at the universitys Institute for Environmental
Studies, and Director of the Global Governance Project, a joint research
program of ten leading European institutes.
Derick W. Brinkerho is Senior Fellow in International Public Management
with RTI International (Research Triangle Institute), and has a faculty associate appointment at The George Washington Universitys School of Public
Policy and Public Administration.
Jennifer M. Brinkerho is Associate Professor of Public Administration
and International Aairs at The George Washington University in the
United States. She is Co-founder of GWUs multidisciplinary research
program on NGOs, and Director of GWUs Diaspora Program (a research
program on diasporas, policy and development).
Man-san Chan is a PhD researcher with the Department of Environmental
Policy Analysis of the Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit
(Free University) Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is a political scientist
specializing in transnational environmental governance. His doctoral
x
Contributors
xi
research is part of the PARTNERS research project on the emergence,

eectiveness and legitimacy of transnational public policy networks.
Pieter Glasbergen is Professor of Environmental Studies, Policy and
Management at Utrecht University and the Dutch Open University. He
chairs the research programme Governance for Sustainable Development
at Utrecht University and the Utrecht-Nijmegen programme on partnerships (www.unpop.nl).
Barbara Gray is Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Management
and Organization Department and Director of the Center for Research on
Conict and Negotiation at the Pennsylvania State University. She is also
a trained mediator.
Neil Gunningham is Professor in the Regulatory Institutions Network and
the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National
University. He is an interdisciplinary social scientist working primarily in
the areas of environmental regulation and policy.
Sanjeev Khagram is Professor and Faculty Director of the Lindenberg
Center for Humanitarian Action, International Development and Global
Citizenship at the Evans School of Public Aairs, University of Washington,
and Co-Lead Steward of Global Action Network-Net (GAN-Net: www.
gan-net.net).
James Meadowcroft is Professor in the School of Public Policy and
Administration and in the Department of Political Science at Carleton
University in Ottawa. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Governance
for Sustainable Development.
Aysem Mert is a PhD researcher with the Department of Environmental
Policy Analysis of the Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit
(Free University) Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is a political scientist
specializing in transnational environmental governance, with a particular
focus on transnational public policy networks, their discourses and emergence, as part of the PARTNERS research project at Vrije Universiteit.
Arthur P.J. Mol is Chairman and Professor in Environmental Policy at the
Department of Social Sciences, Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
His main elds of interest and publication are in environmental governance, social theory and the environment, globalization, informational
governance and Asian transitional economies.
xii
Contributors
Philipp Pattberg, PhD, is a researcher and project leader with the Department
of Environmental Policy Analysis of the Institute for Environmental Studies,
Vrije Universiteit (Free University) Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is also
the Research Coordinator of the Global Governance Project (glogov.org), a
joint research program of ten leading European institutes.
Ingrid J. Visseren-Hamakers is researcher at the Copernicus Institute for
Sustainable Development and Innovation at Utrecht University, the
Netherlands, and participates in the Utrecht-Nijmegen programme on
partnerships (www.unpop.nl).
Steve Waddell is Co-Lead Steward of Global Action Network-Net (GANNet: www.gan-net.net). He focuses upon development of multi-stakeholder
global issue networks.
Preface
During the 1990s, but even stronger after the 2002 Johannesburg World
Summit on Sustainable Development (the Rio+10 Summit), partnerships
for sustainability emerged as a new phenomenon. These partnerships
aim to address the challenges of environmental governance in an increasingly complex, globalized world. This volume discusses the emerging partnership paradigm in governance for sustainable development. Current
debates on (global) environmental governance focus on the role and inclusion of private actors in policies for sustainable development, and partnerships are one mode and conceptualization for such non-governmental
involvements in initially state-dominated practices. Scientic research on
partnerships within the context of governance theory is fairly new, and
there is a clear need to systemize our knowledge base to further dene the
international research agenda on this topic. In addition, there is an urgent
demand from governments and international organizations, but also from
non-governmental actors, for strategic insights to build upon their activities in this eld. This volume is designed to address the questions, debates
and agendas related to this new mode of governance.
The book arose out of an international colloquium and PhD master class
at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam in
June 2006. The colloquium and master class brought together experts and
students in the eld of partnerships for sustainable development from many
countries and social science disciplines. The lively, stimulating and innovative debates at these academic events have strongly contributed to the nal
shaping of this volume and the individual contributions in it.
Both the international colloquium and the master class were made possible by generous grants from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences, the Netherlands Research School for Socio-Economic and
Natural Sciences of the Environment, the Faculty of Geosciences of
Utrecht University, and the Dutch Ministry of the Environment.
The colloquium and master class aimed to connect the theoretical
insights from research with policy needs. Though focused on academic
research, parts of the colloquium were addressed at the discussion of the
connection between the science and practice of partnerships that policymakers are confronted with. We would like to thank representatives of
the Dutch Ministry of the Environment, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign
xiii
xiv
Preface
Aairs, Rabobank, Unilever and the World Wide Fund for Nature for
sharing their experiences with us.
Besides the authors in this volume we would also like to acknowledge the
intellectual contributions of Jem Bendell, Mirjam Bult-Spiering, Jacqueline
Cramer, Mara Francken, Mariette van Huijstee, Ans Kolk, Jan Kooiman,
William M. Laerty, Marc Levy, Reinier de Man, Pim Martens, Binayak Rath,
Paul van Seters, Egbert Tellegen, Katrien Termeer and Walter Vermeulen, as
well as the anonymous reviewers of all chapters.
April 2007
The Editors
1. Setting the scene: the partnership

paradigm in the making
Pieter Glasbergen
One of the central themes in the debate on sustainable development
addresses the question of what institutional arrangements are the most
promising in order to advance the process of progressive change. Fighting
for prominence are a state-centric approach versus a pluralistic approach.
The state-centric approach generally frames sustainable development as a
project. An ideal form of this approach is the mission to preserve the ecological base of our planet, based on scientically dened limits. The direction of the envisioned change is clear: to protect the environment in the
course of economic and societal development. It is assumed that governments should take a leading role. Business parties are seen as egoistic utility
maximizers, those who do not care about social responsibility, including
the environment. Civil society is seen as a heterogeneous group of conicting actors also seeking its short-term particular interests. It cannot be
expected that they will come up with solutions.
The pluralistic approach uses a more open-ended concept of sustainable
development. The task at hand, which is worth pursuing, is to rene the
denition of the quality of life, including material welfare and social
equity. Sustainable development is something that has to be dened anew
as times, places and circumstances change. This approach particularly recognizes the self-governing capacities of businesses and organizations in
civil society. Here the central question is how to motivate these stakeholders in sustainability issues to make reasonable decisions and progressive
changes.
The state-centric approach is generally recognized as the basis for sustainability policy and politics. In its implementation, though, the pluralistic approach is increasingly gaining the upper hand. Instead of a strong
state to induce sustainable progress, the focus is changing to the opportunities of a strong society, which is at least partly based on private initiatives
from the market and civil society. Governance for sustainable development, in other words, has become an eort to structure cooperatively the
relationships of stakeholders around a sustainability issue (Laerty and
1
Partnerships, governance and sustainable development
Meadowcroft, 1996; Meadowcroft, 1998; Glasbergen and Driessen, 2002).

This has been institutionalized in all kinds of collaborative arrangements,
of which partnerships, the topic of this book, are considered among potentially the most powerful. Partnerships are self-organizing and coordinating
alliances, or in a more strict denition collaborative arrangements in
which actors from two or more spheres of society (state, market and civil
society) are involved in a non-hierarchical process through which these actors
strive for a sustainability goal.
Partnerships are set up to solve societal problems. They do so on
the basis of a commitment that is formalized to some extent. And their
problem-solving task is accomplished, either partially or exclusively, by
private parties.
Partnerships are more and more perceived as arrangements that can
further the drive for sustainable development. In that role, they provide a
managerial response to the general ethical ideal of societal progress.
However, these managerial tools are also contested. They are part of the
political tug-of-war over the degree to which public goods and services can
be privatized. And they are part of the political battle over the implications
of the concept of sustainable development. Discussing partnerships as new
forms of governance thus brings us to the heart of the debate on public
and private responsibilities, their relationships and the possibilities of
combining them into a forceful management strategy within the liberaldemocratic order.
The aim of this book is to contribute to our understanding of how, to
which extent, and under what circumstances partnerships can improve
the eectiveness and legitimacy of governance for sustainable development (see also Glasbergen, 1998). This introductory chapter will rst
look at the direction in which partnership practices have grown, and
dene what can be called the partnership paradigm. Subsequently, this
partnership paradigm will be discussed from three perspectives. The consecutive order of these perspectives shows a gradual shift away from a
purely voluntaristic and intentional analysis toward a more institutional
analysis couched in governance terms. From the rst angle, partnerships
are studied as single collaborative arrangements. Attention is focused on
how they are created, how they operate and what determines this. From
the second angle, attention is turned to the external eects of partnerships. Partnership arrangements are seen as tools for deliberate societal
change. The third angle takes a broader perspective on the governance
system. Attention is focused on the changes that partnerships make
in the conguration of political decision-making structures. Particular
attention is drawn to the consequences for the way a liberal democracy
functions.
Setting the scene
1.1 THE PARTNERSHIP PARADIGM

The shift towards the pluralistic approach of governance for sustainable
development was already obvious at the UN Conference on Environment
and Development (UNCED) in Rio in 1992. Empowerment of people
(and not only governments) to deal in a responsible manner with their
own future was and still is one of the cornerstones of the Rio Agenda
21. The main message was that building up deliberative capabilities of
societies forms an indisputable part of their sustainable development
(Burger, 2006). One of the main discussion points concerned the responsibility of private parties, particularly corporations. They would have to
live up to their social responsibilities and not just serve their shareholders direct interests. They would also be expected to apply their
problem-solving capacity to public issues. Thus, thinking in terms of
giving private parties a wider responsibility would place public and
private interests on a continuum. In fact, one could even speak of a shared
interest in public aairs. This perspective opened up the opportunity for
public administrations, businesses and NGOs to undertake joint activities
in the public interest.
The UNCED laid the foundation for a conceptual shift. In time, the
reection on public and private responsibilities did lead to new governance
practices. Eorts were made to restructure the relationships among stakeholders in a sustainability issue along cooperative lines. Various forms of
new institutional arrangements were formed:
Government policy turned away from strict regulation toward more

exible incentive-based and market-oriented policy systems.
Public administrations tried to strengthen their policy through cooperation with private parties from both the market and civil society.
In some economic sectors, the business community developed its own
proactive rule-systems in new social arrangements promoting sustainable business models.
NGOs that had previously tried to achieve sustainable markets exclusively by putting pressure on public administrations to adapt their
policy the indirect route now also formed alliances with businesses to intervene directly in markets and to guide them towards
sustainability.
Some of the new institutional arrangements only serve the interests of

their participants. Others have a wider public dimension, pursuing a
sustainability agenda that goes beyond the limits of private interests and
sovereign territories. They provide morally inspired voluntary management
standards, codes of conduct and/or certied product and process labels.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in
2002, conrmed this trend. Partnerships were promoted as the preferred
vehicles of sustainable change. There was talk of a new era of governance,
characterized by consultation, collaboration, mutual accommodation,
shared decision-making and an orientation toward the market among all of
the stakeholders both public and private in sustainability issues. The
primary orientation toward the regulatory capacities of public administrations was replaced by a primary or at least supplementary orientation
toward the roles of private parties and toward building new relations
between public and private actors for solving public problems.
The normative foundation for partnerships lies in a broader conceptual
change in the way sustainable development should be managed. However,
this normative turn is not only the result of idealistic change. It can also be
explained in terms of structural transformation. Partnerships t into a
context in which they are incontrovertible. This context emerges when
public administrations have lost their credibility and with it their capacity
to govern autonomously. It emerges when multinational corporations have
expanded to become powerful political players. And it emerges when social
movements have professionalized and built up so much social and economic capital that they have become indispensable to any denition of
public problems and their solutions. From this perspective, partnerships
and other forms of co- and self-governance reect deeper socioeconomic
changes in the last part of the twentieth century.
The new philosophy of governance postulates the need for changes in the
institutional order of liberal democracies. In those societies, public (in the
sense of dening and implementing a conception of the general interest)
and private responsibilities were traditionally clearly separated from each
other. Partnership practices may be seen as both idealistic and structural
specications of that philosophy in a more operational governance paradigm. We can summarize the main premises underpinning this partnership
paradigm as follows:
Parties from the public sector, from the market and from civil society
have an interest in sustainable development.
A constructive dialogue among these interests can be convened in a
setting that excludes hierarchy and authority.
Dialogue can produce a shared normative belief that provides a
value-based rationale for collaborative action.
Collaborative action based on voluntarism, joint resource commitment and shared responsibility of all actors for the whole project can
serve public interests as well as private interests.
Setting the scene
Collective action can be commercial in nature; the market mechanism can promote more sustainable practices through the leverage
and spin-o of private-sector investments.
Meanwhile, a pluriform partnership practice has taken root in these

paradigmatic premises. Partnerships come in three modalities. The rst
modality concerns partnerships that are initiated by government. They can
generally be considered an extension of government policy. Public administrations try to reinforce their powers by forming alliances with businesses
and/or civil society. These partnerships lean heavily on the authority and
sanctions of government. The second modality concerns arrangements
made by private parties in which public administrations participate as one
of many partners. Here, there is more balance between the public and the
private character of the arrangement. The partnership derives some of its
legitimacy from the authority of the administrations, though their formal
sanctions have little if any eect. The third modality concerns the cooperation between businesses and non-governmental organizations. These collaborative arrangements also relate to societys problem-solving capacity.
They are initiated as a supplement or alternative to government policy. The
basic assumption is that public aairs can be dealt with more eciently and
eectively by the private sector. In this modality, there is no role for the
authority and sanctions of the government.
These forms coalesce around area-specic sustainability issues, within
international product chains, in the service of specic natural resources,
and through environmental reporting and other such functions that
support sustainable development. Some partnerships are local or national
in scope. Others are international or global arrangements connecting the
developed and the developing world. They vary considerably in size (that
is, in the number of partners) and in geographic scope. But they also dier
in terms of their time frame, functions and access to funding.
In the rest of this chapter, I will discuss the three angles mentioned above:
the collaborative angle, the focus on partnerships as steering mechanisms
and partnerships and their impact on political decision-making structures.
1.2 PARTNERSHIPS AS COLLABORATIVE

ARRANGEMENTS
The partnership paradigm raises several fundamental questions. First of
all, what are the options for establishing collaborative alliances for public
issues? From this angle, partnerships are questioned as arrangements in
their own right.
Partnerships are specic congurations of parties from dierent sectors

of society. Each partner represents a particular interest, embodies a dierent
segment of the world outside, comes with specic hopes, expectations and
claims, and has its own strong and weak points too. The literature on partnerships presents precisely these characteristics as their strengths. With
respect to tri-sector partnerships, the literature emphasizes the advantages
of combining the moral authority of NGOs, the market principles of businesses and the public authority of the state (i.e., Waddell, 2005). Yet these
strengths could also be seen as a fundamental disadvantage. NGOs are
bound by their identication with and loyalty to civic values. The market
mechanism forces businesses to act in their own direct economic interest. In
principle, governments cannot share the political mandate that the public
has vested in them. Indeed, the fact that partnerships still arise around
public issues is more of a miracle than something we can take for granted.
In a sense, partnerships are a governance anomaly. They do not have any
formal political power. And they are hard to interpret in a legal framework.
Actually, it is hard to reconcile partnerships with the separation of powers
a fundamental principle of the democratic state or with the juridical foundation of the tasks and responsibilities of government.
Taking this argument a step further and looking at partnerships from the
perspective of the constituent parties, partnerships may be seen as green
political market places. Each partner stands for its own rationality. The
party with access to most resources will probably acquire the most power.
Each of the participants can be expected to act strategically, in the sense of
striving to maximize their individual prot. Taking a rather cynical view,
one might assume that businesses always try to protect their own market,
NGOs are constantly scouting for funding, and governments if they have
joined partnerships see their participation as an opportunity to shift some
of their responsibilities onto other shoulders.
Yet this is denitely not the angle taken in the partnership literature. The
dierent rationalities of the partners are amply recognized, though not as
obstacles. In fact, they are seen as opportunities. By far, most authors direct
their attention to what goes on within the partnerships. They study the creation and development of new practices as if these were merely a problem
of process design. The solution would thus lie in sensible relation management. This actor perspective does not question the partnership phenomenon as such. Nor does it look at it as a possible solution for governance
problems. Typically, a study from this perspective will display the following
characteristics:
Partnerships are seen as instruments for the advancement of actorspecic goals in relation to the goals of the other actors in a partnership.
Setting the scene
Studies describe and analyze how partners cope with the partnership
such that it helps all of the actors achieve their goals.
The partnering process is assessed on the basis of criteria that can
make the process more eective. Eectiveness is translated in terms
of the feasibility of intersectoral collaboration. This entails partner
satisfaction, improved partner relationships and the development of
shared objectives.
The aim is to provide practical recommendations for either one or all
partners, advising on when, how and with whom to partner and how
to arrange the process. The recommendations are focused on outputs
rather than outcomes. That is, researchers hardly study how products
contribute to sustainable development.
The favorite methodology is the single case study. The core questions are
pragmatic and managerial in nature. Many case studies have an anecdotal
character. The objective is to discover how stakeholders in a multi-actor
game reframe their own interests. How do they establish a common language and a shared discourse? How do they develop a common denition
of the problem? And how do they connect their problem-solving capacities
in a common policy practice? Much of this research is based on observations gained by consultants who play an active role in the development
of partnerships.
This kind of research has generated many decision tools and checklists.
It has identied countless pitfalls and success factors in the design and
implementation of partnership processes (see Long and Arnold, 1995;
Hartman and Staord, 1997; Murphy and Bendell, 1997; Austin, 2000;
Heap, 2000; Rondinelli and London, 2003; Tennyson, 2004; Waddell, 2005).
The resulting classications are quite dierent, though. The factors of
success and failure are related to among other things the type of actor,
the relations between actors, the working relations within a partnership, the
phases in the partnering process, the way the partnership is structured, as
well as the environment in which it operates.
The Relevance of Collaborative Advantage and Trust
Research from an actor perspective is closely related to collaboration
studies in interorganizational relationships. One core concept, though
often left implicit, is collaborative advantage. This notion encapsulates the
synergy argument: to gain real advantage from collaboration, something
has to be achieved that could not have been achieved by any one of the partners acting alone. Collaborative advantage refers to the purpose of collaboration (Huxham and Vangen, 2004). Trust is often identied as the pivotal
mechanism for gaining this advantage. Trust encapsulates the emotional

argument: the reduction of feelings of risk and vulnerability in the partnering process.
The notion of collaborative advantage postulates the possibility that
each of the parties can connect its own interest with the common (i.e.,
public) objective of the partnership. It is assumed that collaborative advantages can be generated through discursive consensus formation
(Meadowcroft, 1998). This is a process by which stakeholders can attune
their expectations, aspirations and assumptions. In other words, they must
be motivated to create overlapping agendas. They will only do so if they are
convinced they stand to gain from the partnership.
Consider the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), for instance (Pattberg,
2005). The parties who launched it were absolutely certain that this was the
right way to go. As for the overlapping agendas, the companies wanted to
continue selling tropical wood, while the NGOs realized that their boycott
of tropical wood was unrealistic. Both sides wanted to work out an alternative resource in order to spare (tropical) forests that were not sustainably
managed. Moreover, the companies that had set up the FSC felt it was their
responsibility to help nd a solution.
Thus, without overlapping agendas and motivation, there can be no successful partnership. Yet there is another necessary precondition for success.
Even before those agendas can be set, the parties must develop a sense of
mutual trust. Trust is fundamental to any process aimed at creating successful collaborative advantages. The concept refers to a psychological
state, characterized by reliable expectations about how the partners will
behave. It connotes a positive evaluation of this behavior where it impinges
upon ones own interests as well as upon the interests of the partnership as
a whole. In this sense, there is always an element of reciprocity in trust. To
some extent, the reciprocal relations have to be predictable. The parties will
not enter into a dialogue if they do not have some positive preconceived
ideas about overlap in agendas and the potentially valuable input of each
of the other partners. Mostly, this initial trust will be based on reputations,
past behavior or pre-existing informal relations between the parties.
Partnerships generally build upon positive experience in the past.
Building trust is a continuous activity. In the context of a partnership, this
process takes on some specic characteristics. Naturally, these will change
during the partnering process. First, partnerships are voluntary alliances;
the partners do not need to work together. To reach an agreement, the
parties will have to validate their initial trust, giving it depth in the course
of their interactions. They will have to nd a balance between opportunities and risks. Second, partners are representatives of various societal
sectors. Thus, the right balance might be dierent for each partner. The
Setting the scene
balance will also have to be convincing to the constituencies of the partners. And it will have to t in with the relationships in the broader networks
they participate in. Third, building trust, specically in the early phases of
partnering, is a delicate and controversial process. To establish trust successfully, bureaucratic mechanisms have to be in place. These can provide a
basis for the allocation of responsibility. They can set the rules of the game.
These rules are necessary to minimize existing power dierentials and
articulate mutual respect. And they can provide facilities to make commitments operational. Fourth and nally, partnering processes need to result
in more or less formalized agreements. The contractual nature of this relation changes the trust-building process fundamentally. Voluntarism is
replaced by dedicated commitment. The contractual relationship, and the
degree to which the parties live up to the contract, then denes for a large
part the continuity of trust. Provisions in the contract take over some of
the trust-building activities. The stability can be turned into dynamism
again, for instance when new partners join up.
In light of the characteristics of partnerships, concepts such as collaborative advantage and trust could obviously provide grounds for fruitful
analysis. Indeed, analysis based on these concepts has already yielded many
practical tools for the development of partnerships. This actor approach
has several consequences for research, however. For one thing, it leaves relatively little room for the broader structures in which the partners are
embedded. It often ignores the constraints that these structures place on the
behavior of the partners (see also Chapter 7 by Visseren-Hamakers, Arts
and Glasbergen in this volume). For another, the approach is rather voluntaristic. It gives little attention to the question of which kind of problems
do or do not lend themselves to a partnering initiative. As yet, the actor perspective has not been used to assess the outcomes of partnerships in terms
of the public interests they serve. Though there is a large body of literature
devoted to the added value of partnerships, the concept is mostly dened
in a narrow sense. Added value is usually determined by comparison with
other private and public forms of governance. It is not dened in terms of
their actual contribution to formal sustainable development policies and
the outcomes of these policies (Brinkerho, 2002; Nelson and Zadek, 2000;
Mitchell, Shankleman and Warner, 2004).
1.3 PARTNERSHIPS AS GOVERNANCE

MECHANISMS
The mutual trust that results in an agreement should not be a goal in itself.
My second question concerns the presumed potential of partnerships to
10
serve as steering mechanisms. The question is, whether a reform agenda can
be the logical result of increased collaboration between the state and private
actors of the market and the civil society, as well as the result of private initiatives themselves. Thus, I shall now look at partnerships as strategic tools
in a process of change towards sustainability.
Steering mechanisms perform cognitive, regulatory and normative functions. They collate knowledge, point out directions for change and put both
the information and the observations into a moral perspective. All partnerships perform these functions, though dierent types of partnership
emphasize dierent aspects. Some of the most common types are:
Partnerships that mainly serve to raise awareness. These are platforms that encourage debate, sharing of experiences, and development of new ideas. Multi-stakeholder policy dialogue and panel
sessions fall into this category. But it also includes partnerships such
as those pursuing joint learning and research on sustainable food
production, sustainable energy and the sustainable development of
nancial markets.
Partnerships that concentrate on the dissemination and accreditation
of information on sustainable development. Often, this takes the form
of guidelines for reporting on the performance of a sector of the
market. The Global Reporting Initiative is a well-known example.
There are many more with roughly the same objective namely, to
promote access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making.
Partnerships that provide technology assistance in management
processes. They tend to focus on a specic sustainability issue or program in a given problem area. For instance, there are partnerships
that provide support for investing in or constructing (water) infrastructure, or partnerships to support forest resource management.
Partnerships that develop a new, more sustainable product. The aim
is to get products that comply with a specic denition of sustainability onto the market. This type of partnership is the one most
directly involved in establishing an alternative market structure. Two
of the most well known are the Forest and the Marine Stewardship
Councils. But there are multiple partnerships in play promoting these
and many other products, including services such as tourism.
In addition, there are partnerships that have become institutional structures in their own right. One is the Global Environment Facility; another
is the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships. These two are
already counted among the established political regimes (Nelson, 2002).
Setting the scene
11
They, and other partnerships, such as the Johannesburg partnerships, are

vehicles for distributing development and/or environmental funding. Some
partnerships combine several of the functions mentioned above, while
others evolve along certain lines. For instance, dialogues between corporations and NGOs can lead to institutionalized forms of cooperation geared
to an activity they undertake together. The development and promotion of
a sustainable product is just one example (Glasbergen and Groenenberg,
2001). Because any given partnership serves various functions, it may be
placed in multiple categories. Accordingly, there is wide variation among
partnerships with respect to the type of steering and governance power.
Even so, they all follow a general pattern: all of the alliances have a voluntaristic character. To the extent that partnerships seek to promote sustainable practices, they are essentially indicative or exemplary in nature.
They demonstrate a socially responsible alternative. In that vein, two very
common operational instruments are certication and labeling. Assessing
the external operation of these partnerships brings two other criteria to the
fore: scaling-up and legitimacy. The performance on these criteria depends
on how external audiences react to the partnership initiatives.
The Relevance of Scaling-up and Legitimacy
Scaling-up denotes the purpose of collaboration, but not in the same way
as collaborative advantage. The dierence is that scaling-up is mainly about
the image projected to outsiders. We speak of scaling-up when the partnerships seek to expand the scope of their initiatives. The objective is to
broaden their rst initiative to encompass a new sustainable standard in an
issue area. In that event, the central mechanism is legitimacy. Legitimacy
refers to the process whereby partnerships gain recognition and become
accepted as a relevant alternative or supplement to government policy
on a particular public issue. There are various ways to initiate scaling-up
processes:
The rst is by replication. This occurs when a particular partnership

model is repeated at other places. A good example is the ubiquitous kind of partnership consisting of nancial institutions and
local NGOs that is set up to arrange micro-nancing in developing
countries.
The second is through coverage enlargement. This occurs when
more and more parties join the partnership. The Global Reporting
Initiative is a good example.
The third is by increasing the scope of the partnership. In this case,
the partnerships draw more and more aspects of a problem complex
12
into their governance. We see this pattern in both of the Stewardship

Councils. For example, the Marine Stewardship Council was pressured to take a wider view in its procedures for certifying sustainable
sheries. It was expected to devote attention to social criteria, including the livelihood interests of the shing communities. (Constance
and Bonanno, 2000)
Related to scaling-up processes is the process of transferring the initiative
into the regular administrative practices of government. In that case the new
practices that the partnership introduced are translated in formal government policy. Interestingly, there is hardly any systematic information available on this phase change (see also Chapter 8 by Pattberg in this volume).
Legitimacy refers to the mechanism through which partnerships gain
recognition and become accepted as a relevant alternative or supplement
to government policy. Eective partnerships manage their legitimacy. With
respect to sustainable development, perhaps the most meaningful partnerships are those that seek to inuence directly the economy of a particular
sector or commodity chain. One way to do so is by establishing new standards for sustainable products. In their quest for legitimacy, these partnerships
appeal to economic interests as well as to the public values attached to those
interests. Besides calling for recognition on utilitarian grounds, they also
emphasize a specic morality. The extent of their success depends, among
others, on the characteristics of the partners, particularly their status and
level of professional expertise. It also depends on how the partnership operates. One way to promote legitimacy is by applying the principles of good
governance (see Chapters 4 and 5 by J. and D. Brinkerho in this book).
However, no single partnership will be able to set new standards exclusively
on the basis of their own characteristics.
Gaining legitimacy also depends on the interactive structures and
processes in which partnerships operate. One striking feature of these interactive structures is that partnerships are also competing with each other for
legitimacy.
Take the agro-food sector, where for many products, multiple partnerships exist. The coee market is a prime example. Sustainably produced
coee falls into several categories: organic, shade-grown, Fair Trade and
coee certied by the Utz Kapeh Foundation or the Forest Alliance. In
addition, large commercial roasters and international traders with sustainability aspirations set private standards (Ponte, 2004). With respect to
biodiversity conservation, each sub-eld displays the same pattern. On the
issue of forest biodiversity, some partnerships have set standards for
sustainable industrial logging. Others have set standards to control the
conversion of forests or illegal logging. Yet other partnerships take an
Setting the scene
13
integrated approach to the protection of specic regions (VisserenHamakers and Glasbergen, 2007). All of these partnerships exhibit a wide
diversity of sustainability ambitions. While some focus on the characteristics of the product itself, others are concerned with production and process
qualications. Some operate nationwide, while others span a continent. In
all of these partnerships, governments, NGOs or businesses are represented
in dierent combinations.
Another striking feature of the interactive structures is the dependence of
partnerships on economic power. The degree of inuence in a commodity
chain depends largely on the position of the commercial partner. That
partner derives its power from the added value in the chain and whether it
is maintained or expanded. In that sense, partnerships are grounded in the
logic of market principles.
Let us take agro-food partnerships again. Most of them are Western initiatives inspired by the presumed preferences of Western consumers or the
wish to create a stronger green consumer demand. Although the primary
producers in developing countries usually receive technical and administrative support, sustainability certication is a costly and lengthy process
for them. They are also not always sure that they will be paid a premium
for a more sustainable product. As a result the most important incentive to
participate tends to shift away from the intrinsic value of a sustainable
product toward the assurance of market access. Conversely, this creates
new entry barriers, which mainly benet a select group of powerful actors
on the market (see also Van der Grijp, Marsden and Cavalcanti, 2005).
Some partnerships are little more than a purely economic reaction to previously established partnerships that are pursuing more ambitious goals for
sustainable change. Regarding the protection of forest biodiversity, these
are mainly partnerships between governments and businesses. On the coee
market, it is mainly private parties such as retailers who bring their own
watered-down sustainability standards into the market.
It is obvious that partnerships are embroiled in the struggle for steering
power on economic and political markets. The standards they set are certainly not neutral tools to improve sustainability. They should be considered political spheres of action because they shut out some sustainability
aspects and interests while serving others (Ponte, 2004). In essence, competition almost always leads to an economic struggle for market power. It
should be kept in mind, however, that partnerships are often formed in
reaction to the failure of government policy. In many issue areas, new and
challenging standards for sustainability have been introduced by partnerships that include the larger NGOs. In reaction, other market players have
presented less ambitious standards through their own initiatives. That leads
us to conclude that markets are in fact being shaken up.
14
The implications for the reform agenda of sustainable development are

still unclear. We increasingly see paired labels on a single product. This suggests opportunities for convergence. However, other evaluative positions
could be taken. From an economic perspective, the competition between
partnerships and their standards might be seen as a positive development.
Competitive relations are expected to ensure that the most viable alternative will prevail. But things could turn out dierently. The mainstream
markets could force the sustainable niches out of the market or replace
these niches with their own light versions. From a sustainability perspective, most attention is devoted to the possibilities for mainstreaming the
most ambitious standards. Most striking from that perspective is the
power of the strongest economic actors in a chain. This would support a
preference for making the most ambitious standards binding for an entire
economic sector. For instance, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
(RSPO) is on that track.
Legitimacy is crucial to partnerships with an ambition to take part in
governance. In their quest for legitimacy, they appeal to economic interests
as well as to the public values attached to those interests. Besides calling for
recognition on utilitarian grounds, they also emphasize their moral right to
exist. Of course, they want to oer an alternative that is economically viable,
but they also want to enhance quality. Altogether, they want to show that a
public good, namely sustainable development, would be well served by the
partnership. Their competitive approach promotes their economic legitimacy, while the concern with quality promotes their political legitimacy.
For the time being, the present situation with many ad hoc initiatives
seems to be a transitional period. Partnerships are still mainly engaged in
limited issue management. The partnership paradigm is a fragmented way
of achieving sustainable development. To some degree, mainstreaming is
dependent on the partnership itself. In the processes of scaling-up and legitimating themselves, they will lose two of the most important paradigmatic
features: one is the voluntaristic character of participation; the other is the
market mechanism. If private regulation is to be eective, there must be
commitment and oversight.
Partnerships that establish new standards will take on more of a traditional regime character. In other words, they will resemble government
regulation. In that light, they will come to be judged in the same manner as
government policy. Thus, partnerships will gradually disband in the course
of the legitimating process they are so avidly pursuing. Though this is
inevitable, it may not be what they want. The truth is that dissolution means
they will lose their exclusive competitive advantage. Nor is it at all certain
that they are capable of disbanding, as they are engaged in economic competition. The question is even broader, though. It remains to be seen if even
Setting the scene
15
without a stronger generic government policy these ambitious partnerships

could actually create many opportunities for more sustainable development. This question arises in light of the market forces in which the major
players are powerful economic parties.
1.4 PARTNERSHIPS AND THE LIBERALDEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE

Any single partnership should be evaluated on its own merits. In so doing, it
could open itself to criticism or appreciation and would dierentiate itself
from other partnerships. The extent to which the partnership paradigm has
been institutionalized tells a dierent story though. It suggests a more fundamental shift in the pattern of governance in liberal-democratic societies.
The third perspective is an inquiry into the consequences of partnership
paradigm dissemination. Specically, I shall consider how this aects the
responsibilities of governance within the liberal-democratic order.
The reform agenda for sustainable development from the very inception of the concept has been associated with the functioning of liberaldemocratic structures with regard to decision-making on social issues.
Many have called for a convergent evolution of environmental ethics and
the political structures of decision-making (Doherty and de Geus, 1996;
Laerty and Meadowcroft, 1996; Barry and Wissenburg, 2001; Eckersley,
2004). By providing an alternative model of governance, the partnership
paradigm contributes to this discussion.
Earlier in this chapter, I distinguished between governance for sustainable development as a project and as a process. This distinction is based on
two images of the manageable society. Each represents a particular attitude
toward the relation between public and private responsibility.
As a project, governance for sustainable development is steeped in the
classic attitude. A characteristic feature is the strict separation of public
and private responsibilities. Full responsibility for public issues is relegated
to the public domain of the state. That is, the state is in charge of issues
that are relevant to society at large and are in the public interest. Private
parties are only held responsible for public issues if the rules imposed by
governments explicitly demand accountability from them and place the
responsibility on them. Actors in business and civil society are thus seen
as target groups in need of correction by a strong and autonomous state.
This image traditionally forms the core of liberal-democratic ideology.
At both the national and international scale, it has engendered a sustainability policy that is largely government-initiated, rule-oriented, legalistic
and rather formal.
16
As a process, governance for sustainable development introduces a new

image of the manageable society. The basic premise is that it is not up to
one single actor namely the government to tackle all the problems of
a society. Choices have to be made in a multi-actor context. Private parties
from the market and civil society should share the responsibility for
solving public problems. This image dispels the view that the public
domain and public issues form a unity (Dubbink, 2003). Formally, the
liberal-democratic ideology does not classify the private sector as part of
the public domain. Nevertheless, private parties are in the new image held
at least partly accountable for public issues. Dened as a management
issue, the new image of the manageable society is the outcome of two
organizational changes. One is the institutionalization of individual
responsibility. The other is the cooperation between relevant stakeholders
on a particular sustainability issue. In these contexts, the reciprocal
dependencies between public and private interests should be made productive. That, in turn, would change the role of the state. In the new image
of the manageable society, a strong state is not dened as a state that is
able to rule from a central position. Rather, it is one that is able to stimulate the self-governing capacities of stakeholders on sustainability issues.
Or at the very least, it is a state that is able to connect private interests to
public objectives.
We may consider the partnership paradigm as an operational model a
concretization of the new image of the manageable society. However, it is
not only the ideology of liberal-democratic societies that changes under the
inuence of partnerships. The ontology of decision-making in society also
changes. Gradually the state-centered structure of governance for sustainable development is being transformed. It is becoming a complex multicentered, multi-layered and diuse structure of relatively autonomous but
co-existent public and private rule systems (Rosenau and Czempiel, 1992;
Rosenau, 1997). Though these rule systems often address the same issue
areas, they dier in terms of scale (that is, in duration, scope and size), they
dier in terms of specic goals and means relationships, and they dier in
terms of their architecture.
The focus has shifted away from political power as the sole agent of sustainable change. Now the focus is on a political space composed of a pluriform set of public and private driving forces. In short, the political
institutions in liberal democracies have been reconstructed. Interestingly,
the assessments of this process have diered substantially:
It has been welcomed as an expression of a new form of democratic

governance and a reinvention of policy and politics in the emerging
network society (Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003).
Setting the scene
17
Conversely, it has been argued that both private and publicprivate

governance will erode the public authority and responsibility of
governments, resulting in private capture of what should be a public
aair (Cutler, Hauer and Porter, 1999; Saurin, 2001; Richter, 2003).
Taking a position between these two standpoints, some have also
weighed in with a utilitarian view. They assume there is a large but still
unexplored potential for governance. Thus, private and publicprivate
arrangements could in principle create supplements or meaningful
alternatives to government policies, with greater legitimacy, and contribute to an improved functioning of the public sector (Murphy and
Bendell, 1997; Ronit and Schneider, 1999).
These contradictory views reect the prevailing uncertainty about the

process of change that liberal-democratic societies are going through. The
outcomes are still uncertain with respect to a new ordering of governance.
Will there be a new kind of hierarchy? Will the parties be complementary to
or superimposed on each other? Or will they replace one another? As a consequence of the uncertainty, each of the evaluations will highlight only one
aspect of the situation. There are valid arguments in favor of each of these
standpoints. However, what they do not yet grasp is the question of the institutional relationship between public and private responsibilities in the
liberal-democratic order. This is a fundamental issue as the creed of shared
responsibility might also be understood as a discourse that serves specic
interests. It may mask that the various partners have dierent responsibilities and distract attention from structural inequalities in society.
To address the issue of responsibility, we need to take some distance from
the approaches commonly taken by political scientists and policy scientists
in their studies of international relations. Many of these studies focus on
the inuence of multinational corporations and non-governmental organizations on formal regimes from the perspective of their contribution to the
improvement of the public tasks that need to be performed by governments. Therefore, to assess the new division of responsibilities with the
introduction of the partnership paradigm we must take a whole issue area
into account and we should consider this area holistically as a public policy
network (Arts, 2000). Such an approach highlights the conguration of
public, publicprivate and fully private regulatory initiatives. Partnerships
must be seen as actors in such a conguration.
Some partnerships have taken initiatives that also have a classic regime
character in the sense that their rules and standards are similar to those
provided by governments in the past. In itself, this does not threaten
the democratic functioning of the rule of law certainly not when government responsibilities are delegated to implementing and executing parties.
18
Democratic principles are only jeopardized when partnership initiatives

arise from a powerless government. And public administrations lose their
power when they do not clearly identify their own role and remit. At the
current stage in the evolution of the partnership paradigm, both of these
conditions seem to be present. The prominent partnerships that derive part
of their legitimacy from the United Nations (WSSD partnerships) can
serve as models worth emulating. Although the accreditation rules are
quite general, they are exemplary for several reasons.
First, it was only in the context of the Johannesburg World Summit that
the UN articulated the idea of partnerships as arrangements for sustainable development. This could only happen once it was clear that no formal
agreements could be reached on many sustainable development issues.
Although partnerships had probably been given due attention indeed,
many collaborative practices had become entrenched there is an undertone in the ocial recognition of a welcome fallback position (Norris,
2005, p. 229). Thus, these partnerships derive partly from the powerless
position of governments.
Second, the various roles of governments have been blurred by the promotion of partnerships. The role of governments in the hierarchy of the
United Nations has been merged with their role as occasional partners in
the horizontal partnership arrangement. Public administrations cannot
always or do not always want to perform their primary and authentic
role. But through this back door, they seem get their act together after all.
The question then arises, what precisely are the interests of governments
when they adopt a dual responsibility (see also Chapter 10 by Mol in this
volume)?
Third, this relationship becomes even more ambiguous because of the
absence of a cohesive framework. What is lacking is a form of metagovernance. This missing framework would have endorsed the coordination and resource synergy that form the cornerstones of successful
governance. It is true that the UN has placed partnerships in the context of
wider government commitments such as Agenda 21. But these objectives
only provide abstract objectives for sustainable development. As a consequence, the UN has relegated itself to the position of endorsing any partnerships that pertain to sustainable development or that could even be
construed as contributing to it in any way whatsoever. The result is predictable: countless duplication of eort, disjointed actions and a patchwork quilt of partnership programs. Whether this will provide a grounding
for creative competition remains to be seen.
Although governments recognize that the partnership paradigm is an
institutional issue, they take a pragmatic approach to it. As a result, responsibilities are spread diusely over public and private parties. So far there are
Setting the scene
19
not enough indications that partnerships fundamentally change the world

of politics. The WSSD partnerships are largely supply-driven (by what
powerful actors have to oer) rather than demand-driven (by what is
needed to bring a more sustainable development forward). They reect
ongoing implementation eorts more than new ideas for bridging core
implementation gaps. Furthermore, most initiatives are Northern-based,
funded by governments, and the private sector hardly ever takes the lead.
Only a small portion of the partnerships involves all signicant stakeholders (Andonova and Levy, 2003/2004; Hale and Mauzerall, 2004).
Recognizing this lack of transparency does not detract from the incidental problem-solving capacity of partnerships. They can develop further
as sources of information and knowledge but also as alternatives to the
classic sustainability regimes. Moreover, taking the partnership paradigm
as a model enhances the deliberative capabilities of societies. It promotes a
sense of collective responsibility for sustainable development. That in itself
is a valuable outcome, regardless of the ultimate results of partnership initiatives (Norris, 2005, p. 229). Thus, the problem with the relation between
public and private responsibilities does not lie with partnerships; the
problem also lies with governments.
The tension between governance for sustainable development as a
project and as a process which I noted earlier is still unresolved. Steering
on the basis of the partnership paradigm also has its limitations. Confusion
may arise about public and private responsibilities when the governments
and partnerships get too cozy and do not clearly dene their institutional
responsibilities. Partnerships derive partly from the powerless role of
governments. However, their success is also largely dependent on them. The
success of many partnerships depends on specic government policies. For
example, overcapacity in shery and illegal shery can hardly be dealt with
by private initiatives on their own and need the back up of government
regimes restricting access to sh stocks. The same holds for sustainable
forestry, which is dependent on a strict land use planning and a formal
policy against illegal logging. Partnerships cannot solve the poverty and
energy problems on their own, but only add to their solving. The redistribution issues that are inherent in sustainability issues lie largely out of their
reach, since partnerships do not have a logical place in government policy.
The situation is essentially the same for either fully private partnerships (or
any form of private regulation) and partnerships involving the government.
The former have been trumpeted as governance without government
(Rosenau and Czempiel, 1992; Cashore, 2002; Ensui, 2002). But that slogan
does not do justice to reality yet. The reality is that even these arrangements
are virtually never completely autonomous with respect to public authority (Hauer, 2000, p. 126). In publicprivate partnerships, that autonomy
20
is in theory even harder to maintain. The problem is that government

involvement by denition links the partnerships to larger public policies in
one way or another. Up to now, governments fail to develop these necessary back-up policies. They are part of the problems that partnerships
address.
1.5
FOCUS OF THE BOOK
Policy analysts for a long time accepted the classical image of the manageable society, which they took as inspiration for their research. As Leroy
and Nelissen showed, it led them for the most part into the ex post study
of the practice of policy implementation and enforcement, into the actual
eects and eectiveness, and also into the ex ante question of the design
of policy instruments that might improve the regulatory capacities of governments (Leroy and Nelissen, 1999, pp. 2336). Policy analysts framed
conicting particular interests as undesirable. Rational policy analysis
should help to dene and implement the general interest to which group
interests should give in, and governments should take a central position to
defend the public interest. One can state that policy analysts were critical
within the context of the main assumptions of the dominant image of the
manageable society and made a substantial contribution towards supporting it. This choice is quite understandable. A new policy sector for
sustainable development had to be developed, with its principles, norms,
instrumentation, legal underpinnings, implementation structures and
monitoring schemes.
The new conceptualization of the manageable society also changes the
roles of policy analysts: from a focus on the design of policy instruments
that might improve the regulatory capacities of governments to a focus on
new institutional arrangements involving representatives of the state, the
market and the civil society. First, they now need to be able to understand
and facilitate collaborative interactions as the core of policy-making processes. An intrinsic part of this role is to constitute conditions for a process
of self-reection by the actors involved in an issue. Second, policy analysts
are assumed to produce knowledge on the design and development of new
institutional arrangements for cooperative action; their architectures and
the conditions that determine their functioning. This kind of knowledge is
based on comparative research of the factors that improve the eectiveness,
eciency and legitimacy of collaborative arrangements. Part of their tasks
is also the critical evaluation of the contribution collaborative arrangements make to bring the process of sustainable development forward. This
includes the reection on the questions of what drives the search for new
Setting the scene
21
governance mechanisms and what inhibits them; what the opportunities

are to solve public problems in the newly created political spaces; and what
the consequences are for problem-solving on the basis of classical political
power (Glasbergen, 2007).
This book is inspired by a perceived need to understand and dene the
partnership paradigm and to sustain the new role of policy analysts (in this
context see also Selsky and Parker, 2005). To that end, we must analyze the
roles and functions of various types of partnerships. We have to examine
the conditions that determine their performance. And we should sketch out
the implications of the paradigm for governance in the context of sustainable development. This motivation was the basis for the central research
question introduced at the beginning of this chapter. Although my reections have a positive undertone, they also take a critical look at partnerships
from each of these perspectives. The partnership paradigm still poses some
challenging questions, which call for both empirical research and theoretical interpretation. The structure of the book follows the lines of the three
perspectives, addressing the questions:
What are the strengths and weaknesses, and the costs and benets, of
various types of partnerships? Which design criteria could improve
their internal performance?
In what way and with what degree of success do partnerships
contribute to the eectiveness and legitimacy of problem-solving
capacities?
How is their contribution related to the capacities of established
policy-making procedures and policy implementation?
What might be some useful roles of governments with regard to the
various types of partnerships? How could they connect partnership
approaches in a strategic way to their sustainability policies?
Part 1 deals with the actor perspective from dierent analytical

approaches. Based on a phase model, Barbara Gray enumerates the critical
issues that need to be addressed in collaborative agreements. With the help
of two other conceptual frameworks, James Austin continues with a specic
focus on businessNGO partnerships. The last contribution to this part, by
Jennifer Brinkerho, further develops her earlier framework for the evaluation of partnerships contribution to governance. Each of the authors uses
selected examples to illustrate the analytical approaches.
Part 2 addresses partnerships as governance mechanisms in three societal contexts. Derick Brinkerho employs concepts of good governance to
analyze the role of the state as an enabler of eective partnerships for
resources management. He takes Madagascars forest sector as an example.
22
Neil Gunningham examines agricultural environmental partnerships in

Australia. Based on a variety of cases he discusses some design factors
that may help to bridge the gap between aspiration and achievement.
Visseren-Hamakers, Arts and Glasbergen develop a transactional model to
improve our understanding of NorthSouth partnerships on sustainable
development. They study two partnerships for marine biodiversity, highlighting the specic challenges of partnerships in development cooperation.
Part 3 examines partnerships and the liberal-democratic governance
structure. Philipp Pattberg analyzes private rule-making partnerships as a
specic type of transnational regime. He aims to understand the emergence
of these partnerships and the causal pathways through which these regimes
gain inuence in world politics, and illustrates his arguments with various
case studies. James Meadowcroft examines the democratic credentials of
strategic partnerships. His concern is with cross-sectoral partnerships that
take up the collective management of sustainability problems. Arthur Mol
explores the shifting analysis and understanding of environmental governance, questioning the role of the state.
Part 4 continues the analysis of Part 3 but with a stronger focus on the
future of global partnerships. Biermann, Chan, Pattberg and Mert study
the contribution of partnerships to traditional ways of governance in international relations. They empirically analyze the multi-stakeholder partnerships ve years after they were institutionalized at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development. Waddell and Khagram construct an initial landscape of the emergent eld of global action networks and evaluate their
potentials in new global governance architecture.
In the Conclusion, the editors discuss some research challenges.
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PART 1
Partnerships as collaborative arrangements:

the actor perspective
2. The process of partnership

construction: anticipating obstacles
and enhancing the likelihood of
successful partnerships for
sustainable development
Barbara Gray
Concerns about environmental sustainability have moved from o stage
to center stage in the global political arena since the issuance of the
Brundtland Report, which legitimized the concept of sustainable development 20 years ago. As environmental threats from global warming, loss
of biodiversity and scarcity of potable water grow, they pose challenging
questions about the appropriate models for environmental governance.
Who should bear responsibility for environmental decision-making and
how should the various parties be organized to tackle the formidable work
of sustainable development? In the absence of a global environmental
authority these political questions permeate the technical debates about
what environmental actions are required. Three generic strategies have been
outlined for global governance in the environmental arena (Porter and
Brown, 1991):
1.
2.
3.
an incremental approach in which interested parties negotiate with one

another without binding commitments for regulatory action;
a global partnership strategy in which the twin issues of economic
development and environmental regulation are negotiated among
industrialized and developing country nations; and
a global governance approach in which institutional restructuring
occurs to create regulation on a global level.
While these approaches are conceptually distinct, in practice, there are now
a myriad number of binding and less binding agreements among various
actors intended to promote a sustainable future, but many of these hinge
on the success of partnerships.
29
30
Partnerships as collaborative arrangements
As Glasbergen (Chapter 1 this volume) explained, by the time of

the World Summit of Sustainable Development in Joannesburg in 2002,
an expanded vision of the partnership approach had gained prominence
one in which numerous lateral arrangements among public, private and
non-governmental actors were championed as the preferred vehicles
of sustainable change. Of the three approaches to studying partnerships
identied by Glasbergen in the introductory chapter, this chapter represents the actor perspective. Rather than focusing on why partnerships
form and on their comparative advantage as governance mechanisms,
I examine what it takes for partnerships to succeed and, in particular, what
partnership leaders can do to facilitate success. I adopt this stance because,
despite good intentions, partnership success is far from assured. Many
partnerships succumb to collaborative inertia; that is, they experience slow
progress or truncate their eorts without realizing their goals (Huxham and
Vangen, 2005). If partnerships are the key to achieving sustainability, then
it is imperative that partners learn to avoid the inertial impediments and
improve the odds of success. Achieving collaboration in such partnerships
requires an ability to work constructively with diverse points of view, development of strong integrative negotiating skills and sustained coordination
to ensure eective implementation of agreements.
My focus in this chapter will be on leading and managing the dynamic
process issues that are inherent in partnership formation. Sustainable development issues pit business values for progress, prot and self-interested
consumption of the environment against environmental values that stress
ecological sustainability, interdependence with the natural world and opposition to exploitation. Thus, they are often characterized by heated and protracted conict. Potential partners often start from fundamentally dierent
value premises and worldviews, and construct very dierent understandings of what is at stake and how problems should be addressed (Lewicki,
Gray and Elliott, 2003). Additionally, these partnerships vary on several
dimensions including: scope (local, national, regional and global), type of
environmental issue under consideration (e.g., commons problems, shared
resources, transboundary externalities and linked issues) (Gray, 1999;
Torrance and Torrance, 2006), and nature of the partners (e.g., NGOmarket partnerships versus those involving governments). Partnerships in
the sustainable development arena include a host of inter-organizational
relationships ranging from networks of NGOs (such as the Climate Action
Network [CAN]), transnational coalitions that link global with local
NGOs (such as the ones that halted a development project in Brazils
rainforest and forced reassessment of global projects by the World Bank),
and partnerships across sectors such as the one between British Petroleum
and the World Resources Institute to forestall climate change (Torrance
The process of partnership construction
31
and Torrance, 2006). Because of their sheer scope, diversity of levels and
diverse interests, these partnerships are particularly dicult to construct
and sustain. Consequently, skills for leading and managing partnerships
are of critical importance.
I begin with a brief theoretical explanation of why partnerships are
necessary. I then identify numerous obstacles to building successful partnerships, since we can learn much about the challenges that arise in partnership construction from dissecting those that have foundered. Next a
four-phase model of partnership development is introduced, and subsequently the critical issues will be analyzed that need to be addressed in each
phase if the partnership is to move forward successfully: who should participate; who can best initiate and lead; how dierences in perspectives can
be met; and how to enhance implementation and institutionalization of
agreements.
2.1
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Organizational scholars have touted collaborative partnership as a useful

and necessary mechanism for organizing parties within a problem domain
(Trist, 1983; Gray, 1989). Problem domains are contexts in which the
central issues cannot be controlled or governed by individual actors
behaving independently. Instead, when actions individuals take with
respect to the focal issue have repercussions for others and vice versa,
individual eorts become maladaptive, and the domain experiences turbulence because of the unpredictable consequences of actions taken by other
stakeholders (Trist, 1983). As Gray (1989) notes, Organizations facing turbulent environments nd that unilateral strategic actions taken to control
environmental exigencies are often ineective (p. 28). Since actors are
interdependent, the only eective response to turbulence requires adopting
a system-level perspective through which stakeholders join forces to inuence how the issue is resolved. Rather than continuing to thwart each
others eorts, by collaborating, stakeholders can devise correlated responses to minimize turbulence and increase regulation of domain dynamics (Trist, 1983).
Building a collaborative partnership requires skilled leadership to ensure
integration of diverse points of view, careful attention to process dynamics
and eective implementation of agreements, not to mention attracting
the diverse partners to participate in the collaborative process in the rst
place. In the area of sustainable development, constructing partnerships
that produce solutions that go beyond each partners individual vision is a
tall order.
32
Obstacles to Collaboration
Despite parties inherent (but often unacknowledged) interdependence,
achieving collaborative outcomes is far from easy. Numerous factors
ranging from political maneuvering or covert power brokering, institutional pressures and serendipity can all contribute to collaborative inertia.
Here I have grouped factors into three general types for ease of discussion:
those associated with (1) past history, mistrust and identity issues; (2)
dierential framing of issues; and (3) process and institutional issues:
Past history, mistrust and identity issues A partnership that began as a
protracted conict between loggers and environmentalists over logging
practices in Californias Sierra Nevada mountains shows how dierences in
organizational cultures of the partners, past histories of misunderstanding
and erosion of trust among parties can make partnership formation
extremely challenging. After years of extremely hostile interactions and
even violent skirmishes, these stakeholders nally put the future of their
community above the conict and joined forces to devise a plan for sustainable logging (Bryan and Wondolleck, 2003). In this conict, and others
related to sustainable development, deep-seated identity dierences and
threats of loss of identity can pose formidable obstacles to partnership formation (Lewicki et al., 2003). Cultural dierences also make collaboration
more dicult because partners often criticize what is sacred in each others
proposals (Pearce and Littlejohn, 2003). The sheer time and resource commitment, fear of potentially negative reactions from ones constituents
(based on stereotypes about sleeping with the enemy), as well as concerns
about establishing unfavorable precedents, can also derail potential partnerships before they start.
Diering frames Another critical obstacle arises from dierences in how
the potential partners frame their understanding of the issues that bring
them together. Framing refers to the process of constructing and representing our interpretations of the world around us. We construct frames
by sorting and categorizing our experience weighing new information
against our previous interpretations (Lewicki et al., 2003, p. 12). Frames
are both guides to and outcomes of sense-making processes. Parties use
frames to make sense of their experiences and to locate themselves with
respect to other stakeholders. More specically, framing involves developing interpretive schemas that bound and order a chaotic situation, facilitate interpretation and provide a guide for doing and acting (Laws and
Rein, 2003, p. 173). As noted earlier, parties who might prot from reaching consensus on how to coordinate their activities around sustainable
33
development often hold vastly dierent interpretations of the issues they

all are concerned about (Lewicki et al., 2003). Even when parties agree on
the need to pool their eorts, they frequently do not see eye to eye on the
aims of collaboration, and, once they begin to work together, their
diering interpretations about the issues and how to frame them may
interfere with the joint work of nding an acceptable agreement. For
example, dierences in potential partners views of nature (i.e., the need
for conservation and its capacity for regeneration), the options they considered as feasible means of conict resolution and their strong, but
diering identications with the land, contributed to the perpetuation of
a 40-year conict over the existence and management of a US national
park (Lewicki et al., 2003).
Process issues and institutional constraints Even when parties freely join
up and have similar conceptions of the problems, another major impediment to partnership success is the absence of process skills among the partners once they begin working together (Wondolleck, 1985). In a similar
vein, psychodynamic factors that arise in the subconscious work of the
group can also derail collaborative eorts (even when the parties are well
intended about working together) (Vansina, 2000). Finally, at a more systemic level, institutional forces and power dierences make partnership formation more dicult. How then can partners overcome these formidable
challenges?
Phases of Collaboration
To envision successful collaborative partnerships, it is useful to understand
the critical issues that need to be addressed as they evolve. Many authors
have proposed phase models of multi-party collaboration that describe distinct periods of sequential activities. Here I adapt the Phase 1 (problem
setting), Phase 2 (direction setting) and Phase 3 (implementation) model as
described by Gray (1989). The critical tasks in the problem-setting phase
include identifying the relevant partners and getting them to commit to a
collaborative partnership. Direction setting involves exploring the issues
and reaching any necessary agreements to address them. Implementation
entails putting those agreements into place and ensuring that followthrough occurs. Since experience has also shown that partnerships often
continue in some form beyond implementation of the agreements they
reach (Phase 3), I have added Phase 4 (institutionalization) to capture structuring and regularization of ongoing interactions among stakeholders
and/or replication of partnerships in other contexts. Even if partnerships
do not evolve precisely in this manner, the principal benets of phase
34
models are: (1) they identify the key challenges that arise and oer a
suggested order for responding to them; (2) they provide leaders (as well as
participants) with a basis for reecting on their experience; and (3) they
oer guidance for process design.
2.2 LEADERSHIP TASKS DURING PROBLEM

SETTING
While scholars may not agree about the extent of control that interveners
can exercise or to the degree that partnership dynamics can be orchestrated,
most agree that partnerships are not totally at the mercy of exogenous
forces. Individuals can exert some leverage over the domain by engaging in
self-regulation and taking correlated actions (Trist, 1983; Gray, 1989).
Several kinds of tasks constitute leadership in inter-organizational domains
because their execution can enhance the likelihood of reaching collaboration among partners. These tasks include: appreciation or visioning, convening, problem structuring, designing the process, reective intervention,
conict handling, brokering and institutional entrepreneurship (Gray,
2007). I refer to them as leadership intervention tasks because they can be
executed by the partners themselves or by external third parties who are
engaged to facilitate partners interactions; most likely they will be shared
by many people over a partnerships lifetime. I have linked them to the four
phases of collaboration, indicating when they would be most necessary and
eective.
A critical task for launching a new partnership is that of appreciation or
visioning. By appreciation, I refer to recognizing the interdependencies
among a group of stakeholders, imagining how the parties can collaborate,
and helping others to see this vision. Appreciation entails the ability to
translate a possible new vision of the domain to other stakeholders. While
any stakeholder can oer a collective appreciation, often this task is performed by someone who has experience in the domain, legitimacy (in the
eyes of other stakeholders) and the political clout to frame the collaborative vision in a way that others cannot ignore (Gray, 1989). Visionaries
need to understand the social, political and economic context surrounding
a partnership as well as the key players. In one of the rst US partnerships
between business and environmentalists, the two leaders who hatched the
idea of forming a partnership did so after years of wrangling over similar
issues in the courts. Their proposal turned into the National Coal Policy
Project in which coal-producing rms, major coal-consuming manufacturers, and environmentalists met for two years to thrash out jointly accepted
regulatory measures (Gray and Hay, 1986).
35
Methods for Appreciation

Several methods for enhancing joint appreciation among stakeholders
within a domain are available to enhance stakeholders awareness of their
interdependencies and formulate correlated actions to reduce domain turbulence. One appreciative technique, the construction of shared strategy
maps (Bryson and Finn, 1995) involves querying and constructing a cognitive map of each individual stakeholders views on a topic and then
combining these into a computerized composite map that reects the perspectives of all and serves as the basis for discussion, revision and forging
a common vision for the partnership.
Moore, Long and Palmer (1999, p. 558) describe visioning as a process
in which people build consensus on a description of their preferred future
the set of conditions they want to see realized over time. Other interventions, such as search conferences, are designed to build common awareness
of domain issues among diverse stakeholders. For example, in a search conference, third parties guide stakeholders in identifying the broad contextual
inuences impinging on the domain, their individual and collective aspirations and their preferred strategies for how the domain should evolve
(Emery and Purser, 1996). Two critical early steps in the search conference
promote domain-level understanding: (1) identifying common futures that
direct stakeholders attention to their mutual aspirations for the future of
the domain; (2) identication of current and anticipated trends likely to
aect the domain. Often, the realizations produced through such analyses
break down boundaries among potential collaborators and promote
awareness of their common plight, as Weisbord and Jano (2005, p. 80)
observe, a short, intense, whole system meeting enables something not
available in any other way: A gestalt of the whole in all participants that
dramatically improves their relationship to their work and their coworkers.
The utility of this process for partnerships is exemplied by an inuential
1993 Futures Search report issued by the Conservation Breeding Specialist
Group (CBSG), which is technically an NGO but functions as a network
of scientists and others concerned about endangered species preservation.
The CBSG conducts such visioning workshops around the globe (Westley,
1999) to forge consensus about endangered species preservation.
Convening
A second intervention task is convening. Carlson (1999, p. 169) identies
four primary activities that conveners undertake: (1) assessing a situation
to determine whether or not a consensus-based approach is feasible;
(2) identifying and inviting participants to ensure that all key interests
36
(i.e., stakeholders) are represented; (3) locating the necessary resources to

help convene, conduct, and support the process; and (4) planning and
organizing the process with participants, or working with a facilitator or
mediator to do so.
While visionaries may see the wisdom of partnering and may also engage
in the task of convening, external third parties are often hired as conveners
to test the feasibility of a potential collaborative alliance. They may do this
by means of a feasibility or conict assessment (if the presenting issues are
conictual) in which they interview stakeholders to assess their willingness
to participate and their motivation to work toward a collaborative agreement. Without an initial commitment to collaborate (Gray, 1989), partnership initiatives may prove futile, and a convener should advise against going
forward. Assembling a wide array of stakeholders is also likely to enhance
partnership success in the long run because key players who are excluded
may later try to block implementation of agreements.
NGOs often serve as conveners of partnerships in developing countries.
For example, the Synergos Institute initiated the Chimalapas Coalition in
southern Mexico to prevent construction of a highly controversial hydroelectric dam and highway through the rainforest. The partnership brought
together previously unconnected partners including two states, the federal
legislature, several ministries, environmental NGOs, human rights groups
and campesinos (farmers), and has met several sustainability objectives
including forest conservation (Gray, 1999).
For some partnerships, problems of representation and exclusion are
often critical to their success. That is, conveners face decisions about who
can participate in a partnership, for whom they can speak, and who can
speak for the partnership as a whole. For regional and national-level partnerships related to policy issues, a primary cause of partnership failure is
ineective resolution of representational issues. During the spotted owl
controversy in the United States Pacic Northwest, a federal agency made
unilateral decisions about representation in ten local partnerships rather
than involve the communities in identifying issues and choosing their representatives. Consequently, participants questioned the governments
motives, the balance of power at the table and the fairness of resource allocation to the partners (Carlson, 1999). In the United States, regulatory
negotiations (temporary partnerships that provide input to a governmental regulatory agency on rule-making) (Fiorino, 1988) and collaborations
convened under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, explicit criteria
about representation and clear decision-making guidelines must be met.
Accepted guidelines for design of consensus-building processes for
environmental issues at local and regional and even national levels also
stress widespread representation (Carlson, 1999). Conveners can minimize
37
partners subsequent withdrawal by ironing out issues about representation

and decision-making authority early in the partnership construction.
Negotiations often later become derailed and trust is eroded if partners
learn that their counterparts lack the necessary authority to decide the
issues on their own. Even when representatives have authority to act, they
often experience tension about their role produced by conict between the
imperatives of the internal negotiation (i.e., negotiations taking place at the
negotiating table) and those of the external interactions with constituents
(Laws, 1999, p. 244). In order to ensure transparency and encourage widespread ownership of agreements, partnership designers may want to build
in a separate step for conferral with constituents to secure ratication of
any agreements reached.
For other types of partnerships, representational issues are of less importance. For global environmental regimes, for example, only sovereign actors
participate, leaving others like NGOs out of the ocial decision-making
(Susskind, 1994). And in NGOmarket partnerships such as the Forest
Stewardship Council, only selected actors are involved. In these partnerships, intended for certifying industry standards for sustainable products,
representational issues are less crucial, although failure to garner widespread participation can limit the partnerships reach and ultimate impact.
Partnership designs can also distinguish levels of stakeholder participation
between those who provide input and those with voting rights. When the
number of parties is extremely large, a system of representatives and caucuses may be necessary to test trial agreements or a design in which local
roundtables are constructed for initial and periodic input throughout
the process. In other cases, such as the CBSG, the partnership includes
50006000 individuals worldwide so representation is quite open and inclusive, enabling the organization to rescue or help to preserve at least 60 species
(Westley, 1999).
2.3
PROBLEM STRUCTURING
Leadership Tasks During Direction Setting

A useful leadership task for Phase 2 involves problem structuring in which
alliance partners tackle their joint problem by analyzing it and inventing
joint solutions. Techniques for problem structuring range from very simple
approaches that visually array data to complex computerized models used
to compare probabilistic scenarios. Some of these approaches, such as the
analysis of interconnected decision areas (AIDA) (Friend and Hickling,
2005), build on multi-attribute utility theory to select alternatives once
38
choices are arrayed. This approach identies and links decision areas
opportunities to act in at least two alternative ways with respect to a
problem and then compares their utility in the eyes of participants to aid
decision-making. Another problem-structuring approach that relies on
group decision support to help analyze the key issues is strategic options
development and analysis (SODA). SODA starts with individual cognitive
maps from all participants as input and relies on modeling methods to
capture, analyze and play back to participants the substance of the issues
under discussion (Huxham, 1996, p. 142), enabling participants to view a
composite array of factors that comprise the problem.
Process Design
A critical distinction between the content and the process of interactions is
an immensely useful construct for leaders and collaborators to understand.
Partnership leaders should consider which stage a collaboration is in, what
ground rules might be necessary, what tasks are needed to move the partners toward their objectives, how to best design the meetings, when plenary
versus small group meetings, caucuses or joint data collection may be productive, how to garner buy-in from constituents and how to facilitate the
resolution of conicts (Gray, 1989). While process design can be useful in
any phase, it is particularly important in Phases 1 and 2 when stakeholders
are least sure about the value of participating, how to get started or how to
bridge their disagreements.
One critical task in Phase 2 is reaching agreement on ground rules for
interaction among partners. These can include how anger will be expressed,
how decisions will be taken (e.g., whether consensus is required), wrestling
with shape of the table issues and who can speak to the media. Although
collaborative partnership can often be fraught with ambiguity, ground rules
and process transparency can attenuate fears about the partnership:
Conferring with the parties about what is going to happen next and who is
going to do it ensures that expectations are not mismatched and that the
parties retain ownership of everything that happens (Gray, 1989, p. 266)
and promotes trust among the parties. While many collaborative partners
underestimate the important role of process attention in aiding collaboration (Wondolleck, 1985), they do so at a price, since eective attention to
process issues can deect partners from detours that gobble up time
and generate frustration and mistrust. Process designers help partners to
establish guidelines for representation and participation, decision-making
processes, ownership of and responsibility for outcomes, power sharing
and conferring with constituents, the media and the larger community.
These activities foster transparency and constructive norms for partnership
39
evolution. While partners may resist process design as an unnecessary

expense or a threat to their control of interactions, expertise about meeting
design, group dynamics and facilitative structures can increase the likelihood of constructive interactions and help partners avoid classic pitfalls that
often derail even well-intended partnerships. For example, consideration of
how to replace participants if they leave their posts during the process might
have prevented the collapse of a New York City Partnership task force,
which unraveled when several key participants all changed jobs within a sixmonth period. Building in redundancy of representation to preserve institutional memory may have saved this partnership (Gray, 1995), but would
have forced the conveners to deal with a larger table from the start.
When decisions about sustainability would be best served by involving
many parties in the process, large-scale designs can ensure that a wide array
of viewpoints are included and promote widespread support for any policy
recommendation or agreements (as in deliberative democracy processes).
Third-party neutrals are typically hired to organize and conduct these
kinds of interventions because of the need for expert facilitation and use of
technological support systems to ensure that input from participants can
be garnered and collated quickly. For example, recently, 4500 diverse residents of New York City participated in a twenty-rst century town hall
meeting designed to solicit their input on the site plans for the World Trade
Center memorial (Lukensmeyer and Brigham, 2005). Using simultaneous
keypad voting techniques, participants engaged with one another in facilitated roundtable dialogues and weighed in on various design proposals.
Their views were then relayed to ocial decision-makers for the project.
Reective Intervening
The task of reective intervening is designed to engage participants in
assessing their concerns, their objectives and their progress to date. The
leader encourages this self-reective task, which can focus on the content
of the issues, the partners interactions or both. By engaging in this joint
diagnosis, partners can identify needed changes they want to make in the
partnership and devise action steps to take to rectify them (Huxham and
Vangen, 2005). Such reection promotes ownership of and commitment to
the collaborative process particularly if facilitated by a third party.
Conict Handling
Since conicting viewpoints often arise in partnerships, the task of conict
handling is an important one that is usually provided by a third party or a
skillful collaborative leader. Conict handling interventions may mean
40
the dierence between successful partnerships and those that succumb

to collaborative inertia. Because stakeholders wrestling with sustainable
development often start from fundamentally dierent value premises,
incorporating a third party to help structure and facilitate discussion of
these dicult issues may indeed be prudent, especially if the number of
partners is large or partners come to the table with high levels of mistrust
or past histories of unresolved conicts. Conict-handling interventions
not only provide methods for working through disagreements, they also
help to reduce stereotypes and restore trust.
Conict handling can take various forms including facilitation, mediation and trust building, which address both the content and process of
resolving conict. Mediators seek to promote winwin solutions by reframing each partys individual interests in terms of a common problem they
face. Mediators often help to bring appropriate partners to the table, design
constructive processes and ground rules for interaction among the partners,
facilitate disclosure of interests, help the partners generate alternative solutions and ensure eective implementation (Moore, 1986; Gray, 1989).
Eective conict handling often restores trust among partners, which
may have been destroyed in past interactions. Restoring trust may require
repeated demonstrations of good faith to overcome vulnerabilities established in the past. Through increasing the number of promises and congruent actions that reinforce the belief that the commitment will be carried
out, negotiators gradually build a relationship of trust (Moore, 1986,
p. 142). One technique for fostering trust is asking potential partners to
recount instances in which they exhibited trustworthy behavior toward
each other. In a collaboration among business, government and civic
leaders to revitalize the city of Newark, New Jersey, community groups
refused to begin work on the process design until the business sector
demonstrated its commitment to the city (Strauss, 1999, p. 142). Several
concrete short-term projects were identied and completed to pave the way
for a much longer consensus-building process that occurred over several
months. Without this upfront demonstration of good faith, the partnership
may never have commenced.
Countering long-standing stereotypes and persistent mistrust can only
occur when parties have positive contact with each other (Amir, 1994) and
repeated experiences in which their stereotypes are disconrmed. Replacing
stereotypes with positive impressions can occur if potential partners take
joint data-gathering trips (Gray, 1989). On these occasions, by sharing
common experiences and everyday interactions, stereotypes are eroded.
Perspective-taking exercises also enable partners to explore their biased
impressions of their counterparts and try out alternative viewpoints. For
example, I facilitated a three-day workshop between representatives of the
41
US Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Forest Service who both worked in
the same national forest but had harbored negative stereotypes about each
other for years. Using a mirroring exercise, they exchanged impressions of
each other and tried to predict how the other group viewed them. Subsequent
review and discussion of these biases enabled them to realize how these
biases interfered with their ability to solve the joint problems they faced.
Partnership leaders can actively promote trust among partners in a
variety of ways. Engaging partners in the construction of clear ground rules
(such as equality of airtime and decision rules), which are then actively
enforce, enhances trust. So does agenda transparency and the use of
winwin negotiating techniques. Leaders may also conduct a priori interviews with each partner to assess their readiness to collaborate and then
summarize the important, commonly shared issues for the partners when
they rst meet. Finally, leaders can help overcome tendencies toward collusion, the tendency to suppress dierences that are dicult to admit or
risky to address (Vansina, 2000).
Internal Brokering
Internal brokers are responsible for sharing information among partners,
and are usually partners themselves (but they could be third parties). As
partnerships extend in duration, become larger, are geographically dispersed, and/or are replicated in other settings, internal brokers are particularly helpful to ensure that everyone is informed about current project
status and their input on emerging issues is garnered. This task is particularly important in Phases 2, 3 and 4.
Several brokerage roles have been identied, including representatives,
liaisons, gatekeepers and so on. Liaisons create linkages and increase information exchange between otherwise unconnected or unrelated parties and
also serve as conict handlers, as bridgers who can connect less powerful
parties with more powerful ones (Westley and Vredenburg, 1991), and/or
as translators who can link stakeholders from dierent cultural traditions
because of their cultural uency. For example, partners from dierent cultural traditions may prefer dierent ground rules (e.g., less talking, more
silence) that emphasize values other than individuality and eciency,
which are particularly Western orientations for interaction. Sensitivity to
process designs that respect the values inherent in non-Western or a variety
of cultural traditions will help to establish a level playing eld for participants, reduce stereotypes and build trust among participants.
When stakeholders initially represent groups with asymmetrical power
and/or are unwilling to work together for this reason, brokers with the
necessary clout to help low-power stakeholders to gain access to elites can
42
play critical roles in creating a dialogue among these groups. In addition to

providing standing for low-power partners, they can serve as shuttle diplomats, conveying critical information and negotiating agreements among
partners of dierential power especially by helping both sides to recognize the ways in which they are dependent on each other for the future outcomes in the domain. Sometimes, special bridging roles are necessary to
rst mobilize community groups to generate a voice in dialogues with elites
(Brown and Ashman, 1999). Brokers in this role assist these groups to organize, select a spokesperson and help them guard against cooptation by
more powerful groups. This was the role that the Catholic Church
played in Ecuador in 1995 when CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of Ecuador), a coalition of indigenous peoples groups
blocked the Pan American highway and brought the country to a halt in
the interest of challenging land reforms introduced by the Ecuadorian
Congress and the International Development Bank (IDB) (Treakle, 1998).
The Church was able to help persuade Ecuadors president that negotiating with the indigenous peoples made sense. Consequently, CONAIE, the
Church, the IDB and the government crafted a collaborative agreement
that stripped away the reforms and restored some control over the lands to
the indigenous people. Often, views of indigenous peoples are depreciated
by First World partners when, in fact, local knowledge of agricultural and
irrigation practices may prove very useful in meeting both partners goals.
In general, in conicts between the First and Third World over sustainable
development concerns, NGOs play important bridging roles, ensuring that
less powerful partners have a voice in deliberations (Brown and Ashman,
1999; Gray, 1999) and preventing cooptation by elites (Karan, 1994).
Certain power leveling can be employed to ensure that more powerful
parties pay attention to sustainability issues and comply with partnership
agreements once reached. One example of partnerships that spanned local
and global interests to challenge a powerful global player was the coalition
that stopped the World Banks Narmada Dam project in India (Fox
and Brown, 1998). Once powerful parties are held accountable, they may
voluntarily adopt future contractual provisions that make themselves
dependent on other stakeholders. Alternatively, partners can appoint independent watchdogs to oversee compliance with agreements or invoke sanctions if power is abused during implementation. This will only work,
however, when, in the face of non-compliance with partnership agreements,
traditional enforcement procedures (such as enforcement of codes by regulatory bodies) or continued political pressure can be used as a fallback
strategy. In order to persuade powerful stakeholders who resist collaborating to change their minds, partnership leaders can remind them of the unattractive consequences of not participating that they may have overlooked
43
or undervalued a process known as reappraising their BATNAs (best

alternative to a negotiated agreement). Reluctant partners may also be persuaded to participate in the end if the other partners have the power to
negotiate coalition deals that would undermine the holdouts interests.
In the context of global environmental protocols, the prospect of shaming
partners into agreement can be of some value. According to Oran Young
(1992), Policymakers, like private individuals, are sensitive to the social
opprobrium that accompanies violations of widely accepted behavioral prescriptions. Especially if organized groups within non-compliant nations
assume responsibility for monitoring adherence to global protocols and
team up with others worldwide, they can exert leverage on non-compliant
nations. Susskind (1994) describes such a proposal, patterned after Amnesty
Internationals technique for pressuring violators of the UNs human rights
provisions. The models eectiveness, of course, depends on having agreed
upon standards for judging non-compliance and procedures for verication
of alleged violations.
2.4 LEADERSHIP TASKS ON IMPLEMENTATION

AND INSTITUTIONALIZATION
An important outcome of Phase 3 is ensuring that any agreements generated in Phase 2 are successfully implemented. This requires adoption of any
new rules, procedures and practices by the stakeholders back-home constituents. As noted earlier, many of the leadership tasks already discussed
(e.g., process design, brokering, conict handling) may also be fruitfully
employed during the implementation stage. However, implementation
eorts may founder in this phase because constituents do not fully understand or want to adhere to provisions of the agreement. Eective process
design will anticipate this outcome and build in mechanisms for periodic
review and modication of the agreement in light of changing external
pressures, exit of key partners or entry of new ones (who need a recounting or bring dierent perspectives), or shrinkage or loss of expected
resources for implementation. At these implementation reviews partners
may need to make revisions to the original agreement or support one
another in persuading their respective constituents of the wisdom of the
original agreement.
Institutional Entrepreneurship
The primary task of institutional entrepreneurs is promotion and institutionalization of new norms and agreements within an emerging eld.
44
They essentially manage the process by which agreements reached in Phase

2 become adopted, armed and monitored for consistency.
If implementation of an agreement requires the construction of a new
organization or a lasting change in the structural relationships among partners, then attention to Phase 4 dynamics is also important. Osborn and
Hagedoorn (1997, p. 272) have referred to building alliances and networks
as experiments in institution building because they often involve creating
new organizational forms with more lateral than horizontal information
ow in which interactions are based on trust rather than authority. These
new structural arrangements and their accompanying modications to routines and practices require both cognitive and behavioral shifts for participating organizations. When these new practices are embedded in existing
routines and align easily with existing values, they are easier to adopt, but
in newly emerging elds in which stakeholders adhere to dierent value
systems, the task of creating norms and building compliance with them
must incorporate the values and practices of diverse partners. Not only do
such changes often engender resistance in the face of ambiguity, but fragile
trust constructed during Phase 2 may easily be destroyed if dierent rates
or methods of institutionalization are mistaken for deliberate attempts to
renege on the agreement. For partnerships bridging national boundaries
these dierences can originate from dierences in organizational, national
or ethnic cultures.
For sustainable development agreements at the global level, willingness
of national governments to subscribe to regime-level agreements poses particular problems. For example, gaining approval for dispersal of funds or
implementation of new routines may occur much more quickly in a forprot than a bureaucratic public organization. On the other hand, institutional entrepreneurs should also guard against over-institutionalization
that is, creating unnecessary structural arrangements and rules that may
stie the exibility needed by a collaborative network to accomplish its
objectives, minimize opportunities for partners to learn from each other, or
recreate pre-alliance hegemonic power relations among the partners that
promote collaborative inertia.
Institutional entrepreneurs may also be charged with replicating successful partnerships that is, translating a successful collaborative structure
to new settings with new partners. Wise institutional entrepreneurs will
realize that repeating the phases with new stakeholders is a critical step in
construction of replications. This not only ensures buy-in from new partners but also allows for incorporation of local modications that may be
key to successful implementation.
2.5
45
CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have tried to forecast the kinds of challenges and obstacles that can befall even well-intended partners who are trying to forge
collaborative agreements for sustainable development and to recommend appropriate countermeasures to improve the likelihood of success.
However, as noted earlier, partnerships in this arena vary vastly in scope,
the diversity of partners and in the types of issues being tackled. Some
involve governments; many do not. A key unanswered question that
remains concerns when and how governments should be involved and
whether they should play a leadership role. While it is impossible to devise
clear-cut rules delineating when governments should step in, governments
often can and should play a key role in catalyzing partnership development, especially within sovereign borders. That is, governments can create
forums to stimulate partnership deliberations. When governments have
clear rule-making authority, regulatory negotiation partnerships can
encourage diverse stakeholders (e.g., business and environmental NGOs)
to resolve conicts in favor of sustainable practices. In non-rule-making
contexts, governments can serve as brokers to encourage deliberations
among private parties. To date, however, governments have varied in their
inclination and capacity to provide this role (i.e., those in developed
countries often playing a larger role). In developing countries, NGOs have
traditionally performed the leadership role by partnering with other
NGOs, foundations and grassroots organizations to promote sustainable
development partnerships such as the Chimalapas Coalition described
above. However, once private funds are withdrawn, governments need to
step in if high potential partnerships are to remain sustainable (Brown and
Ashman, 1999).
At the global level, business/NGO partnerships (such as the Marine and
Forest Stewardship Councils) have established a new partnership model,
albeit one with still limited reach (Visseren-Hamakers and Glasbergen,
2007) and one that leaves local stakeholders and governments outside of
decision-making. Such market-based partnerships have a place since they
aord business stakeholders the opportunity to combine sustainability
with protability. Perhaps the most optimistic scenarios for sustainability
partnerships, however, will emerge as grassroots stakeholders team up with
NGOs to demand that both government and business take sustainability
seriously. The recent commitment by leaders of the Christian Right in the
United States to curb global warming is a promising step in this direction.
Mobilization of such grassroots political muscle worldwide could stimulate
a new interest in partnerships by Northern business and governments and
even rekindle global interest in regime change with respect to sustainable
46
development. If so, governments can play a key role in convening and

leading such partnerships while ensuring wide representation and fair
processes.
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3. Sustainability through partnering:

conceptualizing partnerships
between businesses and NGOs
James E. Austin
Sustainable development requires concerted collaborative actions at all levels
from macro to micro and across all sectors. Cross-sector social partnerships
are proliferating rapidly (Child and Faulkner, 1998; Berger, Cunningham
and Drumright, 2000). This chapter continues the examination of partnerships as collaborative arrangements that Barbara Gray began in the previous
chapter. I also focus explicitly on the rst modality of partnerships as single
collaborative arrangements specied by Pieter Glasbergen in the opening
chapter, but with a specic focus on alliances between businesses and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs or, synonymously, non-prot organizations or civil society organizations).
There are four research questions that are central to deepening our
understanding of these cross-sectoral collaborations. First, why would
businesses and non-governmental organizations want to collaborate?
Understanding the motivational underpinnings is central to fostering the
births of partnerships by nding common ground for coming together
from disparate sectors. Second, how do businessnon-prot collaborative relationships evolve over time? Partnerships are not static phenomena; like other organizational forms, they evolve over time. Consequently,
it is important to examine the dynamics of cross-sector collaborative
arrangements. Third, how do such collaborations create value? The
fundamental purpose of partnering is to create more value than one
could alone. In social purpose collaborations we are concerned not
only with the benets accruing to each of the partners, but also to
society more generally. Fourth, what are the critical determinants of the
performance of cross-sector collaborations? Not all collaborations
succeed; some clearly outperform others. Identifying key success factors
will contribute to more eective design and management of partnerships.
To address these four questions, the following sections will explore: partnering motivations, relationship evolution, value-generation process and
49
50
performance determinants. The purpose of this exploratory chapter is to

provide conceptual frameworks for examining these dimensions and to
illustrate them through specic cross-sector collaboration examples,
which are mostly drawn from partnerships in Latin America studied by
the author and colleagues in the Social Enterprise Knowledge Network
(www.sekn.org).
3.1
PARTNERING MOTIVATIONS
The theoretical rationale for collaborations has been usefully rooted

in resource dependency theory (Gray, 1989), stakeholder management
(Andrio et al., 2002), and social issues (Selsky and Parker, 2005) among
others. To provide an additional lens through which to explore why
companies and non-prots would want to partner each other, this
chapter conceptualizes a collaboration motivation action (CMA) framework.
This CMA framework enables us to understand the linkages from motivations to actions by examining four components: motivational categories
behavioral forces management orientation action focal points. By
systematically understanding these interrelated components, one can better
identify if, why and where the path of collaboration is chosen. The four
components of this framework can be applied to examine both companies
and non-prot organizations, but the elements under each component are
dierent for businesses and NGOs. The framework will be illustrated by
applying it rst to companies and then to NGOs (Tables 3.1a and 3.1b
respectively).
CMA Framework for Companies
Motivational categories The starting point is to categorize the more general motivations for businesses engaging in sustainable development or
social value creation. Motivations can be utilitarian or altruistic or a combination. Manifested motivations can be sorted into four distinguishable,
although sometimes interrelated, categories: compliance-driven, riskdriven, values-driven and business-opportunity-driven.
Behavioral forces Behind each of these motivations there is a corresponding force dictating the behavior. Compliance is dictated by legal obligations; risk by external threats; values by core beliefs; business opportunity
by economic self-interest. As one crosses the motivational categories, the
forces increasingly move from obligatory to voluntary.
Sustainability through partnering
51
Management orientation These forces in turn shape the management

approach. Fullling legal obligations generally involves preserving the
status quo; dealing with external threats entails averting negative consequences; exercising core beliefs aims at validating institutional integrity;
and pursuing opportunities focuses on capturing economic gains.
Action focal points Each of these management arenas has a corresponding set of focal points for action. Managing legal compliance
involves political, regulatory and administrative actions, and other interactions with government entities. Managing the negative focuses on riskmitigation actions aimed at averting damage to, for example, reputation,
consumer patronage, employee loyalty and resource access. Managing
beliefs basically strives to walk the talk and can involve philanthropic
and social responsibility actions among others that contribute to external
and internal reputational enhancement. Managing the pursuit of economic opportunities can aim at such areas as product dierentiation, market expansion, human resource enrichment, supply development
and production eciencies, all of which can generate competitive
advantage.
Table 3.1a illustrates the above, with each column headed by one of the four
motivations and the vertically descending entries being the behavioral
force, the management orientation and the action focal points corresponding to each motivational category.
CMA Framework for NGOs
To illustrate the CMA framework for NGOs we use three motivational categories, followed by the corresponding behavioral forces, management orientation and action focal points.
Funding-driven The behavioral force being a concern for organizational
survival, with a management orientation of nancial sustainability, and
action focal points being, for example, fundraising and earned income
activities; partnerships enter in as a new source of revenue generation.
Capabilities-driven Behavioral force focuses on organizational eectiveness, managerially oriented toward optimizing resource mobilization
and deployment, with actions on developing skills and organizational capacity, and obtaining new capabilities; partnerships oer access to new
resources that can strengthen or complement the NGOs current capabilities.
52
Table 3.1a
Collaboration motivation action framework: companies
Motivational
categories
Compliancedriven
Risk-driven
Values-driven
Businessopportunitydriven
Behavioral
forces
Legal
obligation
External
threats
Core beliefs
Economic
self-interest
Management
orientation
Preserving
status quo
Averting
negative
consequences
Validating
institutional
integrity
Capturing
economic
gains
Action
focal points
Politics
Legislation
Regulation
Reputation
protection
Philanthropy
Corporate social
responsibility
Reputation
enhancement
Resource access
Consumer
patronage
Product
dierentiation
Market
expansion
Employee
enrichment
Employee
loyalty
Supply
development
Production
eciencies
Competitive
advantage
Mission-driven Behavioral force being centered on the cause, management emphasis on goals, and actions focused on outcomes and assessment;
partnerships identify companies that have a signicant degree of congruency with the NGOs mission. Table 3.1b summarizes the above.
There is insucient empirical evidence to state which motivations for
businesses or NGOs is most prevalent. In using these CMA frameworks,
one should recognize that companies and managers might have a mix of
possible motives rather than just a single one. Accordingly, the resultant
action points might also contain a mixed conguration. The frameworks
provide a way of systematically clarifying the motivations and then examining each corresponding chain to decide if, where and how a collaboration
would be most eective.
53
Table 3.1b
Collaboration motivation action framework: NGOs
Motivational
categories
Funding-driven
Capabilities-driven
Mission-driven
Behavioral
forces
Organizational
survival
Organizational
eectiveness
Social cause
Management
orientation
Financial
sustainability
Optimizing
resources
Goals
Action
focal points
Fundraising
Earned income
Personnel skills
Organizational
capacity
Outcomes
Assessment
3.2
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE CMA FRAMEWORK
To illustrate the foregoing collaboration motivation action framework and

how accessing distinctive resources held by potential partners constitutes
the rationale for collaborating, we analyze a few businessNGO sustainable
development alliances.
Case study: TetraPak and Junior League of Mexico (Austin and Recco
et al., 2004)
TetraPak was the largest producer of multi-layer packaging for beverages
in Mexico. Its used containers were a signicant contributor to the solid
waste disposal problem in Mexico City and beyond. Every month, Mexico
City disposed of 35 million of these containers, which require three decades
to disintegrate in solid waste disposal sites. Governmental and public
concern was rising and stricter regulations were being discussed by legislators. In the early 1990s, an environmental NGO emptied a trailer load of
used containers in front of TetraPaks company gates, which was an environmental wake up call for the company.
For the company, the motivations for action were worries about compliance with potentially costly regulatory actions and risk mitigation of negative reactions by governmental, community and consumer groups. The
NGO Junior League was motivated by its mission of community betterment and a need to mobilize additional capabilities in order to have an
impact on the increasingly acute environmental problem of solid waste disposal. Alone, the NGO simply would not be able to alter the system.
TetraPak joined forces with Junior League to undertake a new approach to
the problem by launching a program named Naturally Recyclable to shift
54
from a disposal strategy to recycling. This required the leadership skill

(cited in the previous chapter by Gray) of visioning a new approach.
Their strategy also was to dene the issue and its solution in systemic
terms. This would involve the entire chain of actors encompassing dierent
types of packaging manufacturers, processors using the packaging, distributors, end consumers and the public waste disposal organizations. This
was a leadership task of reframing the solution in what Gray referred to in
the previous chapter as the direction-setting phase. The eorts focused on
education and coordinated actions throughout the entire chain to deal
more eectively with the problem collectively, rather than simply spotlighting a single company. Junior League brought the credibility of a
community-oriented third party to the process, which facilitated eliciting a
more favorable reaction than would have been possible through traditional
lobbying by the company of government ocials. TetraPak brought to
Junior League a major player with action capabilities to help solve the
problem. Its presence also induced other companies to join in the eort,
thereby achieving critical mass for impacting the problem. Both the NGO
and the company applied their respective convening powers to attract all
the dierent key actors in the value chain so that a systemic approach was
possible in the implementation phase.
Case study: Starbucks Coee Company and the NGOs
Starbucks, the worlds leading gourmet coee marketer, has relationships
with various NGOs that illustrate distinct motivational perspectives. Two
of these stand in interesting contrast. First, the company entered into an
alliance with Conservation International (CI), a major environmental
NGO, in a project involving small coee growers in Chiapas, Mexico
(Austin and Reavis, 2004). This project sought to promote shade-grown,
organic coee utilizing environmentally appropriate production processes
that would preserve and enhance the buer zone habitat around El Triunfo
Biosphere Preserve, a major government environmental reserve. While the
company had received criticisms and pressure from the Audubon Society
about migratory bird habitat destruction due to coee planting, Starbucks
joining up with CI was more opportunity-driven than risk-driven. Assisting
the small coee growers also had an element of values-driven motivation
because part of the companys core beliefs was providing value to all of its
stakeholders, including the countries of origin of its coee.
On the pragmatic opportunity side, the company recognized the strategic
need to ensure sustainability of small coee growers in order to guarantee
an expanding supply of high-quality coee essential to its high-growth
strategy, opening three new retail stores every day. However, the company
did not traditionally deal directly with small growers, nor did it have
55
environmental expertise. CI had begun working with small growers before

its partnership with Starbucks as a priority area for achieving its mission of
environmental preservation through altering coee cultivation practices,
and it sought out Starbucks collaboration. Starbucks had the buying
power to create economic incentives through premium prices for quality
coee, which would enable CI to attract more farmers into environmentally
friendly production methods and scale up its small experiment. CI had the
environmental expertise and ability to work directly with small growers that
Starbucks lacked. Thus, each could access needed capabilities that the other
possessed. Starbucks additionally provided funding to CI, as did the
United States Agency for International Development, which saw great sustainable development value in this partnership.
A second StarbucksNGO interaction that also dealt with its coee
supply, but quite distinctly, was with two NGOs: Global Exchange and
TransFair USA. Global Exchange is a Fairtrade advocacy organization that
confronted Starbucks through exhortations at its annual meeting to have the
company buy Fairtrade coee. TransFair works in tandem with Global
Exchange as a Fairtrade-certifying NGO, so while it promotes the sale of
Fairtrade coee, it is more an enabler of the transactions between coee
cooperatives and coee buyers. The confrontational approach of Global
Exchange stood in stark contrast with CIs collaborative approach. Global
Exchange posed reputational risk to Starbucks both with consumers and
with its internal workforce, as criticisms might call into question the credibility of the companys commitment to countries of origin, part of its core
values. However, a fundamental obstacle was whether the coee produced
by small farmer cooperatives associated with TransFair would produce the
high-quality coee that is key to Starbucks success. The company did enter
into a contractual agreement with TransFair to buy certied Fairtrade
coee as long as it met the companys quality standards. While this was
largely a risk-mitigation arrangement for the company to avoid Global
Exchanges criticisms, it did open up the opportunity to develop a new
commitment to origin coee lines that encompassed Fairtrade and shadegrown coees. For TransFair, the contract with Starbucks was basically a
transactional relationship from which the certication fees signicantly
increased its revenues and nancial sustainability as well as contributed to
its social mission of bettering the economic conditions of small coee
growers.
Case study: Natura and the Amazonian product line (Austin and Recco
et al., 2004)
Natura is Brazils leading cosmetics manufacturer and marketer.
Environmental enhancement and community betterment are central to its
56
corporate values, strategy and operations. While it has leading-edge practices

in eco-eciency production and environmental footprint operations, it also
envisioned an opportunity to produce a natural-based product line derived
from renewably extracted ingredients found in the Brazilian Amazon. The
production of the ingredients was to be carried out in partnership with local
community organizations as a new and sustainable economic activity. Thus,
it was dealing with community groups rather than formal NGOs. Given the
communities very precarious economic situation and meager incomeproducing alternatives, their motivation for entering into the partnership with
Natura was driven by the opportunity to receive new funding and income.
The company also partnered with an NGO that served as a third-party
verier of the social and environmental integrity of the process. The resulting Ekos product line was a commercial success, as it created a dierentiated
premium product for the export and domestic markets. There was the added
bonus that the Natura direct salesforce were also highly motivated by being
able to oer this socially and environmentally attractive product that was
also distinctively dierent for the consumers. It created a basis for the salesforce to engage in a dierent type of conversation about the product and
establish a richer social and emotional connection with the clients.
Each of the foregoing examples revealed how dierent motivations can
propel alliances that contribute to sustainable development. However, it is
important to recognize that an alliance per se need not necessarily have a
positive or signicant developmental impact. The type of motivations may
inuence the potential outcome. Companies motivated primarily by compliance may try to use an alliance to do the legal minimum or to avoid regulations rather than to make a signicant advancement from the status quo.
Similarly, risk avoidance motivation may narrow the companys focus on a
particular potential problem area, thereby limiting the scope of potential
social contribution. Or it might even lead to using non-prots, for example,
in cause-related marketing arrangements to oset possible criticisms of
company practices that might have adverse environmental consequences. It
may be that values-driven motivations reduce the possibility of such social
manipulation. Motivations focused on business opportunity partnerships
could run the risk of the pursuit of the prot potential crowding out the
concern for contributions to sustainability.
From the NGO side, the risk of partnering without contributing to sustainability is probably greatest when the funding motivation is dominant.
Agreeing to a window-dressing cause-related marketing arrangement as
suggested above might be such an instance. The mission-driven motivation
is most likely to ensure a positive social contribution. The capabilitiesdriven motivation could cut either way, with a focus on leveraging the
57
organizations assets to maximize social or nancial performance through

partnering, with positive or negative consequences in terms of furthering
sustainable development. Thus, it is important in the discussions among the
partners to dig deeply and honestly into the motivational mix and to lay
explicitly on the table the issue of how important to each of the partners is
a contribution to sustainable development. That contribution will also be
inuenced by the nature of the relationship between the partners.
3.3
RELATIONSHIP EVOLUTION
Whereas the foregoing CMA framework provides a basis for understanding the motivations for engaging in social actions, sustainable development
is an enduring process. Therefore, it is important that we also examine partnerships as ongoing relationships that experience a dynamic evolution. The
CMA framework is related to the evolutionary framework because some of
the motivational factors inuence what type of relationship is established
and how it develops over time.
Research on businessNGO relationships has revealed a collaboration
continuum (Austin, 2000) depicted in Figure 3.1. This framework identies
three types of relationships and a set of descriptive parameters that evolve
as an alliance moves along the relationship continuum:
1.
2.
3.
The philanthropic stage is the traditional and most common relationship in which the company largely plays a nancial benefactor role for
the NGO. The non-prot is funding-driven and the company may be
altruistically or pragmatically driven, attaining some internal and
external reputational enhancement, values credibility and perhaps risk
reduction. While the philanthropic relationship is benecial to both, it
is generally not particularly demanding or strategically vital to either
partner.
When the relationship moves into the transactional stage the interaction focuses on specic projects or activities with set goals and time
lines. The value exchange becomes more two-way and more relevant to
mission. More and dierent types of resources are mobilized.
In the integrative stage the two organizations begin to have more and
deeper points of intersection in terms of mission, strategy and activities. The strategic alliance in this stage is more complex and demanding but is generating greater benets for the partners and for society.
There is nothing automatic about progressing along the continuum, and

in each relationship dierent parameters might fall at dierent points on the
58

Stage I
Stage II
Stage III
Nature of relationship
Philanthropic
Transactional
Integrative
Level of engagement
Importance to mission
Magnitude of resources
Type of resources
Scope of activities
Interaction level
Trust
Managerial complexity
Strategic value
Low
Peripheral
Small
Money
Narrow
Infrequent
Modest
Simple
Minor
High
Central
Big
Core competencies
Broad
Intensive
Deep
Complex
Major
Source: Based on Figure 2.1, p. 35 in Austin (2000).
Figure 3.1
The collaboration continuum
continuum. Furthermore, although most alliances that do evolve seem to

start in the philanthropic stage, it is possible to leapfrog directly into a transactional relationship, and in rare circumstances launch an integrative
alliance.
3.4 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE COLLABORATION

CONTINUUM
I shall now illustrate the continuum dynamics in several sustainable development partnerships.
Case study: Monsanto and the Mexican Foundation for Rural Development
(Austin and Lozano, 1999)
Monsanto is one of the worlds largest suppliers of agro-inputs to large
commercial farmers. Some of its employees began helping small farmers as
a purely philanthropic endeavor. This activity increased the companys
awareness of the needs of this producer segment and also the perception
that the companys products and services could enhance farmer productivity and incomes signicantly. In the aggregate, small farms constitute half
of the globes farmland, thereby representing a strategically important
market opportunity. Rather than just seeing the small landholders as needy
charity cases, the company reconceptualized them as productive agents
warranting serious attention.
Thus, the motivation for engagement in this sustainable development
activity, referring to the CMA framework, was opportunity-driven based on
59
the business potential. However, the company had little experience with and
knowledge of this producer category. Similarly, the small farmers had never
interacted with the company and even harbored suspicions about big companies. To build a bridge between the two, Monsanto turned to the Mexican
Foundation for Rural Development (FMDR in Spanish), an NGO that had
been working for decades with small farmers throughout Mexico to improve
their livelihood. FMDR brought to the partnership deep knowledge and
trust relationships with the community. Monsanto provided funding to
FMDR to assist in the eort to work with the small farmers to identify
and test out dierent technology practices. The company, through its corporate foundation, provided donations to the communities to assist in
meeting non-production but important social needs. Thus, there was an
ongoing philanthropic activity, but in parallel the collaboration moved
toward a transactional relationship focused on the production and incomeenhancement project that was a form of market development for the
company. The model aimed at migrating the farmers along a technology
adoption process to the point where increased incomes would enable the
farmers to purchase, on their own volition, the inputs that they deemed
desirable. Thus, Monsanto moved from an initial altruistic motivation of
helping poor farmers to a more utilitarian focus of developing a new client
segment. The FMDR was attracted to the collaboration because it brought
in the new set of technological capabilities of the company, which oered
new paths to achieve their mission of enhancing farmer incomes.
Case study: Starbucks and the NGOs
Returning to the Starbucks alliances we nd two dierent types of relationship. The interaction with TransFair was denitely a transactional one,
tightly dened contractually, and with a fee for the Fairtrade label usage.
There was never any philanthropic stage. Nor did it evolve beyond the transactional relationship. TransFair deemed that it needed to have an armslength relationship with the company and resisted oers by the company to
work together to improve small farmer cooperative coee quality.
In contrast, while the relationship with Conservation International began
with a transactional focus on the Chiapas project, it has evolved into a more
integrative stage. Starbucks mounted similar collaborations with CI in
several other countries, made donations to CI, engaged jointly with CI to
formulate sustainable coee production and procurement guidelines for the
company and the industry, and its CEO joined the CI board of directors.
Case study: Georgia-Pacic and The Nature Conservancy (Austin, 2000)
Georgia-Pacic (GP) is a major timber products company and The Nature
Conservancy (TNC) is the largest environmental landholding NGO in the
60
United States. These two organizations had traditionally been opponents

facing o over environmental destruction issues surrounding the commercial exploitation of forests. The starting point of the relationship was as
adversaries; they had not even made it onto the collaboration continuum.
Yet, they evolved into being allies.
This dynamic was driven by fundamental reconceptualization of their
respective strategies by two new CEOs. GP concluded that its repeated confrontations with environmental groups were costly and inconsistent with a
growing green consciousness among consumers. A senior vice-president
described the shift:
in our environmental journey we have recognized that environmental stewardship is an important element in how we manage our mills and our nearly six
million acres of commercial forest land. And cooperative partnerships and
proactive alliances are a growing part of our environmental strategy and commitment to sustainability.
The company shifted from a compliance motivation to a risk-mitigation

and business-opportunity approach.
TNC also made a strategic shift, as explained by its then CEO: The
Conservancy has recognized that in some ecosystems protecting rare plants
and animals need not exclude economic activity, in this case, logging. Thus,
there was a dierent vision of how to achieve its mission, which enabled a
reconsideration of the nature of the relationship with companies. The two
organizations entered into a joint management agreement of North
Carolinas Lower Roanoke forest wetlands area owned by GP and including environmentally valuable habitat. The two organizations combined
complementary scientic and forest management skills to develop a novel
forest stewardship approach that enabled both some set-asides of environmentally sensitive areas and lower-impact timber extraction processes. This
initial project was transactional in its specic geographical focus but integrative in terms of shared goals and collective decision-making. Because of
the positive results of this initial collaboration, the two organizations
undertook additional partnering actions in other locations.
Case study: Rainforest Expeditions and the Eseje community (Austin and
Recco et al., 2004)
Rainforest Expeditions is an eco-tourism company operating in the
Peruvian Amazon region in the indigenous Eseje community. The company
was launched by some environmentalists who had been working in the
Eseje community with the original idea being to obtain permission to
operate tours and a lodge in the communitys rainforests, and employ some
of the community members. The international development agency that
61
agreed to provide start-up capital for the venture insisted on the community being an integral part of it. This resulted in a reconguration as a
5050 joint venture Posada Amazonas integrating the company and the
community in ownership and operation, with the company training the
community members in the new skills that would ensure organizational
sustainability. Thus, this entity was born as an integrative relationship and
its evolution involved making that an operating reality.
3.5
VALUE-GENERATION PROCESS
The sustainability of a collaboration is dependent on its capacity to generate value for the partners, and the amount of value generated is dependent
on the magnitude, type and conguration of resources deployed. Thus, the
dynamics of moving along the collaboration continuum are signicantly
shaped by the value-generation process.
Dening Value
In cross-sector collaborations, value is in the eyes of the beholders. In samesector partnerships like business-to-business collaborations, the unit of
value is generally the same, namely nancial return. However, as was indicated in our initial collaboration motivation action framework, businesses
and NGOs are driven to collaborate by dierent motivations and seek distinct kinds of benets. While there are some important points of congruency, often around the shared goal of societal betterment, the specic
benets sought, produced and harvested by the partners are not strictly
comparable. This complicates value assessment because fairness of the
exchange rests on the respective perceptions of the partners rather than a
readily measured common outcome. Nonetheless, the principle of balance
must be adhered to; each side must perceive that the benets each is receiving relative to their investments are deemed fair to them. Balance does not
imply that the benets are equal in kind; in fact, they will be dierent in
kind because each side is pursuing dierent forms of benet. Balance refers
to the partners respective judgments that the benets received are justiable relative to the costs expended. Without perceived fairness in the
value exchange, interests will not be aligned and the short-changed side will
lose interest and disinvest. One side may believe that it is getting more
benets than the costs it expended, and that may be enough to sustain its
engagement in the partnership. However, the risk exists that it may perceive
that the other side is getting much larger benets even if these are of a
dierent kind than the costs it expended. This sense of unfairness in how
62
the pie is divided may demotivate the partner and erode trust. The collaboration may not be sustainable.
Type of Resources Deployed
While it is obvious that increasing the quantity of resources invested in the
alliance by the partners will likely generate greater value, the type of
resources they mobilize appears to leverage the value-generating process. If,
as is common in the philanthropic stage, they are mobilizing generic or
commonly held resources such as cash donations by companies, or the
general goodwill that emanates from most NGOs, they will certainly
produce benets to each partner and probably society. However, greater
value generation is possible if the partners deploy their core assets, those
elements that are central to making them successful organizations in their
respective domains. Such key assets might include their technical skills,
market knowledge, technologies, infrastructure, distribution systems, communications capabilities, administrative systems, institutional and personal
networks, brand, reputation and so on. These assets have particular value
to the opposite partner because they do not possess them, yet they can
enable the production of a benet that would not otherwise be possible for
either partner by itself. This is consistent with the partnering rationale
asserted in resource dependency theory. But rather than just deploying
ones special asset on behalf of the partner, even greater value can be produced if the partners have complementary assets that can be combined to
create an entirely new production value chain. Thus, it is the resource
conguration in addition to the resource type that determines value generation. Let us explore some examples.
In its collaboration portfolio, Starbucks also had a partnership with
CARE International, a leading NGO dedicated to relief and community
development (Austin, 2000). While this started out more as a values-driven
philanthropic relationship, it migrated into the transactional stage as
opportunities for deploying key assets were discovered. For example, to
celebrate CAREs ftieth anniversary, Starbucks, instead of simply providing a cash donation, put on a special promotion in thousands of its stores.
There were standalone informational kiosks about CAREs mission and
important development work in coee-producing communities and a collection of coees from those countries, the purchase of which would generate prot-sharing with CARE, special CARE mugs and t-shirts and
banners. As the CARE Regional Director put it, For a non-prot, this was
a died-and-gone-to-heaven promotion from a highly visible, cool, fastgrowing company. In eect, Starbucks leveraged its distribution infrastructure and its superb point-of-purchase merchandising skills to generate
63
enormous exposure for CARE, its mission and its good work in sustainable
development. A cash donation to CARE by the company would never have
enabled the NGO to buy such exposure. CARE, for its part, used its distinctive community development knowledge and contacts to operate projects in coee-producing countries, which enabled Starbucks to fulll its
corporate values commitment to countries of origin. Starbucks could not
have done that by itself. Each partner used its core competencies to benet
the other.
In Starbucks partnership with Conservation International, both sides not
only used their core competencies, but combined these complementary assets
to create a new value chain producing greater economic benets for small
farmers, a new and more powerful performance model for CI, a distinctive
product for Starbucks, attainment of environmental enhancement and sustainable production systems for CI, Starbucks and the small coee growers.
Capturing the synergies across the partners asset mix and between social and
economic value is an important avenue for sustainable development.
Rainforest Expeditions partnership with the Eseje community to create
the Posada Amazonas eco-tourism lodge also involved combining core
assets. The unique natural resource of the community and the members
knowledge of it were fused with the environmental entrepreneurs capacity
to mobilize funds and organize and manage an enterprise to compete in this
international market. The global eco-tourism industry has become highly
competitive and many companies oer experiences in the Amazon. It has
turned out that the joint venture with the community has proven to be a
distinguishing feature for Posada Amazonas, which has enabled it to win
tourists preference over other lodges oering similar environments and
even lower prices but without an integrative partnership with the community. Strategic alliances can create competitive advantage.
3.6
PERFORMANCE DETERMINANTS
While there are many factors that determine the performance of a collaboration, I highlight some that appear from my and others research on
cross-sectoral collaborations of various types to be salient in many successful and sustainable strategic alliances between businesses and NGOs
(Austin, 2000; Austin and Recco et al., 2004):
Clarity and congruency of objectives Ambiguity about purpose causes
confusion, which can lead to disappointment or even conict. While each
partner will have certain objectives that are specic to their partnering
motivation set, there needs be sucient overlapping of shared objectives to
64
create alignment and cohesion. Strong alliances invest signicant time up

front to achieve clarity and congruency.
Value generation and distribution Creating value is the focal point of
strong collaborations. They know how to use and combine their core
competencies to create distinctive and powerful new value chains. The
partners perspective on the process seems particularly important. The
high-performing ones are guided more by the question How can I create
value for my partner? than by the question What am I going to get out
of this? The result is a virtuous circle of reciprocity that keeps producing
greater value than expected, which in turn raises the value-generation bar
continually.
Capabilities and accountability The partners must have the institutional
capacity to deliver on the proposed value proposition. In some instances,
part of the partnering process has been for one partner to help the other in
the development of those capacities. In the stronger alliances, the partners
set high performance standards and expectations, and then they hold each
other accountable for delivering on them. Good intentions do not suce in
strategic alliances.
Communication and trust Fluid and frequent communication through
formal and informal channels are essential to avoiding misunderstandings
and ensuring alignment of goals and actions. It is through this interaction
that the social capital of interpersonal relationships gets built. Matching
the words with deeds produces credibility and builds trust. This intangible
asset and the personal chemistry create the organizational glue that creates
alliance cohesion.
Learning and commitment Collaborations are not born; they are built. It
is a continual learning process. As Barbara Gray pointed out in the previous chapter, there are a multitude of barriers that impede the development of cross-sector alliances, ranging from dierent organizational
cultures, control issues, conicting goals, stereotyping and costs (Crane,
2000; London, Rondinelli and ONeill, 2005). Consequently, the partners
have to be open to the inevitability of dierences of all kinds and be committed to learning how to overcome such challenges in order to learn how
to work together more eectively in order to create ever greater value. The
stronger alliances are characterized by a problem-solving attitude. There
is a recognition that problems will arise and errors will be made, and so
the task is to try to deal with them constructively rather than eeing from
them.
3.7
65
CONCLUSION
BusinessNGO partnerships are not a panacea for sustainable development. And there are those in the environmental community and other segments of the non-prot world who express deep reservations about
collaborating with businesses, as they are perceived as part of the problem
rather than the solution (Milne, Iyer and Gooding-Williams, 1996). So, too,
are there skeptics in the business camp. Nonetheless, there is growing evidence from the proliferation of such partnerships that important contributions to the development process can be realized through collaboration.
The role of the academy is to accelerate its scrutiny of cross-sector partnering to deepen our theoretical and applied understanding of the phenomena so that we can contribute to the advancement of the frontiers of
knowledge and practice. This chapter, hopefully, has contributed to that
task, but there is more to be done.
In that spirit and as a closing comment on our collective future research
agenda, I raise the following question: is there anything about sustainable
development that creates distinctive dimensions to cross-sector partnering?
The partnering examples I have used in this chapter have been alliances
related to sustainable development. However, the frameworks used, the
analyses presented and the conclusions about performance determinants
stated above are also applicable to and substantiated by businessNGO
collaborations in other social value-creating areas not related to sustainable
development.
Of course, one of the accompanying imperatives and complications
is reaching agreement on what constitutes sustainable development.
Denitions can vary from very narrow environmental foci to much broader
socioeconomic dimensions. The broader the denition, the less likely the
distinctiveness of collaboration processes. At higher levels of abstraction or
conceptualization about the collaboration phenomenon, applicability
tends to become more generalizable. Thus, to discover dierences, one possible path of inquiry is to focus on more micro-level, eld-based research to
ascertain if there are distinctive characteristics of sustainable development
collaborations that emerge from the very nature of sustainable development processes.
Embedded in this research process is comparative analysis, whereby sustainable development collaborations would have to be analyzed against
other types of collaborations. In this regard, one might hypothesize that
sustainable development, particularly environmental components, might
be more likely than other social areas to give rise to conicting objectives
as companies commercial activities might be detrimental to sustainability.
Thus, the barriers to collaboration and the relationship dynamics might
66
have some distinctiveness. More specically, one might also hypothesize

that advocacy NGOs will nd it more dicult to collaborate with businesses than service non-prots because their perceived function is to
provide oversight of companies activities and to force corrective or preventive actions to adverse business practices. This is illustrated by our
example of the advocacy NGO Global Exchange that pressured Starbucks
on the Fairtrade issue to obtain corrective action; collaboration was simply
not in the NGOs repertoire. In contrast, Conservation International, a
service NGO, was able to collaborate with the company because combining resources would lead to superior achievement of the social and institutional missions. Even some advocacy NGOs in the environmental and
human rights elds among others have actually entered into collaborations
with businesses, which suggests that barriers to collaboration are surmountable. Deepening our understanding of how this occurs is an area
meriting further research.
There is much remaining to be discovered. The potential benets of
cross-sector collaboration have not yet been fully realized. There is urgency
in continuing our research journey.
REFERENCES
Andrio, J., S. Waddock, B. Husted and S. Rahman (2002), Unfolding Stakeholder
Thinking: Theory, Responsibility and Engagement, Sheeld, UK: Greenleaf.
Austin, J.E. (2000), The Collaboration Challenge. How Non-prots and Businesses
Succeed Through Strategic Alliances, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Austin, J.E. and G. Lozano (1999), Mexican Foundation for Rural Development,
Harvard Business School Case 9-300-082.
Austin, J. and C. Reavis (2004), Starbucks and Conservation International, Harvard
Business School Case 9-303-055 rev. 1 April, 2004.
Austin, J. and E. Recco et al. (2004), Social Partnering in Latin America. Lessons
Drawn from Collaborations of Businesses and Civil Society Organizations,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Berger, I.E., P.H. Cunningham and M.E. Drumwright (2004), Social alliances:
company/non-prot collaboration, California Management Review, 7(1),
5890.
Child, J. and D. Faulkner (1998), Strategies of Cooperation: Managing Alliances,
Networks, and Joint Ventures, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crane, A. (2000), Culture clash and mediation, in J. Bendell (ed.), Terms of
Endearment, Sheeld, UK: Greenleaf, pp. 16377.
Gray, B. (1989), Collaborating. Finding Common Ground for Multiparty Problems,
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
London, T., D.A. Rondinelli and H. ONeill (2005), Strange bedfellows:
alliances between corporations and non-prots, in O. Shenkar and
J. Reuer (eds), Handbook of Strategic Alliances, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
pp. 35366.
67
Milne, G.R., E.S. Iyer and S. Gooding-Williams (1996), Environmental organization alliance relationships within and across non-prot, business, and government sectors, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 15(2), 20315.
issues: challenges to theory and practice, Journal of Management, 31(6),
December, 84973.
4. Partnership as a means to good

governance: towards an evaluation
framework
Jennifer M. Brinkerho
Partnership has been a fad in public administration and good governance
practice for some time. The logic of working across sectors and organizations to maximize available skills, expertise and resources is taken for
granted. Conceptions of what government should be responsible for have
become starting points for discussion, not end points of allocating assignments. While these developments have opened a world of possibilities and
potential innovation, the practice and success of partnership approaches in
contributing to good governance remain stymied by the absence of a
guiding theory that could serve both to inform the rationale for particular
types of partnership approaches and divisions of labor and to ensure
eectiveness through rigorous evaluation.
Governance is fundamentally about managing competing interests for
the common good. Broadly construed, governance can be seen as incorporating and integrating three related components: eectiveness, legitimacy
and security (Brinkerho, 2007). In the partnership context, this latter
dimension primarily concerns conict prevention and resolution. To date,
partnership has most commonly been promoted as a means of enhancing
governance eectiveness; this is most evident, for example, in the new
public management. Partnership is also a value-laden endeavor, and may
be promoted for purposes of representation and conict resolution. In
general, individual actors choose to partner for one or more of the following four reasons (Brinkerho, 2002d):
1.
2.
To enhance eciency and eectiveness through a reliance on comparative advantages and a rational division of labor. This entails incremental (though possibly dramatic) improvements in the delivery of
development initiatives.
To provide the multi-actor, integrated solutions required by the scope
and nature of the problems being addressed. Without this approach,
the eort would be impossible.
68
Partnership as a means to good governance
3.
4.
69
To move from a no-win situation among multiple actors to a compromise and potential winwin situation (i.e., in response to collective
action problems or the need for conict resolution). It may be possible
to continue without partnership but stakeholders would remain
dissatised and continue to incur losses.
To open decision-making processes to promote a broader operationalization of the public good. The normative dimension seeks to maximize
representation and democratic processes; the pragmatic perspective
views this as a means to ensure sustainability.
These rationales have clear implications for good governance beyond

eective service delivery, and highlight, in particular, how partnership may
contribute to its legitimacy component, and to managing competing interests and conict.
Partnership among diverse actors is a mainstay of governance approaches
across technical sectors and policy issues, yet it has not yet been suciently
conceptually situated in broader governance frameworks, nor have the
implications of such contextualization for partnership eectiveness been
explored. One of the larger questions that remains surprisingly underaddressed in partnership research is what partnership has to contribute to
improving governance as it is dened in the current dominant paradigm of
good governance.
If we intend for our partnership approaches to contribute to improving
governance, we must account for the relational dimensions as discussed
by Gray and Austin in the foregoing chapters which can also lend themselves to (or against) legitimacy, and to managing competing interests
and conict. This chapter: (1) revises my previously published partnership evaluation framework (Brinkerho, 2002a) to account for a more
explicit assessment of partnerships contributions to good governance;
(2) examines partnerships potential contributions to the three facets of
governance eectiveness, legitimacy and conict management; and
(3) suggests assessment targets for each of these. Selected examples illustrate partnerships contribution to improved governance in the environmental sector.
4.1 PARTNERSHIP EVALUATION AND GOOD

GOVERNANCE: A REVISED FRAMEWORK
Essential to gauging partnerships contribution to good governance is
a deeper understanding, appreciation and assessment of the relationships among partners and their impact on each of the three governance
70
dimensions. As Ellinger, Keller and Ellinger (2000) found, both interaction

(meetings and information exchange) and collaboration (teamwork,
sharing and the achievement of collective goals) are positively associated
with performance, but, more specically, collaboration mediates the relationship between interaction and performance. In other words, the nature
of interaction matters. Thus, relationship dynamics are important to evaluating any partnership, including those intended to contribute to improved
governance. The proposed evaluation framework examines partnerships
perceived governance impact and actual governance outcomes, answering the question: how does the partnership contribute to governance
eectiveness, legitimacy and conict management?
This section adapts my earlier partnership evaluation framework
(Brinkerho, 2002a) in light of and for the purpose of gauging partnerships contribution to governance eectiveness, legitimacy and conict
management, as summarized in Figure 4.1. The adjusted framework
includes related assessment targets for partnership structure, process and
outcomes.
Because partnership structure is so crucial to governance outcomes, particularly legitimacy, I have added it as a general area of assessment. I have
also added a feedback loop connecting general success factors and
eciency to prerequisites. A key component of strategically managing
partnerships is to create and strengthen success factors. The gure illustrates and conrms that partnerships can be initiated in the absence of
some of the prerequisites and success factors identied in the literature, as
long as these become the subject of development through partnership
processes. This is especially true, for example, for partnerships designed to
mediate among competing interests (see Brinkerho, 2002b). Partnerships
may have to prove their worth to contributing stakeholders before stakeStructure
Process
Outcomes
Outcomes of
Partnership
Relationship:
Partnership
Practice
Prerequisites
Partnership
Structure
Partner
Performance
Success
Factors and
Efficiency
Effectiveness
Legitimacy
Conflict
management
Figure 4.1 Causal chain for partnerships contributions to good

governance
71
holders demonstrate a willingness to adapt to meet partnership needs. And

partnership champions may similarly emerge or be strengthened once the
partnerships potential becomes clearer. While governance components are
listed explicitly under outcomes, they are also directly implicated in partnership structure and process.
An explicit evaluation focus on good governance dimensions augments
targets in each component of the causal chain. For example, prerequisites
and facilitative factors generally include perceptions of partners tolerance
for sharing power and their willingness to adapt to meet the partnerships
needs, and the existence of partnership champions, both within each participating organization and for the partnership as a whole (Brinkerho,
2002d). Considering governance dimensions would call more attention
to the nature of implicated conicts (Hirschman, 1994), if relevant.
Structural characteristics would also need to be considered, including the
partnerships ties to traditional forms of public legitimation (Wlti,
Kbler and Popodopoulos, 2004), an assessment of who participates and
how (ibid.), the extent and design of formal and informal accountability
mechanisms (see Cheema, 2003; Barrados, 2004; Brinkerho, 2006) and
the presence of forums for exchange and learning across stakeholder
groups. Accordingly, partner performance would encompass adherence to
legitimate structures, and recognition of traditional forms of public legitimation (Wlti et al., 2004).
Some of these input and process assessment targets are illuminated in the
deeper treatment of good governance outcome targets discussed below.
4.2 PARTNERSHIP CONTRIBUTIONS TO

GOVERNANCE EFFECTIVENESS
The rationale of partnership approaches under the new public management centers on enhancing eciency and eectiveness of public service
delivery. This is consistent with most traditional evaluation approaches
that focus primarily upon the outcomes of programs and structures.
Measuring partnership eectiveness also encompasses evaluating the
eectiveness of the partnership relationship and its value-added the
subject of my earlier partnership evaluation framework. In emphasizing
eectiveness of governance outcomes, partnerships are primarily a means
to an end.
Building on partnerships dening dimensions and value-added, partnership can contribute to governance eectiveness in ways that correspond to the more general rationales for pursuing partnership approaches.
First, it can enhance eciency and eectiveness through a reliance on
72
comparative advantages and a rational division of labor. This entails

incremental (though possibly dramatic) improvements in the delivery of
development initiatives. Second, it can enable actors to address problems
that otherwise would remain beyond the grasp of any one actor owing
to scope or complexity. Third, it can foster agreements among competing or conicting actors that prevent progress or solution. And, nally,
it can ensure sustainability of eectiveness by fostering buy-in among
participants.
North (2004) argues that in order to contribute to economic performance, or eectiveness, partnership must produce supporting incentives
by reducing transactions costs. That is, partnership has potential to
address information asymmetries related to: measuring the costs and
benets of production and services in order to reduce corruption; protecting individual property rights; enforcing agreements and integrating
knowledge that is dispersed throughout society. Put another way, partnership can respond to the three big problems of intelligent institutional
change identied by March and Olsen (1995): conict (to be discussed
below), ignorance and ambiguity. Picciotto (2004) adds partnerships
potential to reduce free-riding, particularly in the production of public
goods. Eectiveness also can be self-reinforcing. That is, to the extent that
service delivery is eective, stakeholders will be more willing to comply
with their expected contributions, hence sustaining eectiveness (for
example, in the water and sanitation sector, see Stalker Prokopy and
Komives, 2001).
Partnership eectiveness is dicult to assess objectively. Lubell (2003)
calls attention to perceived eectiveness as a key element in determining
support for various policy-making mechanisms. He applies the advocacy
coalition framework to argue that perceived eectiveness is not just a function of objective costs and benets, but also whether or not collective decisions are made in a way consistent with the normative preferences dened
by policy-core beliefs, that is, those regarding policy-making processes and
goals within a particular policy subsystem (p. 310). Perceived eectiveness
is more likely to occur where there is less uncertainty (e.g., supportive
scientic research) with respect to the causes and consequences of the problems and solutions the mechanism addresses. Such values congruence and
related perceptions of eectiveness matter because they can become selffullling prophecies and impact both participants willingness to continue
to make committed contributions and other stakeholders perceived legitimacy and support.
Proposed assessment targets for partnerships contributions to governance eectiveness are shown in Box 4.1.
BOX 4.1
73
PARTNERSHIP CONTRIBUTIONS TO
GOVERNANCE EFFECTIVENESS
1. Relationship effectiveness:
partner contribution compliance;
meeting respective partner objectives;
value-added related to effectiveness and efficiency

(necessarily impressionistic with anecdotal evidence).
2. Reduction of transaction costs. Enhanced or shared ability to:
measure the costs and benefits of producing goods and

services;
protect property rights;
enforce agreements;
integrate dispersed knowledge;
reduce free-riding.
3. Effectiveness reinforcement:
perceived effectiveness and willingness to continue

expected contributions;
availability of scientific knowledge to support decisions.
Case example: StarTrack

In the environmental sector, multi-sectoral approaches to regulatory reform in the United States have enabled the incorporation of exibility and
incentives for compliance that top-down, government-led, one-size-ts-all
regulatory frameworks could never match. Rigid, one-size-ts-all approaches are a rational response to information asymmetry, but do not yield
the most ecient and eective outcomes. For example, the StarTrack
program in New England, United States, is a voluntary third-party
certication program (EPA New England, 1999; 2000). It addresses several
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) eectiveness challenges, including: insucient resources to inspect all regulated facilities; the limits of
environmental laws and regulations to address the full range of environmental problems and lack of information and experience for leveraging
private companies decisions to implement environmental monitoring
systems to improve environmental quality. Under StarTrack, participating
facilities self-audit their environmental management and compliance
performance; prepare and publish an annual performance report and
submit these audit results for review and certication by an independent
third party every three years. In turn, the facilities receive recognition for
74
participation and compliance, modied inspection priority and penalty

mitigation for violations corrected within designated time periods.
Partnership approaches, such as StarTrack, allow environmental regulators to capitalize on incentives for voluntary compliance, with a reliance
on industry associations and self-regulation, focusing on setting regulatory oors (minimum standards with attention to incentives), as
opposed to enforcing ceilings (see Eisner, 2004). Gains in eciency and
eectiveness derive largely from the partnership between regulators and
industry associations, where these associations can be relied upon to tailor
regulatory standards to industry specications (addressing information
asymmetries), supplement funding and attention to compliance and technical assistance, enhance responsiveness of regulations to industry needs
and enforce compliance through industry codes that set the standard for
membership.
4.3 PARTNERSHIP CONTRIBUTIONS TO

GOVERNANCE LEGITIMACY
There is increasing attention, including formal research, focusing on the
relationship of partnership to legitimacy. The good governance paradigm
seemed to assume that partnership approaches would yield expanded participation, which would automatically yield increased accountability.
Instead, as Glasbergen has shown in the rst chapter of this book, ironically, partnership can be the source of legitimacy challenges. Indeed, auditors have raised concerns about accountability, transparency and the public
interest with regard to new governance mechanisms (Bemelmans-Videc,
2003). Legitimacy derives from (1) structure: notably, who participates?
(2) process: how do they participate? and (3) outcomes: are promises kept
and expectations met?
Wlti et al. (2004) review arguments that the new governance paradigm
may actually close the space available for accountability. They nd that,
while there is a rationale for these critical arguments, new governance
mechanisms do not automatically lead to unaccountable outcomes
and perceived illegitimacy. They cite potential challenges to democratic
quality deriving from two sources. First, deliberative critics argue that
new governance models bring public decision-making into expanded
technocratic spheres, where participation is limited to selected, unelected
technical experts who are not accountable to the general public. Not only
is this potentially undemocratic, it may also be ineective: the more citizens regard public policies as products of a deliberative process among
equals rather than outcomes of sheer power relations, the more likely they
75
accept them (ibid., p. 93). Wlti et al. (2004) explore the deliberativeness
of these new mechanisms according to their relationship to traditional
forms of public legitimation, including participation of elected ocials,
participants attitudes vis vis public debate (i.e., necessary and legitimate
versus noisy and unhelpful), links to political control (e.g., through
executive agencies or the legislature) and incorporation of referenda
processes.
Second, participatory critics believe that the new governance models may
limit the breadth of citizen participation and thus inhibit community
organization and solidarity. Expanded participation is an important end in
itself as it presents opportunities for learned citizenship and the emergence
and reinforcement of social cohesion. Wlti et al. (2004) nd that when
partnership represents an expansion of participation, rent-seeking by a few
may be reduced. But expanded or unlimited participation is not always
desirable. They point out that participation can also be managed so as to
combat the tyranny of the majority, that is, to overcome societal biases
and limited technical understandings, and to secure the voice of the underprivileged and under-represented. As a caveat they argue, it cannot be
legitimate to include or discourage actors simply because they do not
adhere to the dominant policy paradigm (Wlti et al., 2004, p. 106).
A key factor in governance legitimacy is democratic accountability.
Skelcher (2005) stresses that in democratic systems citizens are enabled to
give consent to and pass judgment on the exercise of authority (p. 89). A
fundamental requirement, then, is exit and voice (Hirschman, 1970).
Legitimacy is challenging in polycentric governance mechanisms precisely because the lines of authority are not clear. In the absence of generally accepted rules and norms, related institutions emerge as ad hoc
designs tailored to specic circumstances, yielding problematic results for
legitimacy, consent and accountability. Skelcher (2005) reviews a range of
legitimacy, consent and accountability approaches, linked to various
structures. Legitimacy can derive from and accountability may be
directed toward: members of a partnership, determined by member
assessments of costbenet ratios; government mandates and performance results or constituencies, deliberative processes and performance
results. He also promotes a consociational approach, where legitimacy and accountability are grounded in representation, and consent is
based on mutual adjustment and nonviolation of entities core values
(Skelcher, 2005, p. 105).
One of the perennial challenges to accountability of partnerships is
not just the how, but the who. To whom should various partnerships
be accountable? The literature and practice in all sectors concur that at a
minimum internal accountability that is, among the partners is one
76
component. But as noted above, if partnership is to contribute to good

governance, external accountability (and to more than just funders) is also
necessary. As Skelchers (2005) alternatives suggest, external accountability
can be targeted either directly to citizens (e.g., direct and open participation, such as through polity-forming mechanisms) or indirectly to citizens (through government agency mechanisms mandated by government,
sometimes with the participation of elected ocials). Internal accountability entails an emphasis on compliance, suggesting bureaucratic (rules, procedures, role descriptions) and market (e.g., contracts) mechanisms of
control, which allow for exit. Together, these are the foundation for predictability in the operational processes of the partnership.
Three types of accountability are relevant for both internal and external accountability: (1) nancial (the intended and actual use of nancial
resources); (2) performance (meeting agreed-upon performance targets)
and (3) political (rewarding and sanctioning partnership participants,
systems of checks and balances between the partnership and government, fulllment of mandate promises and public trust and ensuring the
aggregation and representation of citizens interests) (Brinkerho, 2006,
as modied with respect to partnerships). As a source of internal
accountability, Cheema (2003) includes administrative accountability, or
internal standards, incentives and ethics codes. External legitimacy
derives from both internal (among partners) and external transparency.
Transparency refers to open processes of reporting, review and decisionmaking.
In seeking to address the legitimacy challenges of new governance
models, Barrados (2004) reviews essential elements of a governance framework as proposed by the Canadian Auditor General (1999). The framework
calls specic attention to accountability (subdivided into reporting and
accountability mechanisms), transparency and the protection of the public
interest. Reporting encompasses publicly available statements regarding
the partnerships public objectives, performance expectations and measurement and reporting on progress (Barrados, 2004, p. 131). Barrados (2004)
elaborates on the framework in her discussion of accountability mechanisms, which encourage transparency of both structure and process,
including:
clear roles and responsibilities of each of the parties involved;

realistic performance expectations, given the resources, personnel
and authorities of the new arrangement;
well-dened management structure, for example, corporate boards,
professional management and nancial controls;
appropriate monitoring regime;
77
partner dispute-resolution mechanisms;

procedures to deal with non-performance;
specic evaluation and audit provisions; and
appropriate audit regime (paraphrased from pp. 1313).
Also under this framework, transparency should encompass public access

to information, and communication of information on key policies and
decisions (ibid., p. 133). Finally, with respect to the public interest, such
arrangements should include: citizen complaint and redress mechanisms,
public consultation and feedback mechanisms and policies to promote pertinent public sector values (e.g., fairness, impartiality, equity, honesty, prudence and openness), as perhaps outlined in codes of conduct and conict
of interest (ibid., pp. 1334).
Proposed assessment targets for partnerships contributions to governance legitimacy are shown in Boxes 4.2 and 4.3.
BOX 4.2
GOVERNANCE LEGITIMACY
1. Ties to traditional forms of public legitimation:
Participation of elected officials.
Presence of sunshine clauses, ranging from decisionmaking participation to voice to observation.
Attitude vis vis public debate (i.e., legitimate consideration or superfluous noise).
Presence of accountability to government structures or

independent rulings (political control).
Presence of referenda processes (i.e., citizen recourse).

2. Polity/Community (e.g., who participates?):
Do all relevant actors have a voice?
Is the participation of the under-represented or underprivileged increased?
Are particularistic interests overcome?
Opportunities for enhancing solidarity and citizenship

learning.
3. How do they participate?
Compliance with participation rules, for example, representation, consultation, participation in implementation,
participation in decision-making.
78
BOX 4.3
ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISM
ASSESSMENT TARGETS (ARE
PROMISES KEPT AND
EXPECTATIONS MET?)
1. Giving an account:
Structure:
clear public statements re: public objectives and key
strategies;
public statements of performance expectations;
publicly available description of roles and responsibilities of each party;
well-defined management structure (e.g., financial
controls, decision-making authority, legal identity and
liability);
presence of partner dispute-resolution mechanisms;
procedures to deal with non-performance;
evaluation and audit provisions;
appropriate audit regime;
Process:
appropriate measurement and reporting on progress;
Outcomes:
reporting outcomes.
2. Holding to account (compliance):
financial accountability;
performance accountability;
political accountability (e.g., checks and balances,

rewarding and sanctioning participants, fulfillment of
public mandates, ensuring aggregation and representation of citizens interests);
administrative accountability (e.g., internal standards,

incentives, ethics codes).
3. Direction of accountability:
members/partners;
government agencies;
citizens;
beneficiaries.
79
Case example: Sustainability North West

Shaw and Kidd (2001) provide an example of an environmental partnership
structure that contributes to governance legitimacy. Sustainability North
West is a multi-sectoral partnership that promotes sustainable development
in the North West region of England. Its leaders are drawn from all sectors
and the organization evolved from local tradition and experience with legitimated environmental partnerships. The partnership took as its starting
point the vision of existing publicly and government-endorsed plans, the
North West Regional Economic Strategy and the Regional Planning
Guidance, with explicit goals to support government-mandated structures
and agencies, the Regional Assembly and the North West Development
Agency. Sta are drawn from existing active environmental voluntary
organizations, and it maintains a sector-representative board of directors
and a board of advisors with links to key regional government agencies.
Shaw and Kidd (2001) argue that this structure has earned the credibility of
citizens and direct stakeholders alike, and was particularly important in a
region with otherwise deep problems of social exclusion. The multi-sectoral
and representative organizational structure enabled Sustainability North
West to explore the meaning, implications and associated activities supportive of sustainable development from a range of perspectives relatively
free of the economic, political and institutional constraints facing many
public and private sector organizations (ibid., p. 122).
4.4 MANAGING COMPETING INTERESTS

AND CONFLICT
This is perhaps the least studied governance dimension vis vis partnership
contributions. Yet partnerships contributions in this arena should be highlighted: without attention to conict prevention and management, we do
not gain a comprehensive appreciation for partnerships potential role in
contributing to good governance more generally and we continue to lack
meaningful criteria for its assessment. Such an understanding and the use
of related criteria can help to inform potential trade-o decisions regarding the three dimensions of governance and between partnership and
alternative approaches.
First, it is important to identify the ultimate target of partnerships contribution in this area. While partnership can serve to prevent conict, it
does not necessarily eliminate latent conict. Dierences in interests, goals
and attitudes constitute sources of latent conict; these are unavoidable in
any society. It is violent action that makes conict manifest. The aim of
conict prevention is to reduce the likelihood that conict will become
80
manifest through violent action. Mobilizing individuals to violent action

entails a change in their psychological state. Northrup (1989) identies four
stages in this process: (1) perception of threat; (2) distortion of information; (3) rigid interpretations of the world (4) and dehumanization of
other. Thus, in general, partnership potentially contributes to conict prevention and management by reducing the likelihood that latent conict will
become manifest through reducing stakeholders perceptions of threat,
providing access to more complete and veriable information, fostering
more exible and tolerant interpretations of the world and encouraging
recognition of common ground with others.
Conict is at the very heart of governance. In his thoughtful essay, Social
conicts as pillars in democratic market society, Hirschman (1994, p. 209)
cites Rustow (1970) (among others) who strongly argued that democracy
has generally come into existence not because people wanted this form of
government or because they had achieved a wide consensus on basic
values but because various groups had been at each others throats for a
long time and nally came to recognize their mutual inability to gain dominance and the need for some accommodation. That is, the common good
that binds citizens in a polity is not one that emerges from deliberation, but
is the process of deliberation itself. Hirschman explores and nuances what
he calls the Dubiel-Gauchet hypothesis: that social conicts produce valuable ties that hold modern democratic societies together (Dubiel, 1990;
1991; 1993), and conict is an essential factor of socialization producing
integration and cohesion (Gauchet, 1980; see also Rdel, 1990). These
processes yield a democratic miracle (ibid.), where human beings and
social groups go through all the motions of out-and-out confrontation
and end up building in this odd manner a cohesive democratic order
(Hirschman, 1994, p. 206).
Hirschman goes on to signal the need for and make a contribution to
the distinction of types of conict that can yield this fortuitous result. He
argues that in a pluralist market society, demands are based on both selfinterest and genuine concern for the public good, yielding both bargaining and arguing (Hirschman, 1994, p. 212). This is consistent with the dual
concern model, whereby stakeholders seek to balance concern for others
outcomes with concerns for their own, and where concern for others outcomes may become instrumental, that is, ultimately serving ones own interests (Rubin, Pruitt and Kim, 1994). Furthermore, he distinguishes between
more-or-less oriented conicts and all-or-nothing ones, and highlights the
importance of perceptions of temporary versus once-and-for-all solutions
for the likelihood of manifest conict. In market societies, he argues,
conict tends to be of the more-or-less type (despite periodic claims otherwise), yielding an impression that solutions are context- and time-specic
81
and that the debate can be reopened as needed. In sum, Hirschman

identies three characteristics of conict conducive to the pillars of democratic society: (1) frequent and diverse, making learning possible; (2) divisible with potential for compromise and bargaining; and, as a consequence,
(3) yielding perceptions that solutions can be revisited. Hirschman also
calls attention to the role of cross-cutting cleavages.
Drawing from the literature on ethnic conict, Chandra (2001) calls for
a nuanced understanding of identity, which assumes instability in group
boundaries and preferences. Privileging a single dimension of identity
might over time destroy the capacity to organize politics along other
dimensions (Chandra, 2001, p. 350). Crossed categorization, where group
membership is shared or overlaps, reduces bias and hence polarization
among groups because it: (1) increases the complexity of social categorization; (2) decreases the importance of any one in-group/out-group distinction; (3) highlights the fact that the out-group consists of dierent
subgroups; (4) increases classication of others in terms of multiple dimensions; and (5) increases the degree of interpersonal interaction and trust
across category boundaries (Brewer, 2000; see also Hewstone, Rubin and
Willis, 2002). Furthermore, cross-cutting cleavages prevent conict because
they create multiple loyalties, mutual dependencies, and common interests
(Coser, 1956 quoted in Leatherman et al., 1999, p. 59).
Social capital, particularly bridging social capital, is also relevant to
conict and security. Continuing to draw lessons from ethnic conict literature, the absence of social networks across groups can lead to tension and
distrust among groups (Fearon and Laitin, 1996). Varshney (2001) posits
that when exogenous shocks, tensions or rumors lead to intra-group
engagement, the common result is inter-group violence; but when these
lead to inter-group engagement the result may be inter-group peace.
Partnership approaches represent just this type of inter-group engagement.
Bridging social capital emphasizes heterogeneous networks, where members have greater opportunities to access information and understanding
beyond their current intra-group resources (see, for example, Burt, 2000).
Through repeat interaction and the discovery of shared needs and interests,
bridging social capital prevents the dehumanization of other (see, for
example, Northrup, 1989; Rubin et al., 1994).
In their examination of governance mechanisms for drug policy in
Switzerland, Wlti et al. (2004) present anecdotal evidence to suggest that
governance mechanisms may channel particularistic requests and create
the preconditions for reasoned and informed decisions that call for
common sacrices in favor of stigmatized groups (p. 105). Or as March
and Olsen (1995) put it, Clashes among private interests may be transformed by deliberation into a question of what is good for the community
82
and acceptable in it (p. 84). But such outcomes rest on inclusive or legitimate processes: Provided that they are suciently inclusive, governance
mechanisms enhance deliberative reection and prevent participants from
acting without sucient consideration of the consequences for others
(Wlti et al., 2004, p. 105). Wlti et al. (2004) add that lack of political
acceptance or even citizen protest about partnership outcomes is not a
good indicator for lack of public accountability. In fact, high public protest
might instead suggest that public deliberation and debate are underway in
the public sphere. Furthermore, sharp disagreements may eventually yield
more resilient solutions and agreements than supercial and premature
consensus.
Papadopoulos (2000) rightly warns that partnership approaches could
just as easily intensify conict as actors may discover that conicts are
more numerous and deeper than previously assumed. This realism suggests that partnerships that bring together potentially conicting parties
may demonstrate a bell curve in terms of intensity and range of conict.
That is, one might expect a growth in conict intensity and range as parties
come to understand the issues and respective actors and interests better,
but these are likely to diminish through continued deliberation. In fact,
in reecting on the experience of Irelands social partnership, which
yielded its Celtic Tiger status, a former Director of the National Economic
and Social Council stated, Partnership involves the players in a process
of deliberation that has the potential to shape and reshape their understanding, identity and preferences. . . . This suggests that rather than being
a precondition for partnership, consensus and shared understanding are
more like an outcome (ODonnell, 1998, p. 27 quoted in House and
McGrath, 2004).
Proposed assessment targets for partnerships contributions to managing
competing interest and conict are shown in Box 4.4.
Case example: World Commission on Dams
In the environmental sector, the World Commission on Dams represented
a partnership as a social network mediator for resolving a global conict
(Brinkerho, 2002c). The issues involved in large dam projects are complex
and varied, entailing technical (engineering and geological), socio-cultural
(resettlement, cultural heritage), environmental, economic/nancial, moral
(human rights) and political dimensions. It is clear that no one stakeholder
commands the necessary skills and information to understand and incorporate all of these. The history of conict over large dam projects includes
murder, willful life-threatening protest, international campaigns both on
environmental and human rights grounds, resultant stoppage of dam projects and calls for the decommissioning of dams.
BOX 4.4
83
MANAGING COMPETING INTERESTS
AND CONFLICT
1. Provision of forums for exchange and mutual learning:
reducing stakeholders perceptions of threat;
providing access to more complete and verifiable

information;
fostering more flexible and tolerant interpretations of the

world;
encouraging recognition of common ground with others;
supporting bridging social capital.

2. Nature of conflict:
self-interest and common good;
repeated conflict interactions (for trust building and

learning);
more-or-less versus all-or-nothing (conducive to compromise and bargaining);
perceptions that solutions can be revisited (process in

place).
3. Identity construction:
emphasizes common identities;
respects diversity;
multiple loyalties;
mutual dependencies;
access to information and understanding beyond intragroup offerings.

4. Interest outcomes:
growing attention to common good over particularistic

interests;
public protests that confirm deliberation is under way;
bell curve of conflict intensity and range.
Building on a shared dissatisfaction with the status quo, diverse stakeholders agreed to support a World Commission on Dams (WCD) to
develop standards, criteria and guidelines to inform future decisionmaking. The WCD was comprised of 12 members, with an internationally
recognized chairperson. The commissioners represented varied perspectives but were expected to shed their institutional aliations in order to
84
overcome the conict among positions, and to create a new spirit for the
work to be carried out by the team (Liebenthal, 1999). Activities centered
on building a knowledge base, implementing an elaborate communications action plan, and developing the nal report. The work was guided
by principles of consultation, inclusion and transparency, with a process designed around two concepts: independence from vested interests
and balance in terms of perspectives represented (including sources of
nancial support) (WCD, 1999). The WCD encountered much conict
among stakeholder groups both in its start up and implementation. The
nal report (WCD, 2000) acknowledged deep fault lines that continue to
separate dam critics and proponents but nevertheless proposed a new
framework for decision-making, which emphasizes environmental and
social costs and introduces an inclusive rights and risks approach that
promotes identifying and including all stakeholders in negotiating development choices.
4.5
INTERDEPENDENCE AND TRADE-OFFS
In isolation, partnerships contributions to each of the governance dimensions is relatively straightforward. However, these contributions, and
the dimensions themselves, are interdependent, at times mutually reinforcing and at others, generating trade-os. For example, perceptions of
transactions costs reduction and absence of free-riding (eectiveness
enablers) produce legitimacy. Similarly, transparency contributes both to
eectiveness and legitimacy. As noted above, eectiveness can be reinforcing when it incentivizes stakeholders to remain committed to their
expected contributions. And conict management contributions are not
possible without perceived legitimacy of the eort. Because of these
interdependencies, some assessment targets may inform all three types of
partnerships governance contributions (eectiveness, legitimacy and
conict management).
The trade-os are often more readily recognized than the reinforcements
because of the challenges they present. Eciency and eectiveness may be
enhanced by limiting the range of participation but this has trade-os for
legitimacy in terms of accountability and democratic participation. It
furthermore limits opportunities for learned citizenship and social cohesion (contributors to the conict management dimension). Moe (2001)
argues that quasi-governmental structures are sometimes selected precisely
because they have limited accountability, which aords greater attention
and prioritization to performance and results in the achievement of the
desired policy (Moe, 2001 quoted in Skelcher, 2005). Indeed, partnership
85
approaches are often couched in the language of entrepreneurism. Skelcher

points out that such a stance reduces transparency of decisions at the core
to emphasize instead the reporting of results. Caplan (2003) explicitly
emphasizes the trade-os between accountability and innovation, putting
each at respective ends of a continuum used for designing partnerships. He
notes that these are not mutually exclusive, though partnerships at any one
time tend to lean more in one direction than the other. A challenge, then,
is to strike a design that meets the context-specic needs for responsiveness
and exibility on the one hand, and grievance mechanisms, results and
institutional buy-in on the other.
4.6
SOME COMMENTS ON METHODOLOGY
Those most interested in assessing governance implications of partnership

approaches may not be the participants themselves, or such an interest may
not be equally shared among them. Therefore, this discussion, the causal
chain and proposed assessment targets are oered as a starting point from
which more precise indicators and assessment instruments may be developed jointly with participants or by independent evaluators. Given the
emphasis on governance and governance outcomes, a wider range of
methods will be needed, including stakeholder surveys and focus groups. A
thorough assessment of partnerships contribution to good governance will
also require comparison of selected assessment targets to baseline data. All
of these methods would need to be tailored to the specic objectives and
context of a particular partnership and to priority issues and questions
with respect to its contributions to good governance.
An important caveat, noted in my earlier framework, remains important.
Because many benets of partnership work derive from the relationship
itself, and because all relationships are dynamic, partnership assessment
should be seen as an evolving process. While movement is not automatically
uni-directional (i.e., always leading towards a positive direction) the potential for partnerships added-value tends to develop over time and experience. This means that partnership cannot be expected to yield immediate
results, though this may occur. More likely, it is as partners become more
familiar with each others strengths, weaknesses, operations and representatives that synergistic rewards will emerge. This process not only entails an
increase in mutual understanding, but also trust building.
Since partnerships are dynamic, they have the potential to yield dierent
costs and benets at dierent stages of their development. Furthermore,
as they become more eective and institutionalized relationships, one
should expect a gradual shift in emphasis within the partnership work, from
86
being activity-driven to becoming more strategic, looking and planning for

opportunities to yield synergistic rewards. This caveat suggests humility
in the expectations of what partnership can deliver in the short term, and
the need for diligence in ensuring that partnership dynamism moves in a
positive direction, toward greater understanding, trust and consequent
eciencies. It also conrms the need to revisit and possibly redesign assessment indicators and processes periodically.
4.7
CONCLUSION
Partnership is often promoted as if it were a panacea to all ills, whether to

solve a particular policy or service delivery challenge, or, more generally, as
implicit evidence of improved governance. Its practice is consistent with the
dominant good governance paradigm that views government as a facilitator of private initiative, steering rather than rowing. Yet little evidence
exists that partnerships outcomes meaningfully contribute to improved
governance outcomes. No systematic eort has been made to examine
governance consequences of partnership, particularly in terms of governance legitimacy and security.
Further specication and application of the framework can yield better
understandings of how to attain improved governance and, specically, how
partnership may or may not be a contributing factor. Through experience
and in context-specic applications, indicators can be identied and rened.
Framework applications could enable quantitative analysis of component
correlations. For example, to what extent is the degree of partnership correlated with perceptions of legitimacy and conict outputs? How important
are prerequisite/facilitating factors to governance outcomes?
This chapter has sought to contribute to our continuing eorts to
improve governance, in this instance, through identifying criteria for assessing partnerships potential contributions. While good governance continues to be hailed as the most important outcome of development and
political processes, general understandings of how to attain it, especially
through active interventions, remain focused on interventions that are
specically designed to meet this objective. Yet, there is a much wider range
of possibilities to improve governance. Indeed, it may be that good governance is best achieved through deliberations that center on established concerns, rather than to try to create momentum articially behind targeted
programming. Issues around which stakeholders are already compelled to
act may be the best entry points for promoting good governance. This
chapter builds upon a limited body of knowledge that seeks to support
these broader perspectives on good governance. Notably, D. Brinkerho
87
(2000) outlined the possible linkages between sector reform eorts and
democratic governance promotion. Partnership is an additional approach
for operationalizing these synergies.
Beyond this more general contribution, the chapter calls attention to
partnerships contributions to all three governance dimensions and suggests associated assessment criteria. Attending to the full range of partnerships potential role in furthering good governance may:
1.
2.
3.
increase partnerships desirability as a mechanism for policy and

program design and implementation;
call attention to trade-os among governance dimensions and, by
extension, alternative approaches; and
enable actors to better capitalize on these contributions, improving partnerships eectiveness, legitimacy and conict management outcomes.
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PART 2
Partnerships as governance mechanisms:

the instrumental perspective
5. Enabling environmental
partnerships: the role of good
governance in Madagascars forest
sector1
Derick W. Brinkerho
In todays world, loss of forest cover, shrinking biodiversity, climate change
and increased global competition for natural resources (e.g., fossil fuels,
water, minerals) have all heightened awareness of the importance of
environment and natural resources (ENR) policies and management.
Developing and developed countries alike confront the need for sustainable
resource use. The challenges are particularly acute for the developing
world, where large numbers of people are directly dependent upon natural
resources for their livelihoods, poverty is widespread and state ENR management capacity decits are large.
In light of these challenges, a major analytic focus has been upon policy
regimes and institutional arrangements that support the sustainable management of common property resources. These arrangements bring
together state and non-state actors in partnerships for resources management. Researchers have built an extensive literature on local management
of common property resources (e.g., forests, sheries, rangeland, coastal
zones and irrigation water). Many developing countries, assisted by international donors, have experimented with such partnerships and have
devolved some control over resources to local users.
Capitalizing on the full potential of these partnerships, however, requires
attention to larger questions of statesociety relations and governance.
This is an area where the natural resources co-management literature has
less to say, constituting what Agrawal (2001) identies as an analytic gap.
This chapter looks at the role of state actors in ENR partnerships, focusing on how governance enables cross-sectoral collaboration. Employing
concepts from good governance, the chapter develops a framework for
analyzing how government can support environmental partners in managing resources sustainably. The chapter applies the framework to ongoing
reforms in the forest service (DGEF: Direction Gnrale des Eaux et
93
94
Partnerships as governance mechanisms
Forts) in Madagascar, and assesses the challenges involved in the governance changes necessary to enable eective ENR partnerships. The chapter
concludes with some lessons from Madagascars experience that are applicable to other countries and contexts.
5.1 TRENDS IN ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL

RESOURCES POLICY
An examination of ENR policy evolution in developing countries reveals
two overarching trends. The rst is decreased reliance on control-oriented
policies, which involves a move away from exclusive reliance on centralized
regulation and proscriptive policies toward a broader array of incentives,
including market-based regulation. The second is increased participation
of resource users in policy decisions and resource management, reected in
devolved partnerships that share ENR responsibilities between central and
local levels. These policy shifts increase the potential for partnerships
between state and non-state actors to serve as steering mechanisms for
ENR management by reducing the reliance on command and control, and
by increasing user participation. Figure 5.1 summarizes these trends and
the following sections provide elaborating discussion.
Although the matrix identies four distinct quadrants for purposes of
illustration, the two dimensions are in reality more accurately thought of
as continua. Thus, as user participation increases, reliance on command
Higher
Lower
Lower
Reliance on Command and Control Policies
Extent of User Participation
Figure 5.1
Higher
I
Resource protection
II
Resource co-management
Centralized regulatory
enforcement and policing
Decentralized regulatory enforcement,

joint local authority and community
policing
III
Resource pricing
IV
Resource self-management
Market-based incentives and

enforcement, centralized
regulation and monitoring
Local user-determined rules,

community monitoring and
enforcement
Typology of ENR policy strategies
Enabling environmental partnerships
95
and control decreases; the relative degrees of increase and decrease allow
for a wide range of policy expression in practice.
Decreased Reliance on Command and Control
Developing countries have traditionally relied heavily on regulatory and
administrative policy strategies for environmental and resource management, which face serious constraints on their eectiveness. The limitations
of centralized regulatory approaches are both operational, that is, emerging from the implementation and management burden they impose, and
structural, deriving from the incentive structures they create for regulators
and regulated inherent in the rules and regulations. Turning to the operational weaknesses rst: command and control strategies emphasize regulation, impose quantitative restrictions on resource use or pollution
outputs and require screening of investments for environmental impacts.
These tasks are administratively intensive, and they place a premium on
information, communication, data collection and analysis. In addition, to
work appropriately, they require exibility for adaptation to local conditions. Yet in many countries this critical adaptation step has not been taken.
Given the well-documented capacity decits of developing country public
sectors, the reliance on command and control strategies, administered by
centralized agencies, has not resulted in eective environmental management, despite the existence of a legal framework. Morell and Poznanskis
observation of 20 years ago remains broadly applicable today:
many of the statutes, laws, and regulations in developing countries contain
admirable rhetoric: strong environmental goals, relatively strict standards,
actions designed to alleviate ecological damage and avoid new environmental
problems. In reality, however, enforcement of these laws has been weak or nonexistent, particularly in rural areas. (Morell and Poznanski, 1985, p. 139)
These agencies, like the rest of the public sector, tend to be overly hierarchical, starved for budgets, inadequately staed and highly centralized. While
there is an appropriate role for regulation and law enforcement as part of any
national strategy for ENR policy management, many analysts and practitioners highlight the constraint that weak implementation capacity poses,
and note in particular the perverse incentives created when governments
pursue command and control policies without regard for their ability to
implement.
There are also structural limitations to the regulatory approach to ENR
policy, which is embodied in systems of rules and regulations that are essentially proscriptive, imposing penalties and nes for violations. The emphasis
is on donts rather than dos or mays. Where administrative and political
96
factors lead to selective and spotty enforcement, policy implementation

opens the door to distortion of incentives as users seek to circumvent regulations, and to corruption as enforcers engage in rent-seeking.
Increased Participation of Resource Users
The second ENR policy trend is in the direction of expanded involvement
of stakeholders in policy decisions and implementation. Participation has
long been recognized as instrumental for the achievement of development
objectives, particularly poverty reduction. Numerous studies cite the centrality of local participation to sustainable resource utilization decisions
and practices (Shaikh et al., 1988; Chopra et al., 1990). This policy trend
has led to a gradual inclusion of economics, agriculture and social services into ENR in recognition of the fact that resource users do not compartmentalize their lives; thus resource conservation strategies must
incorporate sustainable livelihood considerations. On the implementation
side, this trend has led to experimentation with ENR partnership
arrangements to take advantage of the unique knowledge and capacities
of local people, and to achieve synergistic outcomes (McNeely, 1995;
Agrawal and Gibson, 1999; Agrawal, 2001; Shackleton et al., 2002;
Berkes, 2004).
The trend in addressing administrative capacity gaps in public-sector
ENR agencies has been to establish partnership arrangements in which
certain implementation functions are devolved to NGOs, NGO associations, local communities, and/or private rms. One of the major forces
pushing for such partnerships is the lack of government capacity to
implement ENR programs eectively. The performance record of developing country public agencies in promoting sustainable NR conservation
and management is, with a few exceptions, uniformly poor. While some
ENR policy functions must necessarily reside with the state, others can
be accomplished by non-state entities. The record is clear that without
engaging resource users in ENR management, the state alone cannot
successfully protect and manage ENR; this is the core rationale for
partnerships.
In broad terms, environmental partnerships that bring together state
and non-state actors can be dened as interactions designed to achieve
resource protection and sustainable use objectives through the combined
eorts of both sets of actors, but where the roles and responsibilities of
each remain distinct. The objective of these partnerships is to produce
more and/or better results than if the partners operated independently; in
short, to create synergistic eort. To make this happen, it is important that
objectives be clearly and mutually specied; that there are appropriate
97
mechanisms for combining eorts and managing cooperation; that roles,

responsibilities, authorities and comparative advantages are clearly understood and that each side has the space and capacity to carry out its part (see
Vira et al., 1998).
Partnerships that assign local groups substantial authority and autonomy to determine and apply ENR rules and incentives fall into the category
of NR self-management (quadrant IV of Figure 5.1). The role of the state
is indirect and relatively hands-o. Local actors are free to employ shared
decision-making, locally determined access and use rules, and site- and
resource-specic knowledge to achieve sustainable resource outcomes.
Partnerships where local participation takes place within a national or
regional policy framework that pairs government agencies with local
groups more closely are referred to as NR co-management (quadrant II).
Co-management partners share power and responsibility for ENR systems
(Berkes, George and Preston, 1991). In practice, relatively few instances of
pure self-management are found; the distinction between self- and comanaged NR is one of degree.
For ENR partnerships, the appropriate function of government is to
empower and support local self-governing entities to manage NR through
selective devolution of authority and the creation of key enabling conditions (see Western and Wright, 1994). Two dimensions need to be
addressed to make them operate eectively. The rst is the appropriate
allocation and sharing of authority and responsibility between state and
local non-state actors. The second is the operational capacity of those
actors to fulll their responsibilities under a shared ENR policy regime.
The possibilities for partnerships are strongly inuenced by the characteristics of a countrys governance system; this topic is addressed in the following section.
5.2 GOOD GOVERNANCE: ENABLING

PARTNERSHIPS
Research ndings have increasingly demonstrated the links among successful socioeconomic development, sound economic and social policies
and government capacity coupled with political will (see, for example,
Burnside and Dollar, 2000). These ndings have been incorporated into
reform agendas under the broad rubric of good governance. Because of
the expansive nature of the term, good governance can be dened in
various ways. In general, governance concerns how a society organizes to
solve public problems, set policies, allocate resources and produce public
goods. A major implication of the concept is that governance involves more
98
Private Sector
Major source of
economic growth,
opportunity and
employment
Partner with public
sector for service
delivery
Private
Sector
Public Sector
Public Sector Steering

and Regulating
Government enables
provision of:
Public services
Citizen welfare
Economic opportunity
With delivery by:
Public agencies
NGOs
Private sector
Civil Society
Civil Society
Voluntarism
Voice and advocacy
Aggregation of citizen interests
Watch-dog
Figure 5.2
Governance framework
than simply government actors in the public sector. Non-state actors the
private sector and civil society have important roles to play. Further, the
practical manifestations of governance choices emerge from political
decisions and the exercise of political power. These choices are then operationalized in policies, institutions, rules and regulations. Figure 5.2 illustrates this denition, and highlights the dierent roles that public, private
and civil society actors play in governance.
Figure 5.2 captures in visual shorthand the dominant good governance
model that undergirds the worldwide governance reform movement. In
terms of economics, the model conrms the market as the primary organizing principle of societies. Governments role is to assure sound macroeconomic policy, maintain the rule of law and enforcement of property
rights, develop a market-supporting regulatory framework and promote
private-sector investment.
Administratively, the model advocates a downsized government that provides basic services and infrastructure eciently and eectively, through a
combination of direct provision, contracting out and partnership with the
private sector and NGOs. Public administration is decentralized, responsive, exible and participatory to bring the state and citizens closer
99
together. These features increase eciency and eectiveness, as well as

oering citizens a stronger voice in governance.
The political dimension of the model focuses on democratic governance
mechanisms, including selection of political leadership through elections,
accountability and integrity systems, conict resolution and consensusbuilding institutions and procedures. Democratic governance addresses
social equity and inclusiveness, management of diversity, broad-based
legitimacy and protection of vulnerable groups. It seeks to open the policy
and resource allocation processes beyond closed circles of elites, and
devolve meaningful authority to local bodies that are accessible to citizens.
Although there is some variation in the details of how the model is conceived and applied, the elements or principles of good governance are relatively consistent, as identied by most analysts. The following list represents
a widely accepted set of components:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
rule of law;
transparency and a free ow of information;
accountability;
eective management of public resources;
control of corruption; and
citizen participation.
Table 5.1 oers specics on each of these elements.

One approach to measuring governance is assessment of the extent to
which a countrys governance processes fulll (or fail to fulll) the principles of good governance. This approach has been widely used by international donors and international NGOs. For example, the World Bank has
devoted intense eort to developing comparative rankings of countries on
governance scores, and the US governments Millennium Challenge
Corporation (MCC) has adopted a rating scheme to qualify countries for
assistance that incorporates besides indicators related to investing in
people and economic freedom a set of governance indicators in a category the MCC calls ruling justly (www.mca.gov). Well-known indexes
that focus on international comparisons of key elements of good governance include Transparency Internationals Corruption Perception Index,
and Freedom Houses Democracy and Freedom Audits. These types of
scorecards are used both to make comparisons across countries and to track
individual countries improvements (or declines) over time.
Worldwide experience in the ENR sector clearly demonstrates how failures to meet the criteria for good governance, as embodied in the list of
components for example, inappropriate and/or misapplied rules and
regulations, opaque procedures, unaccountable and weak institutions and
100
Table 5.1
Elements of good governance
Element
Denition
Rule of law
Existence and application of predictable, recognizable,

systematic rules and procedures to regulate norms and
behaviors plus accepted means of adjudicating
disputes: enforceable body of law, security of contracts
and property, independent and eective judiciary
Transparency and free

ow of information
Information related to public resources, utilization

and results is made available and circulates freely
Decision criteria and decisions are disclosed
Media and civil society have access to information to
keep citizens informed
Accountability
Relationships of checks and balances that allocate

power and authority; obligation to answer for actions
and decisions, provide information and submit to
sanctions
Eective management
of public resources
State assures basic public goods, fullls regulatory

and steering functions and pursues appropriate
economic and social policies
Private sector and civil society fulll rowing functions
to large extent
Control of corruption
Structures, procedures and their application that

minimize illicit use of public power and resources
for private gain (monopoly discretion
accountability corruption)
Citizen participation
Engagement of citizens in creating public goods; with

shared roles for government, civil society and private
sector
Includes basic civil/human rights, concern for equity
and institutional space for engagement
high levels of corruption can erode valuable natural assets, fail to support
sustainable use and increase the vulnerability of the poor (e.g., Roy and
Tisdell, 1998; Barrett et al., 2001). Many countries have undertaken policy
reforms to reduce the dominance of the public sector in ENR governance
in favor of increased partnering with the private sector and with local
communities, and to revise the role of government agencies, such as forest
services, toward facilitating and regulatory functions. The next section
briey overviews Madagascars experience in the forest sector in terms of
the elements of good governance.
5.3
101
MADAGASCAR AND FORESTRY POLICY
Madagascar, a large island o the west coast of Southern Africa, is home

to unique biodiversity. Largely rural and poor, its growing population is
highly dependent on the NR base, and environmental pressures lead to soil
erosion, deforestation and declines in agricultural productivity. Between
1960 and 2000, Madagascar lost about 40 percent of its forest cover, and
estimates are that the country continues to lose about 1.2 percent of its
remaining forested area per year (World Bank, 2004b). In an eort to
shrink environmental degradation, the government launched a comprehensive national environmental planning exercise in the mid- to late 1980s,
assisted by bilateral and multilateral donor agencies and the international
conservation community, which established the legal and institutional
framework for coordinated environmental action (Brinkerho, 1996).
Since that time, this framework has guided international and national
investment in the ENR sector, including forestry.
Legal Framework/Rule of Law
A 1930 decree established the Forest Service during the colonial period
along paramilitary lines, with a resource control and protection mandate
implemented through a system of permits and policing. The comprehensive
national environmental action planning process launched a major change in
policy direction away from sole reliance on command and control policies,
which led to new enabling legislation and new institutions that integrate
conservation and development. The Forest Service, which became a separate ministry in 1991, initially resisted the new policies, but in 1995 it developed a new Forest Policy, a National Forest Action Plan and six Regional
Forest Action Plans. These led to the passage of a revised Forest Law in
1997, followed by a decree in 1998 that legally enabled local participation in
forest management. This decree and a series of subsequent administrative
regulations created the legal framework for partnerships between the Forest
Service and local communities. These joint arrangements have been organized under what are referred to as Gestion Locale Scurise (GELOSE) and
Gestion Contractualise des Forts (GCF). GELOSE and GCF established
contracts between the Forest Service, which as of 2003 became an administrative unit of a merged ministry of environment, water and forests
(MinEnvEF) and communities. The local groups establish an association
(COBA, Communaut de Base), which is the entity that enters into the contractual partnership (Muttenzer, 2002; Raik and Decker, 2005).
In light of continued illicit exploitation of forest resources, the government, donors, NGOs and the private sector engaged in dialogue that led
102
to new legislation and administrative regulations. These aimed to control

logging in ecologically sensitive conservation sites, control exports of highvalue tropical hardwoods, expand application of the existing environmental impact assessment law (Le Dcret MECIE), reform the process of
awarding logging permits and tighten nancial systems for forest revenues
collected by the Forest Service (for details, see Winterbottom, 2005:
Appendix D). In addition, a 2001 law set up a Forest Sector Observatory
(OSF) to serve as an external oversight and monitoring body. In
September 2003 at the World Parks Congress, held in Durban, South
Africa, the President of Madagascar announced a new policy to increase
the countrys protected areas from 1.7 million hectares to six million in ve
years.
Beyond the forest sector, Madagascars democratic transition, begun in
the 1990s, set in motion legal changes that allocated some powers to lower
levels of government. The transition to democracy saw the rst steps
toward decentralization, and the 1992 constitution laid the groundwork
for local authority and local management of services. Commune-level
elections were held for the rst time in 1995. Beginning in the mid-1990s,
sectoral ministries took steps to shift some decision-making away from the
center to lower levels, although most decisions and expenditure still take
place centrally. Because lower-level structures have little discretion in
decision-making, it is more accurate to speak of deconcentration rather
than decentralization. Madagascar remains a highly centralized state (see
World Bank, 2004a). Current decentralization policy is in ux, 1998 legislation that would have created autonomous provinces has been suspended,
but an alternative vision has yet to be fully developed, creating something
of a legal limbo. These changes have potential implications for forestry
policy and partnerships in that they increase local discretion among
commune ocials; decisions about natural resources are of direct concern
to them and their constituents. In addition, the DGEF has created regional
oces with delegated operational authorities for permitting, enforcement,
land-use planning and interacting with local communities.
Transparency and Information Flows
In Madagascars centralized and hierarchical public bureaucracies, information transparency and availability are relatively low, and the Forest
Service is no exception. There are no laws that provide for public access to
government information. As noted above, several recent legal reforms are
aimed at increasing transparency in the critical areas of the issuance of
permits and in the collection and allocation of nancial resources derived
from forest exploitation. Lack of transparency has been an enduring
103
problem, and has encouraged lax enforcement, facilitated illicit activities

and fostered corruption. The multi-donor working group that supports
ENR programs has regularly pressured the government to address this
issue. In late 2001, the Madagascar aliate of the World Wide Fund for
Nature published a list of all existing permit holders in an eort both to
expose illicit dealings and to push the MinEnvEF to make information
public.
Reporting on revenues generated by the Forest Service, their allocation
and utilization is also not transparent. Fees and nes collected locally are
transferred to two forestry funds, one national (FFN) and one regional
(FFR). Recent reforms include the creation of management committees for
the two funds.
Besides information about permitting and the forestry funds, availability
of a variety of legal and technical information is limited. Resource users,
including the COBAs, remain relatively uninformed regarding the details
of ENR laws and regulations. Even some forest agents are ignorant of
aspects of the laws they are charged with enforcing.
Accountability
In moving from authoritarianism to democracy, Madagascars path to
democratic governance has been somewhat rocky. In 1992 the economic
failure of the socialist model led to popular dissatisfaction and unrest, culminating in a referendum on a new constitution that created a parliamentary
regime, the stepping down from power of Didier Ratsiraka, and the start of
the Third Republic. In 1993 Albert Zafy was elected president. Zafys inability to manage a coalition government and deliver results led to impeachment
proceedings in the National Assembly and a political comeback for
Ratsiraka, who was elected president in 1996. The December 2001 presidential election pitted Ratsiraka against the former mayor of Antananarivo,
Marc Ravalomanana. Both candidates claimed victory, leading to a political and economic crisis in 2002 with two competing governments. After
several months of civil strife and economic disruption the stand-o ended
with victory for Ravalomanana and the departure of Ratsiraka into exile
in France. Since then, Ravalomanana has maintained his popularity, consolidated his hold on power, won signicant international donor support
and campaigned successfully for re-election, winning a second term in
December 2006.
While democratic accountability through the electoral process has been
established, the institutional structures that would support the checks and
balances necessary to build a strong system of popular accountability are
weak. Elements of the neopatrimonialism of the past remain in place today
104
(Marcus, 2004). The major sources of accountability internal institutional norms of procedure and externally mandated and enforced sanctions function poorly or are absent. Public ocials tend to look upwards
to their hierarchical superiors in terms of accountability, rather than downwards to citizens, the countrys steps toward decentralization notwithstanding. The judiciary is not a strong force for accountability; the justice
system has severe problems in maintaining basic operations. The courts are
clogged with large backlogs of cases, while incompetent and often venal
judges preside over cases, and prosecutors can bend the law for personal
gain.
Similar to most sectoral agencies (cf. Brinkerho, 2004) and given its
command and control heritage, the DGEF does not have a strong downward accountability ethic. The lack of transparency regarding rules and
regulations, the weak oversight of forest agents and the opportunities these
create for illicit gain, means that accountability within the service is relatively weak. Local residents and COBAs have little eective recourse in the
face of malfeasance and abusive practices. A particularly dicult problem
faces communities with resource management contracts when outsiders,
often agents of wealthy private sector interests, come in to exploit the
forests armed with legal permits obtained outside regular channels.
The creation of the OSF is intended to increase accountability in the
sector, though its capacity is relatively limited. Similarly, the new anticorruption agency mentioned below could serve to reinforce accountability and the rule of law.
Eective Management
Management capacity in all sectors is weak, especially outside the capital
and the few major urban centers. The government of Madagascar has
launched a number of good governance reforms, coordinated by a new
Oce of Good Governance, attached to the presidency. A program to
improve the eciency and eectiveness of the state, with the World Bank
as the lead donor, includes measures to improve basic incentives for public
employees, align incentives with performance, encourage political will and
leadership for reform (e.g., integrity workshops) and inculcate new values
and practices (e.g., codes of conduct and training).
The DGEF, like most public sector agencies, has limited technical and
managerial capacity relative to the challenges it faces. Dealing with the ecological diversity of Madagascars forests, the range of users and the
exploitationconservation trade-os pose enormous problems (McConnell
and Sweeney, 2005). The forest service is seriously under-resourced, with an
annual budget of around US$400 000 to manage over six million hectares
105
of natural forests and to carry out bush and forest re management nationwide (World Bank, 2004b, p. 6). The human resource base of the Forest
Service is aging, with a signicant percentage of sta at or past ocial
retirement age. Many eld posts are unlled, with existing sta serving in
multiple positions. The personnel mix is heavy on people in administration
and nance positions, and light on technical expertise and eld agents.
Weaknesses in information, reporting, oversight, monitoring and nancial
systems compound human resource decits, impede eective planning,
undermine enforcement activities and fail to discourage and control
corrupt practices.
The critical eectiveness gaps in the DGEF point toward the need for
ENR partnership in order for the Forest Service to fulll its mandate.
Indeed, the GELOSE and GCF mechanisms described above seek to build
ENR co-management partnerships that can enable the Forest Service to
increase its eciency and eectiveness through cooperation with non-state
actors. Yet, the DGEFs weaknesses also constrain its ability to engage with
communities, NGOs and the private sector as eective partners. Over the
years since major international assistance in the ENR sector began, the
Forest Service in its various institutional incarnations has had a dicult
relationship with the donors and international NGOs. Frequently criticized
as ineective and incompetent, and jealous of resources assigned to newly
created environmental agencies, Forest Service sta reacted by implementing a strategy of systematic obstruction at their level of competence
(Ramamonjisoa, 2001, p. 4, quoted in Muttenzer, 2002). These behaviors
have not been conducive to partnerships between the Forest Service and
communities or private businesses. The donors recognize that these problems and weaknesses exist, and currently USAID, in cooperation with
other international agencies, is providing support to strengthen the DGEF.
Control of Corruption
Corruption in Madagascar is systemic and pervasive. Petty corruption at
the lower levels of the public service is the most widespread form of corruption, although large-scale corruption is also a problem. The latter reputedly permeates government contracting procedures, issuance of business
licenses and permits for exploiting natural resources (noted above), the
operations of the customs service, the justice system and the electoral
process. A major contributing factor to widespread corruption is poverty,
particularly for petty corruption. But poverty alone is not responsible for
corruption in Madagascar, particularly larger-scale corruption at the
higher levels of government; there is a structural dimension that creates the
conditions conducive to the emergence of corruption: monopoly plus
106
discretion minus accountability. The historically strong role of the state has
created a near monopoly on power, and high levels of discretion unchecked
by accountability and sanctions. Laws and regulations tend to be either not
applied or selectively enforced, sometimes as a result of lack of institutional
capacity, sometimes by design. Low levels of transparency and responsiveness contribute to the discretionary power of public ocials, and to lack of
accountability.
President Ravalomanana has made a public commitment to ghting corruption, and senior government ocials appear to have taken that commitment seriously. In 2003, the President created the Anti-corruption
Council, and in 2004 set up the BIANCO (Anti-corruption Independent
Oce) and drop boxes for public complaints across the country. The World
Bank and other donors are providing support for anti-corruption activities.
The countrys NR base has long been a source of corruption, given the
high value of forest products and minerals, and the lax enforcement of laws
and regulations. In a well-known incident in October 2004 while ying over
a conservation area the President noticed a new logging road, and issued a
directive freezing all logging permits nationwide and requested the
MinEnvEF and the donors to develop an action plan to improve forest
sector governance (see Winterbottom, 2005). Forest-permitting reforms,
more systematic application of the environmental impact laws, the oversight activities of the OSF and the public information campaigns of the
BIANCO and of the Forest Service are all intended to address ENR-based
corruption.
Citizen Participation
Madagascars democratic transition has resulted in signicantly expanded
freedom of expression and political space. However, Madagascar has yet to
create an environment where statesociety interaction takes place in ways
that engage citizens systematically, routinely and eectively in policy debates
and the production of public goods. Weak media, associations without clear
roles or community roots, serious socioeconomic inequities and pervasive
poverty all limit citizen participation. Civil society, an essential counterweight to the state and business interests in a democratic, market-based
economy, is especially weak, though some church-based organizations have
widespread credibility and inuence. President Ravalomanana is also vicepresident of the Protestant Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar, one of the
largest and most inuential church groups in the country.
An exception to the general pattern of low citizen participation in public
aairs was the preparation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
(PRSP), which led to Madagascar beneting from the funding and special
107
conditions associated with the World Banks HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor
Countries) Initiative. The PRSP emerged from an extended participatory
consultation process during September 2000May 2003, organized by a
small secretariat, supported by the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank. Ten thematic workshops were held throughout the country on
education, health, HIV/AIDS, gender, rural and urban development,
governance and the environment. The draft report was vetted at six regional
workshops and one in the capital, and the nal version was presented at a
national conference with over 500 participants (see IMF, 2004). While a
laudable eort to develop public policy through broad participation, the
PRSP process has done little to change the standard operating procedures
in government oces to increase citizen participation, although one component of the PRSP elaborates the good governance agenda that led to the
governments governance improvement program.
In the ENR sector, citizen participation has primarily served an instrumental function as a mechanism to implement partnership strategies, as
illustrated in quadrants II and IV of Figure 5.1. Various co-management
structures have been in use since the early 1990s, particularly in protected
areas and park buer zones, supported by organizations created and supported by the international donors (see Froger, Meral and Herimandimby,
2004; Chaboud, 2005). The Association for the Management of Protected
Areas (ANGAP), for example, has worked with local resource user groups
and international NGOs on integrated conservation and development
projects since it was created in 1990. In 2006, ANGAP was formally established as a semi-autonomous park and wildlife management service, with
law enforcement authority, under the System of Protected Areas of
Madagascar (SAPM). As noted above, the Forest Service trailed the conservation community in moving toward co-management and user participation. But such practices are now established as a key element of forestry
policy. Currently, 300 GCF contracts are in eect throughout Madagascar
(Raik and Decker, 2005). Forest areas under GCF contract are zoned into
three parts: a conservation zone (no extraction of any resources), a sustainable use zone (for daily-use resource extraction) and a commercial zone
(where forest products may be harvested for sale).
While resource user groups engage with the Forest Services deconcentrated eld units as implementing partners, their ability to fulll an
accountability function is limited. In this sense, citizen participation
remains relatively state-directed, reinforced by the attitudes of many
forestry agents who continue to view resource users as threats to the environment rather than partners in its protection and sustainable use. Beyond
community groups, the private sector has been mobilized to participate in
ENR management. Private sector operators have organized three entities
108
to increase their clout and represent their interests vis vis state actors: the
National Union of Forest-based Exploiters of Madagascar (SNEFM), the
Professional Association of Producers and Exporters of Wood Products
(GPEB), and the Association of Free Enterprises and Partners (GEFEP).
These associations have participated with the Forest Service in roundtables
and in the National Technical Committee on Forestry (CNTF).
As Madagascars forestry policy addresses reforestation and plantation
management, the participation of the private sector as an ENR partner is
important. While the DGEF has legal authority over private as well as
public forested lands, land-use planning and implementation necessarily
involve private sector actors.
5.4 PROSPECTS FOR ENR PARTNERSHIPS: A

GOVERNANCE AGENDA
The above assessment of governance in Madagascars forest sector paints
a mixed picture regarding the extent to which the state serves as an enabler
of eective ENR partnerships with non-state actors. On the positive side
are: a favorable legal framework for forestry policy; espoused political will
at the senior levels of government to address resource conservation, public
sector performance and corruption; the creation of new accountability and
oversight organizations; and increased decentralization. On the other side,
signicant impediments remain: institutional weaknesses, insucient adjudication of conicts over user and property rights, high levels of corruption, limited opportunities for citizen voice and large power asymmetries
between state agencies and citizens.
What can be done to improve governance and to enhance the prospects
for ENR partnerships? It should be noted that governance improvements
are important not just for the partnerships to contribute to implementing
ENR policies in quadrants II and IV of Figure 5.1, but are also necessary
for eective implementation of regulatory command and control policies
and of market-based incentives (quadrants I and III). Partnerships with
non-state actors are supported particularly by the citizen participation
element of good governance, though the other elements play important
roles as well in establishing and reinforcing the institutional conditions for
partnership. Critical is the power imbalance that the Madagascar case illustrates clearly.
The following strategy holds promise, both for Madagascar and potentially for other countries seeking to enable ENR partnerships with state and
non-state actors more eectively. In Madagascar, a number of current
reform eorts are underway that reect these elements:
109
establish/reinforce constraints on forest governance actors through

increased accountability, transparency checks and balances;
build actors capacities to fulll their roles in forest governance
through increased skills and improved management eectiveness;
track progress through indicators of outcomes, for example, improved
permitting processes, service user satisfaction surveys, community
management contracts, and so on.
Establishing or Reinforcing Constraints

In developing countries where governance is weak, the power of state
actors is, in most cases, exceptionally high relative to that of non-state
actors. Thus, an important step toward better governance is establishing or
reinforcing constraints on the state. These constraints can reinforce the
rule of law, limit corruption, ensure that citizens can gain access to information so as to understand what government is doing and hold state actors
accountable, and so on. Partnerships do not operate eectively where one
partner dominates the relationship. For example, partnership mechanisms
like the GCFs discussed above assign local communities NRM responsibilities without necessarily giving them rights and recourse to countervailing power to enforce those rights (see Ribot, 2004).
The Madagascar case illustrates some progress on this front, and the steps
taken are applicable to other countries as well. The establishment of the Anticorruption Council and the BIANCO represents a positive move toward limiting corruption. The OSF and the Forestry Commissions, as independent
mechanisms intended to oversee and report on the actions of state and nonstate actors, are also sources of accountability. Other steps include increasing the public availability of information on permit awards, forest zoning,
forest fund receipts and expenditures and community management contracts.
Decentralization is important in creating the conditions that will support
the operation of transparency and accountability (see Baumann and
Farrington, 2003; Ribot, 2004). Madagascar, as well as other countries with
a legacy of strong central control, is pursuing measures to increase decentralization, though progress has been slow. At present, local governments
(communes) have very limited revenue-raising and service-delivery functions; the majority of services are provided by deconcentrated units of
central ministries (cf. World Bank, 2004a). The DGEF has regional and
local oces, as noted above, but these entities remain largely accountable
upward to the center and oriented toward law enforcement. Partnershiporiented activities, such as joint land-use planning (zonage), GFC contracts, or bush re prevention campaigns, call for downward linkages and
collaborative relationships.
110
Experience shows that changing eld sta behaviors toward collaboration and downward accountability depends upon strong central
determination of standards along with local participation in providing performance feedback and accountability (Tendler, 1997). Madagascars
progress toward democracy and decentralization, and how it aects local
politics and administration, will inuence whether such incentives emerge
and the extent to which they can contribute to the viability of ENR partnerships and the achievement of resource protection.
Building Capacities
Besides an institutional environment that addresses power issues between
state and non-state actors and that puts in place checks and balances, ENR
partnerships call for increased capacities for actors to play new roles. In
many developing countries, state actors in the public service function in
organizational systems that are hierarchical, internally focused and reward
loyalty and following rules rather than taking initiative and achieving
results. The Madagascar case shows how some governments are seeking
to make changes. The governments good governance reform agenda, still
in its early stages, aims at a fundamental shift in civil servants mentalities
and behaviors. Each ministry is charged with including good governance
in its annual work plan and with developing indicators to measure
progress. The MinEnvEFs Good Governance Program concentrates on
increasing internal organizational eectiveness, which is important;
however capacity building needs to take place within the context of a reformulation of the Forest Services mandate beyond command and control.
USAID is currently assisting the DGEF with technical and managerial
systems improvements and strategic planning for a revised vision that integrates co-management with command and control.
This vision looks beyond the DGEF to consider other actors involved in
the forest sector, and to address the technical and management capacities
necessary to implement the governments evolving ENR policy agenda. A
limiting factor on making progress is the dominance of senior DGEF sta
who remain imbued with the command and control mentality. However, a
younger cadre is coming up the ranks, which will lead to progressive
replacement of the old guard in the DGEF. The DGEF has set up a
reform working group that is leading the visioning eort, with support
from the USAID technical assistance team.
Besides the state agencies involved in ENR partnerships, other actors
need to build capacity as well. The new OSF is still in the early stages of
operation. Civil society, as noted above, is relatively weak. The international conservation NGOs have worked extensively with ANGAP and
111
with community groups on protected areas, and are open to working with
the DGEF; they constitute a key source of capacity. Private sector operators are another set of actors whose capacities are important, especially
for reforestation and plantation operations.
It also needs to be recognized that in some situations what is lacking is
not capacity, but incentives. Partnerships depend upon shared objectives,
and as Agrawal and Gibson (1999) point out, ENR strategies have often
made unfounded assumptions about the homogeneity of interests of those
living in proximity to natural resources by virtue of classing them as communities. Thus in terms of engaging non-state actors, unpacking their
objectives and their implicit costbenet calculations will help separate
capacity from incentive decits (e.g., Sander and Zeller, 2004).
Focusing on Outcomes
Advancing any reform eort including expanding the use of ENR partnerships depends upon establishing milestones that provide indications of
progress and sources of incentives to move forward. The Madagascar case
demonstrates the importance of selecting appropriate outcome indicators.
As noted, the DGEFs concentration on good governance as largely concerning ecient management has led to under-attention to the role of other
actors in forest governance, and to over-concentration on DGEF exercise
of control and enforcement at all levels. Based on the monitoring principle
that what gets measured gets done, focusing on progress measures that
address multi-actor participation and target the Forest Services relationship to service users/citizens would: (1) help to shift the DGEFs focus
beyond its organizational borders to its local partners; (2) ll a gap in the
existing ENR indicators used by both the government and the donors to
reect more fully the principles of good governance.
Selecting governance indicators that reect how good governance can
enhance partnerships can help to move the reform agenda forward,
strengthen the reform constituency and help to enable ENR partnerships
more strongly. By developing measures that target accountability, transparency and participation, reformers can strengthen incentives to enact the
principles of good governance in support of improved ENR management
through partnerships.
5.5
CONCLUSION
To protect its biodiversity and help the majority of its citizens to emerge
from poverty, Madagascar needs to engage all societal actors, state and
112
non-state, in sustainable development and conservation of its natural

resources. It is clear that centralized, state-controlled ENR management
regimes are neither feasible nor desirable, thus partnerships are essential for
the protection of Madagascars forest resources and its biodiversity.
Eective statesociety relations, embodied in the principles of good governance, are central to the design and implementation of collective action
necessary to achieve sustainable development, of which partnerships are a
key example. A focus on the components of good governance provides a
way forward to pursue reforms that will enable partnerships that tap the
capacities and motivations of forest sector actors. Given the diversity of
forest types, uses and users of forest products and management regimes, no
single form of partnership will serve the needs of sustainable ENR management. This variation reinforces the need to adapt partnership arrangements to t the physical dynamics of the forest resources to be managed,
the specic uses envisioned and the capacities and interests of the users.
Donor perspectives on good governance tend to emphasize its technocratic aspects. Yet, to view collective action as divorced from politics is
myopic; indeed, one of the key issues for ENR partnerships is how community organizations can coordinate with state actors while retaining
sucient autonomy and clout to serve as a local check on those actors
behaviors. Thus, included in the governance focus is the recognition that
statesociety relations involve distributions of power, authority and interests. To the extent possible, these must be managed and in the inevitable
case of conict adjudicated equitably in order to achieve broadly
benecial outcomes. This focus holds implications not just for Madagascar
but beyond.
NOTE
1. Portions of this chapter are based on eldwork conducted in September 2005 for the
Sustainable Environment and Forest Ecosystems Management (SEFEM) Project, funded
by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The views expressed are
solely those of the author and should not be attributed to USAID.
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6. Environmental partnerships in
agriculture: reections on the
Australian experience1
Neil Gunningham
At the beginning of the 1990s, environmental partnerships were virtually
unknown. Relationships between business and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were largely adversarial, and little attention was given to the
prospect of constructive engagement between them. Relationships between
business and government regulators, while sometimes less strained, were
rarely based on the establishment of mutual trust, or the pursuit of winwin
solutions. Today, things are very dierent. We nd numerous examples of
environmental partnerships not just in the war-torn arena of industrial
pollution (where many of them rst emerged), but also in a variety of other
environmental contexts. Of these, none is more important than that of agricultural production.
Partnerships in the area of agriculture have many potential benets,
described below. However, the gap between aspiration and achievement
may be a large one, and identifying the circumstances in which such partnerships can most benecially be formed, the design factors that will
inuence their success (in terms of their contribution to sustainability), and
their major commercial and environmental benets, is a work in progress.
This chapter examines a number of agricultural environmental partnerships in one particular country: Australia. There is, of course, a risk of generalization from case studies and even more so from case studies selected
from one particular jurisdiction. Yet, as we will see, the pressures and
opportunities that caused partnerships in agriculture to evolve in Australia
were similar in many respects to those experienced in a wide variety of
developed countries. The reasons for their relative success and failure also
resonate with experience elsewhere, particularly that of Western Europe
and North America.
Australia, in any event, is a sensible place to embark on an investigation
of environmental partnerships in agriculture. It is a country whose agricultural practices have caused widespread and systemic damage and, as a
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result, faces more than its share of serious environmental challenges. These
include loss of biological diversity, loss of natural habitats, pollution of
o-farm ecosystems and on-farm pollution causing loss of productivity.
Notwithstanding the severity of these problems, only a small number of
policy instruments have been employed to address them, and most of these
have performed poorly (Gunningham and Grabosky, 1998, Chapter 5).
In contrast, some early environmental partnerships for sustainable agriculture appear to have achieved substantially more than the policy status
quo (Thrupp, 1996; Gunningham and Sinclair, 2002a). However, our
knowledge of what works and what doesnt work in the agricultural context
remains extremely limited. This is unfortunate because the challenge of sustainable agriculture is not only one of the most important issues confronting humankind, but also one desperately in need of more imaginative,
constructive and, above all, successful, policy instruments. The central
questions for this chapter are whether, to what extent, and in what circumstances, environmental partnerships in agriculture have these qualities.
The remainder of the chapter consists of ve sections. First, a number of
case studies relating to Australian environmental partnerships in the agricultural sector are summarized. In the next section, drawing from these
case studies, a number of circumstances are identied under which environmental partnerships are most likely to be successful in achieving both
economic and environmental goals. This is followed by an examination of
the new environmental governance: a highly ambitious experiment in agricultural environmental partnerships involving multiple stakeholders and
levels of government, as well as industry and civil society engagement over
a broad geographical scale. The next part recognizes that successful partnerships will not necessarily evolve spontaneously (although some do), and
for this reason considers the role of government in facilitating and developing such partnerships. The last section concludes.
One qualifying comment is in order before engaging in these tasks. There
are, of course, inherent limitations in a case study approach, not least in the
extent to which it is possible to generalize from a limited and not necessarily representative set of studies. This qualication is particularly apposite
in the present case. As will become apparent, the four principal case studies
are very dierent in nature. This diversity has both attractions (it enables
examination of a broad range of contexts) and limitations (one is not comparing like with like). One consequence is that there are limitations to the
extent to which this approach enables systemic evaluation of successes and
failures. On the other hand, when dealing with a relatively new and immature eld such as agricultural partnerships, which has been subject to little
previous analysis, then the sort of explorative and provisional analysis that
follows may nevertheless advance knowledge in the eld.
Environmental partnerships in agriculture
6.1
117
ENVIRONMENTAL PARTNERSHIPS
Environmental partnerships may take many dierent forms. For example,

industry participation may be either collective or individual, and there are
also a substantial number of possible partnership combinations. These
include not only many possible permutations of bipartite partnerships,
but also tripartite (or even multipartite) combinations. Participants
might include individual companies; a collective arrangement of
companies (including industry associations); government (federal, state
and/or regional); quasi-government bodies (such as standard-setting bodies
and universities); retailers, wholesalers and consumers; and community
organizations (including environmental and other public interest groups).
And dierent partnerships also involve very dierent terms and conditions.
Given the large number of possible permutations, the case studies chosen
below can, at best, cover only a sample. Those chosen involve:
1.
2.
3.
4.
a single company and a single NGO;

an industry association and a number of NGOs;
an industry association and a government agency;
a variety of local businesses, community groups, local and state
government.
These cases were selected not only to explore the diversity of partnership
arrangements and the stakeholders who engage in them, but also to explore
the dierent types of reciprocal benets that parties hope to gain from such
partnerships, and the obstacles to their achievement. For reasons of space,
a shortened description of each of the case studies is given below, and
readers are referred to other sources for more detailed accounts.
Case study: Southcorp Limited and the Australian Conservation
Foundation
In July 2000, Southcorp Limited (a major Australian wine producer) and
the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) launched an environmental alliance to ght rising salinity in Australia. This was the rst time the
ACF, arguably Australias most inuential environmental NGO, had
entered a formal partnership with an individual corporate entity (although
the ACF has partnered with the National Farmers Federation, in the formation of Landcare and the Repairing the Country policy program).
Under the partnership, Southcorp agreed to using its corporate standing
and its nancial resources in two principal ways. First, it committed to
using its leadership position to impress on government and business sectors
the magnitude of the salinity crisis. It did this by forming a Business
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Leaders Roundtable, chaired by the CEO of Southcorp, to look at ways

of leveraging private sector funds for mutual obligation in the environmental arena. Second, it funded two full-time positions within the ACF to
run the latters national salinity program, encompassing both political
advocacy and practical implementation.
In return, the ACF agreed to promote Southcorps eorts, and name, in
relation to the program, including joint press releases using ACF and
Southcorp logos; promotion of Southcorps initiative through a variety of
public fora; and assisting Southcorp in developing its environmental policies and programs. ACF has been quick to reject suggestions that this might
imply some sort of sponsorship arrangement, emphasizing instead the reciprocal nature of responsibilities and the importance of the exchange of
information and expertise (Gunningham and Sinclair, 2002a).
Southcorp respondents identied a number of potential benets from
the partnership. In essence, their view was that the wine industry is distinctive in that not only is its product destined very largely for international
markets, but consumers are particularly discriminating as to the source and
content of the product. Wine consumers tend to come from a higher socioeconomic bracket, and to seek out wines with particular characteristics
(including region, variety, company and particular attributes). This consumer concern with the origin of wines increasingly extends to environmental characteristics, especially in the case of key Northern European
export markets. In short, wine companies have the opportunity to market,
and ultimately benet commercially, through the fostering of a clean and
green image and an alliance with a major environmental group will
enhance the credibility of such claims.
It may appear somewhat odd, then, that Southcorp thus far has resisted
the idea of environmental labeling of wine products. It is particularly
intriguing given its strong export bias and the fact that international
markets/consumers are unlikely to be aware of its positive public relations
in Australia. Possible (and not necessarily mutually exclusive) explanations
for this are threefold. First, Southcorp may be more driven to pursue its
environmental agenda as a result of the prospect of onerous environmental regulations in Australia, rather than export market potential. It thus
may see the alliance as a way of inuencing or forestalling future regulatory obligations. Second, it may see the alliance as a means of meeting
any future purchasing requirements by European retailers. Finally, it may
simply be that the marketing division of Southcorp, unlike other parts of
the organization, is slow to recognize and exploit the full benets of the
ACF alliance (Gunningham and Sinclair, 2002a).
In responding to the benets to its organization, ACF suggested that,
apart from the chance to obtain a signicant injection of funds into its
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national salinity program, the primary attraction of the alliance was the
opportunity to greatly enhance its voice in the business sphere and to add
weight to its policy campaigns with government. However, the formation
of such a novel alliance with a commercial entity also involves potential
risks to the ACF. In particular, such an arrangement might undermine the
capacity, either real or perceived, of an environmental NGO to act as an
uncompromising advocate for the environment. This may be described as
a variation on the regulatory capture thesis, whereby regulatory authorities/inspectors begin to identify and sympathize with the plight of regulatory entities to the extent that they discount or overlook breaches of
environmental regulations. For example, might such an arrangement
incline an NGO to hesitate in criticizing, or at least tone down its criticism
of, its commercial partners? This has led some commentators to criticize
the formation of such relationships (Steketee, 2001).
At the very least, ACF is aware of the risks and has sought to develop an
engagement protocol to govern its future dealings and arrangements with
the private sector. When Southcorp was prosecuted for a serious pollution
oence, the question of a conict of interest was particularly stark. ACF
responded by publicly releasing a statement condemning the breach and
calling for the full force of the law to apply, and the incident does not seem
to have damaged either ACFs credibility or the partnership itself.
With hindsight, the ACF still views the Southcorp alliance in a positive
light, claiming that it spurred its thinking and practices in engaging with
the corporate sector (private correspondence with ACF, August 2006). It
also cites a number of tangible outcomes of the alliance, including: a joint
publication with Southcorp on damage caused by dry land salinity; the
holding of a Business Leaders Roundtable in 2001 and a subsequent
report on leveraging private investment; the The Ecovine Project (Ecovine,
2002) and co-sponsoring a farms to landscapes seminar.
The Southcorp alliance terminated in 2005 as a result of Southcorp
being taken over by a rival company, Fosters. Nevertheless, ACF has continued a relationship with the new owners and a biodiversity management
framework is currently being developed with them.
Case study: the Australian cotton industry
In a little over three decades, Australian cotton farming has developed into
an AUD1.5 billion dollar industry and the third largest exporter of cotton
in the world. But that growth has come at a substantial cost to the environment and to workers health. Of greatest concern have been the risks
associated with agricultural chemicals. In the late 1990s, the use of endosulfan, in particular, posed a serious threat not only to the environment, but
also to the cattle industry, whose export markets were threatened by high
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pesticide residues found in export beef produced on mixed farms or on

properties adjoining cotton producers. Cotton-related pesticides have been
connected with sh kills and other damage to aquatic life, raised occupational health concerns amongst agricultural workers, and has been a
source of community concern when residues were found in domestic water
tanks and elsewhere. Overall, the cotton industrys tarnished environmental image provides a substantial threat to its legitimacy (and indirectly to its
economic viability).
Against this backdrop, how might the industry best preserve its social
license (that is, the expectations of local communities, the wider society
and various constituent groups), rebuild trust and credibility with key
stakeholders and improve its overall environmental performance?
Initially, the cotton industry responded by unilateral action, producing
what it terms an industry-wide environmental management system
(EMS) and developing a variety of industry-level self-regulatory initiatives through its best management practice (BMP) program that also
seeks to nurture a custodianship ethic. These initiatives have achieved
mixed results. On the positive side, pesticide residues are down, as are other
indicators such as the number of sh kills and external complaints.
On the other hand, this initiative has lacked independent and credible
environmental targets, or eective monitoring and reporting mechanisms
(Gunningham, 2004).
But even if such mechanisms were put in place, such forms of selfregulation almost invariably lack credibility with external stakeholders.
They are widely regarded as a sham and as a cynical attempt to give the
appearance of regulation while serving private interests at the expense of
the public, thereby avoiding more direct and eective forms of environmental control such as direct government regulation. Critics point to an
inherent incentive for unmotivated members to free ride on the eorts of
others (explaining why a substantial minority of cotton growers do not participate); an unwillingness and/or incapacity on the part of the responsible
industry association to monitor outcomes eectively, detect compliance
failure or impose sanctions on recalcitrant members; and a lack of transparency and accountability (Priest, 1998).
Arguably, one means of compensating for these perceived weaknesses of
self-regulation would be an environmental partnership with sectoral interest groups such as environmental and community groups or NGOs.
Potentially at least, developing partnerships with such groups oers considerable benets to both sides. For the industry it would provide muchneeded credibility, protecting its image and reducing the risk of adverse
publicity, hostility from various constituent groups, tougher regulation and
a total ban on certain activities. For environmental groups it might provide
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an opportunity to engage directly with the industry and the leverage

necessary to insist upon the industry demonstrably improving its environmental performance. For example, an NGO might insist upon environmental targets, transparency, independent monitoring and third-party auditing,
as the price for its participation.
The cotton industry has already advanced some way down this path
towards collaboration with moderate national environmental groups. In
particular, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and ACF have entered
a dialogue with the cotton industry and have participated in various roundtables and other meetings providing input into particular processes.
However, formal partnerships have not been successfully negotiated. Under
a draft agreement between environmental groups and Cotton Australia,
key environmental groups were to provide advice to Cotton Australia on
developing and implementing the industrys Code of Sustainability. This,
in turn, was intended to lead to positive marketing and branding of
Australian cotton internationally. However, the agreement did not proceed
because of concern from members of some of those groups about the risks
of co-option and compromise (Gunningham, 2004).
Whether the industry can ever answer its more strident and uncompromising environmental critics, or whether there is sucient common ground
and winwin outcomes to develop partnerships of the type described
above remains doubtful. For example, one environmentalist interviewed
stated: for it to try to be sustainable is unsustainable. You cant justify the
industrys environmental impact on the country. If they had to internalize
their costs, likely there would not be a viable industry. In essence, parts of
the environmental movement remain convinced that the industry is unsustainable in its land use, water use and chemical practices, and the industry
is still a long, long way from any concept of sustainable agriculture or a
workable model of how on-farm practice should link to catchment
resources and targets.
But for the minority of environmental groups who believe that the industry can be made sustainable, the question is how best to achieve it?
Environmental partnerships, notwithstanding their aws, arguably provide
a more viable vehicle through which to pursue this goal than any of the
alternatives. In the context of the cotton industry, where government
resources are very limited, problems are complex and do not readily lend
themselves to conventional regulatory solutions, and the industry itself has
the capacity and the self-interest to take at least a substantial part of the
regulatory burden, there are plausible reasons to embrace it. Even in these
circumstances, the industry association faces considerable challenges: if it
goes too slowly it will gain little credibility or external recognition for its
eorts. Yet if it goes too fast it may generate such a level of resistance from
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its members that too many withdraw. How the next phase of the cotton
industrys journey towards sustainability plays out, or whether this is a
goal too far, remains to be seen.
Case study: the Victorian vegetable growers
Like an increasing number of agricultural sectors across Australia, the vegetable growers of Victoria have determined to develop a strategy for
improved environmental performance (Gunningham and Sinclair, 2002b).
The vegetable growers had a number of reasons for pursuing cleaner
production:
Community pressure. In Victoria, community pressure has arisen

because of the close proximity of many vegetable growers to urban
fringes and the increasing concern of residents and others about
some of the growers environmental practices.
International and domestic trends. On the international front, the
growers are well aware of dramatic changes in purchasing policy
being introduced by major supermarket chains, a vitally important
commercial market for vegetable growers. On the domestic front,
industry representatives had become aware of moves within other
agricultural sectors to introduce environmental management codes
of practice and of the increasing concern of the principal supermarket chains to demonstrate their environmental credentials by
demanding high standards from their suppliers.
The prospect of regulation. While existing regulation has been relatively unimportant in the past, industry representatives point to inappropriate environmental regulations being a substantial potential
threat to the industry in the future, with a recent report addressing
the issue of spray drift being highlighted as a prime example.
Recognizing the potential for the industry and the government regulator
to achieve reciprocal benets from a collaborative arrangement, both sides
set out to develop its specic terms. This was done through the development
and implementation of an environmental improvement plan (EIP), which
had an emphasis on cleaner production. The purported aims of the plan are:
to better understand the real impacts of market gardens on the environment;
to increase grower awareness of their environmental responsibilities; to
provide a venue for growers to demonstrate good environmental performance; to reduce compliance costs and to satisfy regulators and the community that the vegetable industry is environmentally aware and responsible.
The environmental improvement plan began with a pilot phase, involving
four key elements: a pollution audit; an awareness program and management
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audit; environmental management guidelines and a training program. The

guidelines act as a form of self-audit, and are designed to be highly practical
and easily understood, so as to gain the maximum chance of uptake by the
majority of growers. In return (in addition to providing its credibility),
the principal Environment Protection Agency contribution was a modest
nancial one, intended to facilitate the development of the EIP and its
various components (Gunningham and Sinclair, 2002b).
However, if the vegetable growers cleaner production initiative is to
prosper rather than merely survive, then further measures will be necessary.
Not least, EPA may need to provide additional resources and contribute additional incentives to encourage widespread and genuine participation. Such
incentives have not been provided at the time of writing and the partnership
has not advanced further. Rather, the partnership has transformed into what
is essentially an industry self-regulatory initiative, funded in part from the
National Vegetable Levy and known as Environveg. This is a national
program undertaken by the national industry association (AUSVEG Ltd)
and is exclusively industry owned and managed. Its goals are modest, being
a simple self-assessment tool that allows growers to demonstrate that they
are environmentally responsible managers (AUSVEG Ltd, 2006).
Case study: neighborhood environmental improvement plans
The State Government of Victoria has initiated a number of policies that
are explicitly community-oriented, collaborative and partnership-based,
and that engage with a multiplicity of stakeholders. As part of this agenda,
it has introduced neighborhood environmental improvement plans (NEIPs)
with the intention of engaging with the entire gamut of stakeholders who
are in some way or other responsible for environmental problems at a neighborhood level. In the agricultural context, this involves, for example, a
partnership-based approach to addressing the cumulative impact of nonpoint source agricultural pollution on a local scale (Gunningham, Holley
and Shearing, 2007).
According to the relevant second reading speech, an NEIP is:
a statutory mechanism to enable those contributing to and those aected by
local environmental problems, to come together in a constructive forum. In this
forum, the members of the local community, including residents, industry and
local government, can agree on the environmental priority issues for the neighbourhood. They can then devise a plan to address their agreed environmental
issues in a practical manner. (Minister for Environment and Conservation, 2000)
In other words, the NEIP is a regulatory mechanism to facilitate the production and implementation of a plan by a community to improve certain
environmental issues within a dened geographic area or neighbourhood.
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In practice, while an NEIP is a exible means of engaging more holistically with complex local environmental challenges, such as the cumulative
impacts of multiple small sources of agricultural pollution, and of doing
so at an appropriate scale, its implementation has so far been problematic.
The main limitation of the current NEIP process relates to its reliance
upon voluntary collaboration. NEIPs have been successful in facilitating
for the rst time some industry, government and non-government organizations to work together in addressing a signicant environmental issue at
neighborhood level. And the negotiation inherent in the collaborative
process has helped each entity to better understand the interests of others,
and the development of an integrated vision and a shared agenda.
However, a number of key stakeholders have chosen not to participate, and
the NEIP instrument lacks the leverage or incentives to persuade them to
do so. Although some informal arm twisting or shaming could be used to
get buy-in from some reluctant partners, by and large this has proved
insucient to persuade key polluters to engage in the process in any meaningful way, far less reduce their pollution. Moreover, even where industry,
businesses and other parties have agreed to collaborate, the NEIP has
apparently had insucient clout to persuade them to take positive follow
up action (Gunningham, Holley and Shearing, 2007).
The problem is a familiar one: that polluters, for whom pollution prevention measures would often be costly, lack sucient self-interest to participate in the process, and certainly to take action. This is hardly a new
point, but unless and until it is grasped, the potential role of NEIPs will be
substantially constrained.
A related limitation of the current NEIP process relates to the issue of
resourcing. To date, only a small amount of direct state funding was provided to each NEIP, with the proposal and planning process, as well as
activities under the approved plan, being supported by partner resources or
external funds.
Although this was clearly the regulators intention, it is, however, highly
doubtful whether this is a viable approach. Nearly all respondents reported
that their NEIPs were severely under-resourced. Indeed, the harsh reality
may be that the very nature of the NEIP approach (facilitative regulation)
may require the state regulator to spend more money rather than less.
For instance, for the NEIP to be viable and eective, a coordinator is
required who can administratively support inexperienced volunteers or
time-strapped professionals, generate convincing external funding applications and coordinate various partners to ensure they remain interested
and active in the process. Such funding is unlikely to come from overstretched, under-resourced local governments or other sponsors. Moreover,
even in situations where NEIP partners do obtain external funding that
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could be used to fund coordinators or other activities, NEIP partners, particularly individuals or non-government members, may still struggle with
such funding as it rarely provides for sucient opportunity to monitor and
learn, and generally imposes burdensome administrative requirements. In
short, unless the Victorian Environment Protection Authority is prepared
to spend substantially more on the NEIP program, it may not be possible
to sustain eective or meaningful involvement from NEIP partners
(Gunningham, Holley and Shearing, 2007).
6.2 CREATING SUCCESSFUL (AND

UNSUCCESSFUL) ENVIRONMENTAL
PARTNERSHIPS
Notwithstanding the almost exponential growth of environmental partnerships in the agricultural sector, only limited systematic evaluation has
been conducted as to what types of partnerships succeed and in what circumstances (Gunningham and Sinclair, 2002a; National Environmental
Partnership Summit, 2006). It may also be that the diverse and disparate
nature of environmental partnerships has worked against comparative
analysis.
Against this backdrop, this section seeks to identify relevant factors
behind the success or otherwise of environmental partnerships dened
in terms of their contribution to promoting more sustainable practices. In
so doing, it focuses on those internal and external conditions that are most
likely to generate a fertile environment within which partnerships can grow
and prosper.
Because it is based on only four case studies, the analysis is far from
exhaustive. For example, the role of government was important in each of
these particular partnerships examined and yet we are aware that in other
contexts, successful partnerships sometimes evolve spontaneously, without
strong state intervention.
Nevertheless, although these four studies by no means span the full range
and variety of environmental partnerships, they are representative of some
common agricultural partnership types. Furthermore, what we found in the
Australian context resonates with what has been found in other developed
countries. For example, the experience of the Victorian vegetable growers
is in many respects similar to that of the Wisconsin potato farmers
(Gunningham and Sinclair, 2002a; Protected Harvest, 2006), that of the
Australian cotton industry is not very dierent from that of the Californian
rice growers (Gunningham and Sinclair, 2002a; McGilton, 2006) and that of
Southcorp and the Australian Conservation Foundation parallels various
126
WWF initiatives internationally (International Institute for Sustainable

Development, 2006). Even the study of the neighborhood environmental
improvement plan, which is less easily classied, has commonalities with
multi-party partnerships in North America and Europe (AWQA, 2006;
British Columbia Agriculture Council, 2006), some of which have experienced similar problems of collective action and free-riding.
The most important lessons we can draw from our selection of case
studies, in terms of their eectiveness in promoting sustainability practices,
are listed below.
A high coincidence between public and private prot Successful partnerships between business and NGOs are largely conned to winwin opportunities (where both parties believe they will be better o as a result of
entering the partnership). There is insucient incentive for either party to
participate unless they believe this to be the case, given the substantial
transactions costs involved in developing such partnerships (see, for examples of such winwin opportunities, Greenall and Rovere, 1999).
Making environmental improvements that are endorsed by environmental
groups made good business sense for Southcorp, for the cotton industry
and for the vegetable growers. It was the absence of such winwin opportunities that partially explained the diculties encountered by the neighborhood environmental improvement plan initiative.
Exposure to green markets A prominent motivation for industry groups
to participate in environmental partnerships is the perception that their
products will compete more successfully on green markets. This was certainly a driver for the Victorian vegetable growers and, to a lesser extent,
for the cotton industry, since consumers are far less sensitive to, or prepared to pay a premium for, what they wear compared with what they eat.
While Southcorp might have been expected to take advantage of green
labeling opportunities in its partnership with the Australian Conservation
Foundation, it has not so far done so. Southcorps initiative can be viewed
in broader terms as part of the companys risk management strategy.
Companies or sectors that trade o their public image Some companies
and/or industry sectors have high public proles, which in turn is crucial to
their commercial success. For example, the cotton industry, having suered
severe damage to its social license and credibility, had more reason than
most to protect its public image through a partnership with environmental
groups. The Victorian vegetable growers were motivated by similar concerns. Large retailers, such as Southcorp, which deal directly with the
public, are strongly motivated by pressures to maintain and enhance their
127
corporate image. This may provide a strong incentive to highlight their

green credentials, a process to which environmental partnerships are ideally
suited to contribute.
Disparities in power along the supply chain Where large commercial enterprises have a high degree of market control over both their upstream suppliers and downstream buyers, they may choose to exploit this power to
inuence their environmental behavior. Their interest in doing so is primarily commercial: the risk of being tarnished by the poor environmental performance of ones close associates. For example, in Australia, supermarket
retailing is dominated by two national chains, which includes the majority
share of fresh fruit and vegetable sales. This provides them with considerable inuence over their suppliers, in this case, market gardeners. The
Victorian vegetable growers were certainly sensitive to the power of
Australias two principal supermarket chains to impose environmental
requirements upon them, while Southcorp saw such a move as another
means of environmental risk management. In a more positive sense the
chemical industrys Responsible Care initiative involves large chemical companies assisting those to whom they supply chemicals, such as the cotton
industry, to implement accredited environmental management systems.
A sense of crisis: getting partnerships o the ground It is unusual for environmental partnerships to arise spontaneously. Individuals and groups
are often reluctant to let go of their traditional ways of doing things. They
are only prepared to put energy and resources into developing new partnerships if they see a compelling need to do so. Usually, but not always, the
impetus comes from some crisis or other external event that is so compelling as to shake the players free from their customary behavior: most of
us are only prepared to jump when we are convinced the deck is burning
(Gentry and Fernandez, 1997). In the case of the Australian cotton industry, for example, the rejection of Australian beef by the United States
because of its too-high pesticide content (the result of spray drift from
cotton farming), and the fear of losing export markets, was one such event.
The threat of tougher environmental regulation (for the cotton industry
and the vegetable growers) is another important motivating factor.
However, the best time to engage in environmental partnerships is before
the crisis hits because afterwards it may be too late to repair all the damage,
and some commercial opportunities may have been lost forever. Once you
sell tainted produce on an export market, it is very hard to recover either your
reputation or the market. That is, the best time to form environmental partnerships is when there are commercial opportunities both to protect the
environment and to improve the bottom line, where both partners will benet
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from the arrangement, and before the irreversible damage often associated
with a crisis. But what will give farmers and rural industry the impetus to take
that rst step? Here, perceptions are as important as reality, and what is
crucial is persuading rural industry, in particular, to change its spots. This
issue is further addressed below in Section 6.4.
Scale, complexity and free-riding The environmental partnerships described above are of varying scale and complexity, and this may have an
important bearing on their success. The challenges of building successful
partnerships in agriculture in circumstances where there are a very small
number of partners will be very dierent from those where multiple stakeholders are involved. Scale will be important because developing partnerships on a limited scale (for example, relating to a single business enterprise)
will be far less challenging than doing so on a regional or national level.
One obvious problem is multi-party partnerships, and those on a larger
scale will typically (but not invariably) give rise to a much greater likelihood
of free-riding than simple and small-scale partnerships. The partnership
between the ACF and Southcorp had clearly delineated terms under an
implicit contract between the two parties, with little opportunities for freeriding. In contrast, both the cotton industry and the vegetable growers had
diculty in gaining buy-in from all of their members, and in the case of the
cotton growers, some 40 percent of growers (and perhaps 20 percent
by volume) had not signed onto any environmental commitments. The
problems of multi-party partnerships, particularly in the absence of clear
winwin outcomes, are illustrated by the neighborhood environmental
improvement plan initiative. Although it was possible to bring a substantial number (but by no means all) of the stakeholders to the table, to date
very little has been achieved in terms of substantive outcomes, and some
stakeholders (e.g., polluters with little self-interest in voluntary action)
remain essentially outside the partnership. We return to the challenge of
multi-party contracts on a larger scale in the next section.
6.3 PARTNERSHIP AND COLLABORATIVE

GOVERNANCE
At the time of writing, a far more ambitious experiment in agricultural
environmental partnerships, involving multiple stakeholders, multiple
levels of government and industry and civil society engagement, on a broad
geographical scale, is taking place in Australia. It is commonly referred to
as the new regional-based approach to natural resource management
(NRM), or the new environmental governance.
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The context for this new development is the twin recognition (1) that
natural resource management in Australia is in crisis there are massive
problems relating to rising water tables, increasing salinity, water scarcity,
land clearing, loss of topsoil, diuse pollution from broad-scale rural land
use and biodiversity loss and (2) that traditional approaches to address this
environmental challenge have manifestly failed.
In response, the Commonwealth, in conjunction with the States, has
embarked upon a far-reaching new approach to natural resource management. Through AUD4.4 billion of government funding provided by the
National Heritage Trust (NHT) and the National Action Plan on Salinity
and Water (NAP) (since 1997 and 2001 respectively), NRM decisionmaking power is being devolved to the regional level. Fifty-six regional
natural resource management bodies have been created across Australia
(Australian Government, 2006). These bodies generally comprise a mix of
community, rural and other stakeholders. They have responsibility for
undertaking NRM consultation, planning and priority-setting. They must
each develop a regional plan and regional investment strategy and implement these under a collaborative partnership-based decision-making
process. These plans and strategies are subject to performance indicators
and other controls imposed by the Commonwealth.
This collaborative regional approach involves a style of governance
in which power is exercised through multi-stakeholder participation in
decision-making (including local land managers, local communities, NGOs
and other ground-level stakeholders), coupled with monitoring, evaluation
and oversight. The formal establishment or enhancement of existing
regional bodies introduces what is in eect a fourth sphere of governance
located at the ecosystem/catchment level (because eective solutions must
cut across ecologically arbitrary political boundaries). This hybrid governance is a radical departure from most previous NRM strategies, which
(depending on jurisdiction and context) ranged from traditional topdown legal and institutional arrangements (albeit often honored in the
breach), to education, exhortation and rural extension programs. It
involves non-hierarchical and participatory means to address the NRM
crisis, de-centers the state and restructures relationships between governments, markets and civil society.
This new approach is widely referred to as a new and ambitious form of
multi-party environmental partnership. For example, the Australian
Commonwealth Government states explicitly that both the NAP and the
NHT are partnerships between all levels of community and Government,
working together to protect our environment and natural resources, and
sustain our agricultural industries and regional communities (Australian
Government, 2006).
130
However, the new regional approach might equally be treated as an

example of what is being referred to internationally as the new governance
(de Burca and Scott, 2006) in this case the new environmental governance an ambitious experiment in engaging multiple stakeholders through
collaborative approaches to address complex, contested and hitherto
intractable NRM problems.
This experiment is similar in its general contours to forms of new collaborative environmental governance that have emerged in a number of
other places. In New Zealand they are provided for under the Resource
Management Act, which locates decision-making within regional organizations (Frieder, 1997). In the United States they can be found in Habitat
Conservation Plans under the Endangered Species Act and in the
Chesapeake Bay and San Francisco Bay Delta Programs (Karkkainen,
2002; Freeman and Farber, 2005). Within the European Union, new collaborative environmental governance is expressed in increased exibility in
the setting of Community norms, accompanied by a proceduralization of
Community law, increasingly open-ended environmental standards and an
increased role of a range of stakeholders in decision-making processes
(Scott and Trubek, 2002). Examples can also be found in parts of Africa,
where the reach of state law is often limited. Some of these initiatives,
including the CAMPFIRE initiative, arguably achieved signicant success
even absent a strong state underpinning (Virtanen, 2003).
These initiatives require further examination from institutional, regulatory and governance perspectives. Certainly we lack systematic, empirical,
comparative or theoretical understanding of the nature and challenges of
the new collaborative environmental governance. For example, empirically,
these initiatives raise questions about the extent and ways in which new collaborative environmental governance involves deliberative problemsolving, about the impact of a new fourth level of government and about
how various conicts between agencies within and between dierent levels
of government can be resolved. In explanatory terms, what does the new
collaborative environmental governance involve in terms of mentalities of
governance, and in terms of a diusion of power beyond neo-liberal steering functions? At a normative level, what are the ways in which the existing
forms of new collaborative environmental governance fall short of what is
required to achieve eective, ecient and democratically acceptable NRM,
and how might these deciencies be overcome?
It would be premature to attempt to answer such questions at a time
when the new environmental governance is still in its infancy. However, the
new regional approach is considered below, alongside all the other case
studies, in terms of its implications for government.
6.4
131
IMPLICATIONS FOR GOVERNMENT
In the previous sections it was argued that environmental partnerships can

play important roles in environmental protection. However, agricultural
producers, NGOs and others, will not necessarily organize themselves
into such partnerships, even when they might provide winwin outcomes.
Conservatism, lack of awareness of the opportunities and practical barriers
such as the absence of mechanisms for osetting risk, or lender resistance,
may all militate against change. In the absence of external intervention,
many of the potential opportunities for environmental partnerships may
never be realized. Thus in many (though certainly not all) contexts, there is
an essential policy role for government in encouraging, facilitating, rewarding and shaping such partnerships. That is, at the same time as the state is
retreating from many of its traditional regulatory functions, numerous
opportunities arise to forge creative new roles, harnessing private institutions and resources in furtherance of public policy. The main implications
for government can be summarized under six points:
1.
2.
3.
Steering the boat rather than rowing. Governments traditional role has
been that of intervening directly in the aairs of rural industry, for
example by regulation. In circumstances where the partnership model
is likely to be successful, the role of government is likely to be a less
intrusive one: facilitating and encouraging rather than directly intervening. This was very much the role adopted by the Victorian government in the case of the vegetable growers and of NEIPs, and one that
the New South Wales government might have, but did not take, with
regards to the cotton industry. It is central to the new environmental
governance, in which the federal government controls the purse strings,
but devolves almost all other decisions to the regional level.
Kick-starting environmental partnerships. Many partnerships will
involve substantial start-up costs and other initial barriers to their
adoption. Government can play an important role in providing incentives sucient to kick-start promising new partnership initiatives. Even
if this involves money or other resources, the investment will be
justied given that it will minimize the subsequent need for government
intervention and resources, and may well achieve substantially better
environmental and economic outcomes than traditional regulatory
tools (this assumption underpins the new environmental governance).
However, a lack of sucient resources often bedevils such initiatives,
as it did in the case of both the vegetable growers and NEIPs.
Providing incentives. The precise incentives that government might
provide to encourage environmental partnerships will vary widely with
132
4.
5.
6.
the circumstances. Possible incentives include preference in government procurement contracts, a less attractive regulatory backdrop for
those who do not wish to participate in partnerships, a legal underpinning to prevent free-riding, the use of cross-compliance mechanisms
or, as with the new collaborative environmental governance, substantial payments from central government that fundamentally drive the
entire initiative. In the absence of such incentives, embryonic environmental partnerships often struggle. In the case of the cotton industry,
for example, had government regulation been seriously implemented
(as the cotton industry association and the NGOs would have wished)
and action taken against the recalcitrant, then the free-rider problem
might have been substantially addressed.
Regulatory negotiation. Since negotiating partnerships between stakeholders with very dierent interests and worldviews is never easy, an
additional role for government may be in facilitating regulatory negotiation: a process for developing regulations or policies by consensus
using a committee whose members represent all sides of an issue
(Freeman and Langbein, 2000). While this strategy may only be appropriate in a limited range of circumstances (where government contemplates regulation, or proposed regulation as an incentive to drive the
partnership), it may, in these circumstances, provide considerable
benets.
Reducing risk. One of the diculties in developing partnerships is
the risk involved in moving from one system of production (e.g., intensive pesticide use) to another (e.g., integrated pest management).
Government may have a short-term role in reducing these risks if the
private insurance market fails to do so. Part of the funding under the
new environmental governance initiative may be used for precisely this
purpose.
Building the social license. Recent research suggests that businesses are
constrained by a multi-faceted license to operate and that corporate
behavior can be explained by interactions between regulatory, social
and economic licenses (Gunningham, Kagan and Thornton, 2003). It
also suggests that there is often a considerable imbalance of power in
partnership negotiations between business and NGOs. Government
can play important roles in compensating for asymmetry of information and by otherwise empowering NGOs and civil society, thereby
ensuring that partnership negotiations take place on a less unequal
footing.
As the above section makes clear, government can potentially play a

major role in the establishment and implementation of partnerships, even
133
when it is not directly a party to them. The very modest number of partnerships in Australian agriculture may largely be explained in terms of
government reluctance (given the political power of the agricultural sector
and close ties between government and agriculture at federal level) to take
on such roles and, in particular, by its unwillingness to create the sorts of
incentives that would incline industry to enter into such arrangements.
6.5
CONCLUSION
While an emerging concept internationally, relatively few environmental

partnerships have emerged in the Australian agricultural sector. Yet the
potential exists for agricultural producers to achieve major benets
through participating in such partnerships, at least in the circumstances
described earlier. These include: providing a marketing edge to participating producers and retailers/wholesalers in markets that demand high environmental standards; improving the quality consistency of agricultural
products; pre-empting the imposition of de facto international environmental trade standards; anticipating and avoiding the imposition of future
mandatory environmental regulations and improving the long-term viability of the land itself.
However, notwithstanding the limited number of partnerships in the
agricultural sector, a number of broader points emerge from the various
empirical studies and analyses conducted to date, and from studies in
related areas. First, in the case of government and industry environmental
partnerships, there are well-known and readily identiable benets in
including third parties in the process of developing and overseeing such
agreements, suggesting the value of multipartite partnerships over bipartite agreements.
A second broad point is that environmental partnerships, like voluntary
agreements more generally, are often best used when an environmental
problem is in its early stages and it is premature to regulate it directly. As
the OECD has pointed out:
in this regard voluntary approaches can be regarded as a policy instrument with
a transitional function, i.e. to work until time is ripe for other regulations to
come into force. They are particularly suitable for this role, since they are likely
to generate soft eects and learning, and hence can help improve the future
design of more traditional instruments. (OECD, 1999, p. 134)
This point is particularly pertinent to environmental partnerships in the

agricultural sector, where many problems are not only complex and do not
readily lend themselves to a conventional regulatory solution, but where
134
such a solution would engender massive resistance and hostility from a

sector that has been largely free from such intervention in the past
(although there are an increasing number of exceptions).
Third, the weaknesses of voluntary environmental partnerships can
often be compensated for, and their strengths enhanced, by combining
them with most, but not all, forms of command and control regulation.
While regulation in the agricultural sector has not been the prevalent policy
response, it is nevertheless relevant to point out, as our vegetable growers
case study demonstrates, that such combinations of instruments can work
better than partnerships in isolation. For example, voluntary partnerships
can be used to complement conventional regulation by encouraging the
use of environmental management systems or other management tools
that facilitate meeting legal standards and achieving better environmental
performance.
Fourth, the OECD makes the broader point about voluntary agreements
(VAs) generally that:
if carefully designed and crafted into the policy mix, VAs can play a useful role
in lubricating this policy mix; increasing exibility, paving the way for new regulations without a stringent and brutal implementation, inducing industry to
develop innovative approaches. Filling enforcement decits, participation of
stakeholders, codes of conduct and guidelines, can all contribute to this lubricating function. (OECD, 1999)
However, much work remains to be done in terms of identifying the extent

to which, and the mechanisms by which, voluntary approaches can be
combined with other policy instruments to obtain ecient and eective
outcomes.
Fifth, environmental partnerships do seem to generate major positive
soft eects, such as collective learning, generation and diusion of information, learning by doing and demonstration eects, increased stakeholder
participation and consensus building, which are arguably a key objective
and virtue of many negotiated agreements. Since many partnerships aim at
increasing environmental awareness of the industry, rather than short-term
environmental impacts, these learning and innovation eects should not be
lightly dismissed.
Sixth, the evaluation of environmental partnerships requires a dynamic
analysis: the second generation of such partnerships may be somewhat
dierent from the rst, and considerably more likely to provide public interest benets. For example, in the closely related area of voluntary agreements, targets now tend to be set by government rather than by industry,
government negotiators are much more sensitive to the risks of setting
targets that merely reect improvements that would happen anyway, and
135
there is a movement towards linking negotiated agreements with other

policy instruments, such as taxes, or to complement rather than replace
existing regulations. Greater eorts are also being made in terms of transparency and third-party input. Whether these developments will justify the
faith of advocates of the partnership approach, and whether the additional
transactions costs of building in essential checks and balances will render
such instruments too costly, remains to be seen. But that question must be
asked in the context of a comparison with the other available alternatives.
In the light of the relatively modest success, of most traditional mechanisms at least, the yardstick for comparison may not be that high.
Finally, the relative dearth of partnerships in the Australian context
cannot be understood without an appreciation of the political context in
which partnerships arise, and the importance of providing incentives, for
business in particular, to enter into them. At a federal level, the current
Australian government, which has been in power for over a decade, has
shown no inclination to impose onerous environmental controls on agriculture and one of the coalition parties in that government is closely tied
with the agricultural sector. While at state level the picture is more complex
and variable, nevertheless Australian agriculture has only rarely experienced the threat of direct intervention in its aairs. Strikingly, when the
cotton industry came under re, it was largely because it had threatened the
export markets of another agricultural sector. But, for the most part,
lacking external pressure to enter into partnerships with other groups, few
agricultural enterprises or sectors have sought to do so. Overall, in the agricultural context at least, the evidence suggests that providing the appropriate incentives to enter into partnerships would be the single most powerful
driver for their creation.
NOTE
1. The author would like to acknowledge the funding support of an Australian Research
Council Discovery Grant, which facilitated this research.
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7. Partnership as governance
mechanism in development
cooperation: intersectoral
NorthSouth partnerships for
marine biodiversity1
Ingrid J. Visseren-Hamakers, Bas Arts
and Pieter Glasbergen
NorthSouth relationships in development cooperation are almost per
denition relationships between unequal partners. Traditionally, the
Northern donor government nances development projects in the developing Southern country, a process strikingly described by Glasbergen and
Miranda as a one-way transfer of both money and morals (Glasbergen
and Miranda, 2003, p. 1). For decades, eorts have been made to improve
these relationships in terms of equality and mutuality. These improvements
are a necessity for realizing several main goals of development cooperation,
improving autonomy and self-determination of the South (Maxwell and
Riddell, 1998).
Dening NorthSouth relations in terms of partnership has been an
important part of these eorts to make development cooperation a more
two-way street. In development cooperation, the term partnership is used
to describe dierent types of relationships, sometimes referring to the relationship between a Northern and Southern government only, and sometimes including actors from other sectors of society, like market or civil
society actors. Literature about partnership between North and South
tends to focus on donorrecipient relationships, in particular on the dimensions of power, participation, trust and sustainability, as well as mutuality
(Johnson and Wilson, 2006, p. 72).
Examples of early eorts to change the relationship between donor and
recipient countries are the Lom Conventions between the European Union
and a group of countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacic (the ACP
group) and the sustainable development agreements (SDAs) between the
Netherlands and Benin, Bhutan and Costa Rica. The Lom Conventions,
138
Partnership in development cooperation
139
dating back to 1975, enabled the recipient country to take the lead in dening
objectives and means of implementation of the development cooperation
agreements. During the course of time, these principles of partnership were,
however, gradually replaced by more control by the donors, because the
Northern countries disapproved of the choices made or could not accept
that aid should be provided irrespective of human rights violations in some
countries (Maxwell and Riddell, 1998, p. 261). The SDAs from the 1990s
were grounded on the principles of equality, reciprocity and participation,
with the aim of establishing a new pattern of relationships between North
and South (Verhagen and Dorji et al., 2003). The agreements strived for a
more equal relationship between the donor and developing country. Also,
because the goal of the SDAs was sustainable development, the agreements
implied change not only for the developing but also for the developed
country, since both needed to change in order to achieve sustainability.
Therefore the principle of reciprocity was adopted. The idea behind the principle of participation was the need to strengthen the position of civil society
in the developing countries. The SDAs were not successful for many reasons,
but mainly because the Northern country had diculties with the principle
of reciprocity (Glasbergen and Miranda, 2003; Rinzin, 2006).
These examples raise the question of whether partnership can actually
improve NorthSouth relations in development cooperation. The major
challenge is how to handle existing unequal relations between partners
(Johnson and Wilson, 2006). If these inequalities are not addressed adequately, there is even a danger of partnership actually reinforcing power
asymmetries (Lister, 2000, p. 236).
This discussion on the role of partnership in development cooperation is
part of a broader debate on the role of partnership in sustainable development. This debate is concentrated less on partnership as a tool for the
emancipation of the South, but more on partnership as a mechanism for
the participation of all actors necessary for sustainable development. The
focus is on intersectoral partnership, partnership between state, market
actors and/or actors from civil society, since attaining sustainable development is increasingly seen as a responsibility of all sectors of society instead
of governments only.
The objective of this chapter is to better understand the role of partnership as governance mechanism in development cooperation in this broader
context of sustainable development. We will focus on the role of partnerships in the governance system for marine biodiversity, since several developments are taking place on this issue that are especially relevant for both
development cooperation and sustainable development.
We have developed a transactional model for the analysis of international partnership, which we present in the next section. We will focus
140
our analysis on a form of partnership that is especially relevant for development cooperation, intersectoral NorthSouth partnership. In these partnerships, the governments, market actors and/or civil society groups in both
a developing and a developed country cooperate, thus combining a partnership for development cooperation approach and a partnership for sustainable development approach. Intersectoral NorthSouth partnerships
have mainly evolved between countries with an economic relationship,
usually between a Southern country that produces a certain product for a
market in a Northern country. One of the goals of the partnership is often
to make the production more sustainable, a common problem of the producing and buying countries. Since this type of partnership represents a
specic part of the total arena of partnerships, our results will be especially
useful for NorthSouth partnerships that focus on a combination of development cooperation, sustainable development and trade.
We analyze the performance of two intersectoral NorthSouth partnerships: the shrimp partnership between Indonesia, Malaysia and the
Netherlands and the anchoveta partnership between the Netherlands and
Peru. These partnerships were chosen because they are a few years old and
thus both their start and development over time can be researched; they
involve the same Northern country (the Netherlands) enabling comparison; they play a role in the governance of the most important current sustainability issues in marine biodiversity. The lessons learned through these
two case studies can deepen our understanding of the potential of partnership as governance mechanism for development cooperation.
The results are based on the analysis of partnership documents, desk
research of literature and 26 interviews with marine biodiversity and
sheries experts and participants in the partnerships representing the
sectors of society in all countries involved.
7.1 A TRANSACTIONAL MODEL FOR

PARTNERSHIP ANALYSIS
Partnerships can be analyzed from dierent theoretical angles. Van Huijstee
and Francken et al. (2007) make a distinction between actor and institutional analysis of partnerships. In the actor approach, interactions between
the partners are the key unit of analysis. Topics like how partners communicate, exchange information and inuence each other are analyzed. An
example is Bendell and Murphys (2000) analysis of the Forest Stewardship
Council (FSC), where they assess the role of the non-governmental organization (NGO) WWF, the timber industry and governments from the actors
perspectives. An institutional analysis, on the other hand, takes another
141
point of departure. Here, the emergence of partnerships from institutional

dynamics in a society is studied. According to Arts (2002), for example,
partnerships are an expression of recent political modernization processes.
During the last decades the political roles of state, market and civil society
have been redened and their boundaries have become blurred, due to the
impact of neo-liberalism, privatization, governance and so on. This has
enabled the emergence of new policy arrangements beyond the state, such
as intersectoral partnerships.
This chapter combines the actor and institutional approach, while emphasizing the former. Therefore we call the framework we use for our analysis a
transactional model on partnerships. With that, intersectoral and international relationships between Northern and Southern partners from state,
market and civil society are the key units of analysis. This focus is chosen
because we are theoretically interested most in what the dierent partners do,
think and decide, individually or together. An empirical argument is that the
marine biodiversity partnerships dealt with in this chapter are only a few
years old, so there is not much path dependency to study. Yet, we will also
show that the interactions in and among partnerships are colored by the rules
of the game and the power relations of the past (such as diplomatic traditions and donorrecipient dependencies among governments).
In Figure 7.1 our theoretical framework is presented. Its starting point
is the triangle of the state, market and civil society sectors within
countries (and beyond). Such distinctions are rather common in sociological and political analyses and are often applied to the analysis of environmental governance (Dubbink, 1999; Van Tatenhove and Arts et al., 2000;
Driessen and Glasbergen, 2002). Figure 7.1 distinguishes such triangles in
two countries, in our case a developed and a developing country. As a consequence, intersectoral relationships are not only horizontally established
(within countries), but vertically as well (among countries). At this vertical
axis, dynamics among the sectors are to be distinguished, however, not only
intersectoral dynamics (e.g., statemarket or marketcivil society), but
intrasectoral as well (e.g., statestate or marketmarket). Exactly on the
crossroads of such horizontal and vertical relationships, the establishment
and embedding of intersectoral NorthSouth partnerships take place.
The model also distinguishes three situational contexts: two national and
one international situational context. These refer to specic regulatory
practices on certain issues on the one hand (in our case, existing shery and
marine biodiversity regulations) and to specic market conditions regarding certain products and services on the other (in our case, sh products
and environmental standards).
The nal concept of Figure 7.1 to be elaborated upon is partnership
performance. Performance is dened as the extent to which a partnership
142
State
Situational
Context 1
Market
International
Situational
Context
Civil Society
Partnership Performance
State
Situational
Context 2
Market
Figure 7.1
Civil Society
Transactional model for partnership analysis
realizes its potential in terms of establishing new relationships and producing new outputs. This can be achieved at dierent levels:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
bringing together relevant stakeholders for a specic sustainability

problem;
bringing together relevant views on a problem and thus realizing integrative solutions;
introducing or increasing intersectoral cooperation in developing (and
developed) countries;
strengthening the position of civil society in developing (and developed) countries;
increasing attention for sustainability issues in developing (and developed) countries.
It is hypothesized that the performance of partnerships is dependent on:

(1) the situational contexts; (2) intersectoral relationships (between state,
market and civil society within countries) and (3) international sectoral
143
relationships (between state, market and civil society among countries). The
situational contexts may have a considerable impact on partnerships and
their performance. For example, if there is already much regulation in place
or market conditions are unfavorable, it is probably hard for a partnership
to emerge and institutionalize. Also, the added-value of a partnership in a
situational context in which many other governance initiatives already exist
will probably be smaller than in a situational context with fewer other
mechanisms in place. Partnerships will probably also have diculties institutionalizing when intersectoral and international sectoral relationships
are troubled.
Conceptually, interactions can be studied from many angles: contacts,
conicts, communication and so on. We decided to study the intersectoral
and international sectoral relationships at the level of three dimensions:
discourses, power and rules, comparable with the policy arrangement
approach (Van Tatenhove and Arts et al., 2000).
Discourse, rst, is an important concept to understand how groups of
people frame reality in a certain way, through particular ideas, concepts
and narratives (Hajer, 1995). This concept helps us to analyze the various
sustainability discourses in dierent sectors and countries. Our hypothesis
is that these dierent discourses will color interpersonal relations in partnerships, although implicitly most of the time.
Power is an important concept in political and social analyses alike
(Clegg, 1989), but even more so in this case, given the (potential) power
inequalities among developed and developing countries on the one hand
and among the three sectors of society on the other. It is relevant to see how
and to what extent these inequalities co-determine interactions in partnerships, enabling or constraining some agencies more than others in achieving their goals.
Rules, nally, refer to established norms, conventions, routines and the
like, which shape interaction among agencies (Giddens, 1984). Through
rules of the game one can explain how new partnerships are aected, even
paralyzed sometimes, by patterned interactions from the past. It should
be mentioned that in applying these three concepts discourse, power and
rules we do not aim at a full systematic analysis. Our starting points are
the interactions themselves and only when one or more of the dimensions
seem relevant to explain what is actually happening in the partnership, we
will pay attention to them.
Below, we will assess whether and to what extent the marine biodiversity
partnerships achieve the ve levels of partnership performance. Success
and failure will be linked to the situational contexts and the three dimensions of interaction (discourses, power and rules) in both the intersectoral
relationships and the international sectoral relationships.
144
7.2 DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION AND MARINE

BIODIVERSITY
One of the most important services of marine ecosystems for humans is the
provision of food in the form of sh. Marine products are in demand as
luxury food, subsistence food and as feed for aquaculture and livestock.
Because of the growing demand for sh, the rapid expansion of shing
eets in the twentieth century and the use of destructive shing methods,
shing has become one of the largest threats to marine biodiversity worldwide. Marine sheries are in a global crisis (Pauly and Christensen et al.,
1998). Most industrial sheries are either fully or overexploited (UNEP,
2006): about 47 percent of the main stocks or species are fully exploited, 18
percent are over-exploited and 10 percent are signicantly depleted or
are recovering from depletion (FAO, 2002). The global shing industry
is shing down marine food webs, rst depleting the large, long-lived,
slower-growing, predatory sh that have a position high in the food
web, like tuna, and then moving on to smaller sh species (Pauly and
Christensen et al., 1998, p. 860). Research suggests that the global ocean
has lost more than 90 percent of large predatory shes (Myers and Worm,
2003). Several commercially valuable marine species are considered endangered or commercially extinct (ICTSD, 2006).
The most important trend in global sheries today is the emergence and
rapid development of industrial aquaculture. Aquaculture is one of the
fastest-growing food producing industries, with an annual global growth
rate of about 9 percent since 1950. Today almost half of the sh consumed
is produced by aquaculture (FAO, 2006). Aquaculture could become a sustainable alternative to catching sh in the wild, lowering the pressure on
marine biodiversity. However, the current aquaculture industry has several
sustainability problems of its own. The industry copes with polluted wastewater (Tacon and Forster, 2003) and the farms are often built in ecologically important areas, which are destroyed or impacted due to these
developments. Furthermore, the industry often has a negative impact on
the livelihoods of local communities.
One of the most important sustainability issues in aquaculture is the fact
that most sh produced in industrial aquaculture are carnivorous species.
This type of aquaculture is dependent on industrial feeds, of which a major
ingredient is wild-caught sh (Deutsch and Grslund et al., 2006): industrial
aquaculture is farming up the food web (Naylor and Goldburg et al., 2000,
p. 1018). Already, almost one-third of the sh caught globally is used to
produce shmeal and sh oil, most of which is used as sh feed in aquaculture (FAO, 2002). Around half of the produced shmeal and about threequarters of the produced sh oil is used by aquaculture; the remainder is
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mostly used for animal feed. The feed often comes from fully or overexploited sheries. Moreover, the protein conversion rate is very high: the
weight of the sh caught to produce sh feed is often higher than the weight
of the sh that is farmed. So, when aquaculture uses wild sheries capture
for sh feed, it is not only considered to be unsustainable in an environmental sense (Pauly and Watson, 2003; UNEP, 2006), it also contributes
little to world food security (Naylor and Goldburg et al., 1998). Aquaculture
of carnivorous species is not intended to provide food, but to generate revenues (Deutsch and Grslund et al., 2006). The industry is working towards
improving the protein conversion rate, and is researching alternative sources
for sh feed. Soy is an important replacement for shmeal and sh oil.
However, this only moves the problem to a dierent type of ecosystem, since
in South America large areas of primary forests are already being converted
into agricultural land for soy production.
Another important development in sheries is the globalization of the
production chain (Deutsch and Grslund et al., 2006). The international
trade in sh has grown tremendously over the past decades, spurred on by
a growing international demand for (high-quality) sh, increased aquaculture production and the demand for shmeal and sh oil for animal feed.
This demand is expected to remain equal or increase. An important part of
the trade in reality means that sh produced in developing countries is
exported to developed countries. Developing countries were responsible
for about half of all exports in 2002. Japan, the United States and the
European Union were responsible for about 75 percent of all imports
(ICTSD, 2006). The international trade has increased the quantity and
quality of sh available in developed countries (UNEP, 2006).
The question is whether the development of an export industry, like
industrial sheries or aquaculture, can contribute to sustainable development in developing countries. Export-driven sheries over-exploit the
resource base in developing countries, and divert food away from the local
market. Often only a few companies prot from this industry and it has
proven to be extremely dicult to let local populations also prot from this
development. Moreover, large industrial shing eets that focus mainly on
export markets often compete with artisanal sheries for local markets
(Pauly and Christensen et al., 2002). Fish is extremely important for the
food security of these local shers. At least six million artisanal and smallscale shers worldwide earn less than US$1 per day.
Because the rapid development of aquaculture and export-driven sheries has great impact socially, environmentally and economically, these
issues are of great relevance for development cooperation initiatives for sustainable development. The analyzed intersectoral NorthSouth partnerships play a role in the governance of these important current issues. The
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shrimp partnership is active in one of the most important aquaculture

sectors that uses industrial feed. Shrimp, a high-value luxury seafood, is the
main sh trade commodity in terms of value and is the most traded seafood
product internationally (FAO, 2002). It is produced mainly in developing
countries for markets in industrialized countries (Naylor and Goldburg
et al., 1998). The anchoveta partnership is focused on the worlds largest
shery. Peruvian anchoveta was the largest single species catch in 2000
(FAO, 2002). Peru is the worlds main supplier of shmeal and sh oil: more
than a third of the world production comes from the Peruvian anchoveta
sheries. Fishmeal and sh oil are the fth largest type of sheries trade in
terms of value (ICTSD, 2006).
7.3
THE SHRIMP CASE
Shrimp and Sustainability

Shrimp is both caught in the wild and produced in aquaculture. About
3040 percent of the global shrimp production comes from aquaculture.
Tropical shrimp aquaculture is the second largest aquaculture sector in
terms of market value, and sixth in terms of quantity (FAO, 2006).
Shrimp aquaculture causes several sustainability problems. Shrimp
farms are frequently developed in mangrove forest areas. About 38 percent
of mangrove loss worldwide can be attributed to shrimp aquaculture
(UNEP, 2006). The loss of wild sheries stocks due to habitat conversion
by shrimp aquaculture is large (Naylor and Goldburg et al., 2000), since
these mangroves are important nursery habitats for many juvenile sh
caught as adults in coastal and o-shore sheries. In Southeast Asia,
mangrove-dependent species account for about one-third of the total wild
sh catch. Moreover, mangroves impact the condition of coral reefs, which
account for about 10 percent of global human sh consumption. The development of shrimp aquaculture also has negative consequences for local
communities, who use the mangrove forests, for example to sh. When the
forests are destroyed, these sources of income and food disappear.
Formerly publicly accessible land with many resources is transformed into
privately owned farms (Naylor and Goldburg et al., 2000). Shrimp aquaculture also copes with pollution, and still depends on natural supplies of
shrimp from the sea. In some cases, small shrimp is caught and raised in
farms. In most other cases, adult females are caught in the wild and brought
to hatcheries to produce larvae (CREM, 2004). Wild shrimp is overexploited in many parts of the world (ICTSD, 2006). Finally, because of its
dependence on wild-caught sh for feed, intensive shrimp farming actually
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results in a net loss of sh protein (Naylor and Goldburg et al., 1998).

Figures for 1997 show that for every kilogram of farmed shrimp about
2.8 kilograms of wild sh is needed as feed (Naylor and Goldburg et al.,
2000). Approximately 7080 percent of all farmed shrimp is grown on commercial feed (Deutsch and Grslund et al., 2006).
The main sustainability problem of shrimp sheries is bycatch. Bycatch
are marine species unintendedly caught. They are often thrown overboard
and die due to the injuries incurred. Shrimp trawl sheries are the sheries
with the most bycatch globally, both measured in weight and numbers
(Alverson and Freeberg et al., 1994). For one kilogram of shrimp, about
1017 kilograms of bycatch is caught. These bycatch levels are so high
because shrimp sheries use small-maze nets, and they sh near the shore,
where nurseries are located for many other kinds of sh.
These facts and gures on the sustainability of shrimp are interpreted
dierently by dierent actors. Two main discourses can be distinguished.
Supporters of the rst discourse realize that there are some practical sustainability problems in shrimp farming, but do not see fundamental problems in developing the industry itself. The second discourse is based on
the opposite conviction. Supporters have fundamental problems with the
development of shrimp farming for export markets as such; solving the
local sustainability problems per farm is not going to solve the problem as
a whole (Bn, 2005). These various ideas to a large extent overlap with
dierent discourses on development cooperation. On the one hand there is
the economic growth and global market access discourse. Supporters of
this discourse are of the opinion that economic development within the
context of the globalized economy should be the overall goal of development cooperation. This discourse is countered by another one, in which the
goal of development cooperation is sustainable development, thus placing
the target of economic development in the context of environmental and
social goals.
The Situational Contexts: Many Other Initiatives
Aquaculture shrimp production is a fast-growing industry. It is expected
that this growth will continue. The governments of both Southern partner
countries in the shrimp case, Indonesia and Malaysia, have plans to
increase the production of aquaculture shrimp massively, even though it is
expected that the global production of aquaculture shrimp will soon exceed
demand (Ekmaharaj, 2006).
In Indonesia, shrimp aquaculture is already an important economic
sector. In 1999, Indonesia was the third largest producer of cultivated
shrimp in the world, following Thailand and China. In 2000, it was also the
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third largest wild shrimp producer, following China and India. The shrimp
export is important for the Indonesian economy, with an export value of
about US$1 billion in 1996 (CREM, 2004). Indonesia is mainly a producer
of raw material, with most of the added-value produced during the processing realized by other countries (CREM, 2004). The Indonesian government, supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and bilateral donors,
including the Dutch government, has stimulated the intensication and
expansion of shrimp aquaculture for decades (CREM, 2004). This is part
of a global approach, in which the growth of shrimp aquaculture has been
promoted and supported by national governments, private investors and
international development agencies wanting to generate foreign exchange,
prot and employment (Naylor and Goldburg et al., 1998). This shows that
the international governmental community has been part of the global
market access discourse in development cooperation.
There are several Indonesian regulations that inuence shrimp aquaculture and shrimp sheries. They include the Law on Water Resources
(UU No.6/1996), the Law on Fishery (UU No.31/2004) and the Law on
Decentralization (UU No.32/2004). These laws use the ecosystem approach
and require sustainable management. The Indonesian government has also
developed specic regulations to minimize the impacts of shrimp aquaculture and the catch of wild shrimp. The government requires an environmental impact analysis (EIA) for the development of shrimp ponds larger
than 50 hectares. For smaller projects an environmental management plan
(EMP) and an environmental monitoring plan (EMP) must be available.
Shrimp ponds in mangroves must leave 40 percent of the mangroves intact
and a green belt must be maintained. Shrimp trawling has been prohibited
in Indonesia since 1980. The Ministry of Fisheries has also taken the initiative to develop a Code of Conduct for shrimp aquaculture (CREM,
2004). Overall, on paper, the Indonesian policy on marine biodiversity is
adequate. Yet, the implementation of the regulations and policy remains
problematic in practice because of lack of information and/or enforcement
(CREM, 2004).
Malaysia is currently a relatively small player in global shrimp production. However, the government aims to increase shrimp production
from the estimated 40 000 tonnes in 2006 to 180 000 tonnes in 2010. In
order to achieve this target, the government wants to further develop 25 000
hectares of coastal land into aquaculture ponds (Anonymous, 2007).
The Malaysian federal government has repeatedly committed itself to
strict mangrove protection. However, a large part of mangroves is state
land that falls under state government instead of federal government
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jurisdiction. Dierent Malaysian legislations are relevant for shrimp aquaculture, most of which are of voluntary nature. The national Inland
Fishery Rules (Aquaculture) are being developed and adopted at a very
slow pace. According to the rules, state governments are required to
develop aquaculture development plans that ensure sustainable development of aquaculture. The Environmental Quality Act requires an EIA for
land-based aquaculture projects that involve clearing of mangrove swamps
covering 50 hectares or more. However, because most farms are smaller
than 50 hectares, an EIA is usually not required. In the Guidelines on
Development of Aquaculture, recommendations are made for the selection
of sites for aquaculture development. The Malaysian Code of Conduct for
Responsible Aquaculture provides non-binding guidance for aquaculture
producers. In the Code, mangrove areas are discouraged as sites for aquaculture development. The Malaysian government has also developed its
own Malaysian Aquaculture Farm Certication Scheme (SPLAM), based
on the FAO Code of Conduct for responsible sheries. It includes both
food quality and sustainability issues, however, it is not clear how stringent
the scheme is (AIDEnvironment, 2005).
Besides these national regulations, the production of shrimp is an issue
that is also covered by several international private initiatives and partnerships. The most important ones are international initiatives to set standards
for and/or certify sustainably produced shrimp. Some of them are still
developing their standard; others are already certifying shrimp. The most
inuential are the following. The rst one, the International Principles for
Responsible Shrimp Farming were developed by the FAO, the Network
of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacic (NACA), the United Nations
Environmental Programme (UNEP), the World Bank Group (WB), and
the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) (NACA, 2006). The principles
were welcomed by the 50 countries attending the UN FAO (COFI) Subcommittee Aquaculture meeting in September 2006, and can serve as a harmonization tool for the large number of certication initiatives for shrimp
(Gianni, 2006). The second, the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) is an
international business initiative. The shrimp farm standards are developed
by a technical committee in which conservation NGOs are represented.
Governments are not involved. The Aquaculture Certication Council
(ACC) has been given the exclusive right to certify farms using GAA standards. The GAA/ACC could have a large impact on the industry over the
next few years, primarily because two major seafood retailers in the United
States have recently endorsed the GAA standards and ACC certication
scheme (Gianni, 2006).
Maybe even more inuential is the initiative of the company Heiploeg,
the main Dutch shrimp importer to propose to integrate sustainability
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criteria for shrimp in the Eurep Gap certication system. Eurep Gap is a
commonly used certication system of the European retail industry focused
on food safety issues. The initiative is the result of a dialogue between Dutch
shrimp importing companies and Dutch NGOs that started after an NGO
campaign on shrimp. The dialogue developed parallel to the shrimp partnership analyzed in this chapter, and the participants of both initiatives
largely overlap. In the Dutch dialogue, importers and NGOs agreed on
minimum criteria for the sustainability and transparency of shrimp imports.
The NGOs developed the minimum criteria into detailed environmental and
social criteria for sustainable aquaculture shrimp. Eurep Gap has set up a
working group, chaired by Heiploeg, to further develop the sustainability
criteria for shrimp. The criteria adhere to the International Principles for
Responsible Shrimp described above. If Eurep Gap adopts these criteria,
this would mean the certication criteria for sustainable shrimp aquaculture
would be endorsed by the majority of the European retail industry, and,
more indirectly, that most large shrimp farms would have to adhere to the
criteria. In addition, it could be the start of Eurep Gap including more sustainability criteria in its system, also for other products. It must be said that
caught shrimp is not included in this system.
A last private initiative is Naturland that certies organically produced
shrimp, including farms in Indonesia. It is and will probably remain a
certication scheme for a niche market.
Based on this overview of international and national initiatives and regulations on the sustainability of shrimp, the question is really what the partnership between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Netherlands analyzed in this
chapter can contribute to this already almost overcrowded governance
system for sustainable shrimp.
Partnership Background
The shrimp partnership between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Netherlands
was agreed at the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in
Johannesburg in 2002 (Anonymous, 2003). It is part of a larger WSSD
partnership called Market Access Through Meeting Quality Standards for
Food and Agricultural Products, with more countries involved and on
more products, for which the Dutch government has reserved 8 million.
Here, we focus on the partnership for shrimp.
At the beginning, food safety standards, and not environmental or social
issues, were the main focus of the partnership. Later, environmental and
social issues were incorporated, but the struggle for the aims of the partnership continued. The organization of the shrimp partnership was unclear
for some time. For several partner organizations the decision-making
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procedures, nancing, agenda-setting process and voting procedures were

not transparent. In order to create more clarity, an organizational scheme
was developed and implemented. There is a trilateral committee in which
the representatives from the three countries decide on the focus of the partnership, the work program and so on. The trilateral committee meets about
twice a year. Representatives of the three sectors of society (state, market
and civil society) of all three countries should be represented on the trilateral committee. In each of the three countries, there is a national committee that decides on the national implementation of the partnership. The
three sectors of society should also be represented in these committees. In
principle, decisions are taken by consensus.
In 2005, the Dutch partner NGOs, the Dutch Committee of the World
Conservation Union (IUCN NL), Oxfam Novib and Friends of the Earth
Netherlands (Milieudefensie), left the partnership. The Malaysian NGOs,
Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) and Friends of the Earth
Malaysia (SAM), are no longer active in the partnership since they were
mainly involved for a mangrove rehabilitation project, which has been
implemented. The partnership continues despite the lack of wide participation by civil society. At the moment, only WWF is still actively involved
in both Indonesia and the Netherlands.
A partnership secretariat has been has been set up to coordinate the partnership activities and the partnership has implemented several projects.
Dierent training programs on food safety issues were realized; in Malaysia
a mangrove rehabilitation project was implemented, with 10 000 trees
planted; in Indonesia, a road show, a tour to several locations to create
awareness of sustainability and product safety issues in shrimp aquaculture
took place. Since the implementation of these projects, the partnership
progress has slowed down. Maybe the most important indirect result of the
partnership has been the successful eort in 2006 to ensure that shrimp
from Indonesia will continue to be allowed onto the European market, in
which several partner organizations were involved.
Intersectoral Relationships: An Uneasy Start
One of the main problems of the partnership was that it started more as a
multilateral governmental agreement between Indonesia, Malaysia and the
Netherlands than as an intersectoral partnership. Governments took the
initiative, some market actors were involved, but civil society was invited
later. This imbalance was never fully repaired. Most NGOs felt they were
not seen as true partners throughout the period of their engagement in the
partnership. Also, until today, governmental organizations dominate the
partnership.
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The fact that one sector of society, civil society, was absent at the start of
the partnership had major consequences for its focus. Most of the partners
involved from the start were part of the rst development cooperation discourse in which its main goals are promoting economic development and
strengthening the position of a country or industry in the global economy.
Therefore they easily agreed that solving the existing problems with the
export of shrimp to the European Union should be the main focus of the
partnership. It also explains why the partnership was agreed upon as a
WSSD partnership called Market Access Through Meeting Quality
Standards for Food and Agricultural Products. In particular, the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia wanted the partnership to focus on
ensuring that farmed shrimp from these countries fullled the European
food safety and quality demands. The European Union had rejected some
shrimp imports from Asia due to residues of antibiotics, and the governments wanted support from the Netherlands in improving their control
systems for food quality and safety. They were not particularly interested
in sustainability issues of shrimp farming in the partnership; they wanted
improved market access. Also, within the Dutch government, ministries
dier in their perspectives on development cooperation. The Ministry of
Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) is interested in improving the
market access from developing countries, since it supports the more economic discourse on development cooperation. The Ministry of Foreign
Aairs, however, supports the other discourse, in which sustainable development is the main goal. The fact that within the Dutch government the
Ministry of LNV has the lead in this partnership, strengthens the market
access orientation of the partnership.
In the dierent countries, the partners sharing the same discourse on
development cooperation often had existing rules for working together in
order to achieve their common goals. In Malaysia, for example, the government and industry are used to cooperating in order to further develop
the shrimp aquaculture industry; they have an existing good relationship.
The expansion of shrimp aquaculture is an ocial governmental target,
because of its potential as a high-value export product. The government
sees its role as facilitating the industry, and the industry wants to be supported by the government. Both viewed the partnership as an opportunity
for capacity building in order to fulll international food safety standards.
When governments did try to involve civil society in the partnership,
this was especially problematic in Indonesia and Malaysia. This can be
explained by the existing rules for intersectoral cooperation for sustainable
development in the dierent countries. In the Netherlands, the actors were
used to discussing sustainable development issues in an intersectoral
setting; in Indonesia and Malaysia this was not the case. In these countries,
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government and industry are generally not used to consulting NGOs

regularly. Even though the Dutch partners were able to ensure the participation of the Southern NGOs, they never had a large input in the partnership. An exception is WWF Indonesia, which already had a good
relationship on sustainability issues with the Indonesian government before
the partnership, and has improved its relationship with market actors
through the partnership. In Malaysia, the relationship between the government and NGOs has improved because of their cooperation in the mangrove rehabilitation project. Thus, the partnership has enabled some
increased understanding between societal sectors and countries. However,
the rules for intersectoral relations in general have not been changed.
Moreover, because all three governments mostly did not involve civil
society as equal partners instead treating them, in the old-fashioned
manner, as lobby groups the old rules for intersectoral relationships were
able to dominate the partnership.
Also, because of the dominance of the market access goal of the partnership, organizations with a more sustainable development approach to
development cooperation and with fundamental concerns towards shrimp
aquaculture were less eager to become partners. This was especially the case
for many Southern NGOs, whose main constituency is focused on local
socioeconomic issues. The Southern NGOs that did become involved
mainly used the partnership for implementing individual sustainability
projects, like the mangrove rehabilitation project in Malaysia and the road
show in Indonesia. However, the Southern NGOs did not have enough
power in their intersectoral relationships to tilt the balance between attention for market access and sustainability towards the latter. Through their
role in the partnership, the Dutch NGOs achievement was that the partnership as a whole adopted sustainable shrimp production as a formal goal
on paper, even though the balance between economic goals and social and
environmental goals was never found in practice, as described above.
International Sectoral Relationships: A Divided Civil Society
The government and business partners involved at the start of the partnership represent the discourse on the sustainability of shrimp aquaculture that
views the industry as not fundamentally problematic. This is coherent with
the international debate on shrimp aquaculture, in which international development agencies, the majority of governments, and the industry represent
this discourse and most NGOs the more fundamental one. There is a degree
of agreement among NGOs, but there is also conict of opinion (Bn, 2005).
This conict of opinion among civil society groups has had a large impact
on the performance of the partnership. Most NGOs that have been involved
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in the partnership had fundamental critique on shrimp farming. Only

WWF, IUCN NL and Oxfam Novib had a more pragmatic perspective on
the sustainability of shrimp aquaculture. These organizations took the
industry as a given and wanted to work on making the industry more sustainable. With this pragmatic approach, the NGOs manifested themselves
as part of the less fundamental discourse in the debate on shrimp aquaculture. Within the Friends of the Earth network, the partners in Indonesia,
Malaysia and the Netherlands had dierent opinions. During the course of
the partnership, all Friends of the Earth representatives adapted the more
fundamental view. Although the NGOs with a pragmatic position represented a minority position in the international NGO community, they were
the larger, powerful ones, who most often cooperate with market and state
actors in partnership. Nonetheless, in the shrimp partnership, the international more fundamental NGO community was successful in pressuring
the Dutch NGOs to discontinue their participation in the partnership.
There are several explanations for this remarkable outcome. As described
above, the NGOs involved in the partnership had great diculty getting
attention for sustainability issues in the partnership, so their willingness to
stay involved deteriorated over time. Second, the partnership was meant to
be a true intersectoral NorthSouth partnership, and therefore a lot of
eort was put into involving Southern NGOs. Through them, the more
fundamental discourse received a voice in the partnership. However, due to
the weak position of Southern NGOs in intersectoral relations they were
unable to inuence the core focus of the partnership. Yet, they were able to
inuence the Northern NGOs. Third, dierences in perspectives on the
phenomenon of partnership are also part of the explanation. Some organizations view partnership as a process in which partners meet new actors,
can discuss common issues and try to inuence one another, learn to understand each other and build trust. Also, in this discourse, partnership is seen
as a way to have more relationships in which all three sectors of society are
involved. Others see partnership as a way to reach concrete goals by implementing projects. The Dutch and Malaysian NGOs supported the latter
view. They wanted to make the shrimp aquaculture industry more sustainable through specic projects. WWF Indonesia, on the other hand, has a
more process-oriented perspective on partnership. It regarded the partnership as a means of meeting new actors and build trust. The Northern
NGOs could not realize their specic goals, and felt strong pressure from
the civil society community, both in- and outside the partnership. They felt
they had no other choice but to withdraw from the partnership.
At the same time, the Dutch government was not eager to take a critical
stance towards its Indonesian and Malaysian counterparts in order to
increase attention for sustainability issues. Their existing diplomatic
155
relations did not allow such criticism. After all, the Dutch government and
the Malaysian and Indonesian governments have a long diplomatic history
of negotiations on natural resources, especially timber. The Dutch representatives in the partnership were the same people as in international forest
negotiations. These existing relations and prior experiences have inuenced
the shrimp partnership process. The Dutch government, acting as the partnership coordinator, became stuck between the wish of the Indonesian
and Malaysian governments to focus mainly on market access issues, and
civil society groups to focus more on social and environmental issues.
As described above, the Indonesian and Malaysian market actors were
mainly interested in fullling international food safety norms. The Dutch
importers were divided in their interest in sustainability. The Dutch companies that were interested in sustainability chose to be active in a more
practical, direct manner, working on certication of shrimp through the
Eurep Gap system, an initiative that seems to be far more eective than
the intersectoral NorthSouth partnership itself. Moreover, the Dutch
importers had already lost their powerful position as buyers to convince
their counterparts to pay more attention to sustainability. After the rejection of shrimp imports from Asia, most of the import of Indonesian and
Malaysian shrimp moved to other EU countries. In general, the partnership
has enabled a better understanding between Northern and Southern governments and market actors, and enabled the discussion of sustainability
issues between these actors for the rst time, even though the relationships
have not really changed.
7.4
THE ANCHOVETA CASE
Anchoveta and Sustainability

The present Peruvian industrial shing industry dates back to the 1950s
when anchoveta started to be processed into shmeal and sh oil (Pauly
and Tsukayama, 1987). There are two stocks of anchoveta: the northern
stock is found in Peruvian national waters only; the more southern stock
appears in both the Peruvian and Chilean exclusive economic zones (EEZ).
Anchoveta is therefore considered a transboundary sh stock. The species
has been declared fully exploited (Zuzunaga, 2002).
The anchoveta stocks are part of the Humboldt Current Large Marine
Ecosystem, in the Southeastern part of the Pacic Ocean, one of the most
productive marine areas of the world, due to the Humboldt Current, an
upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich waters. The sh resource is periodically
highly impacted by El Nio Southern Oscillation (ENSO). In El Nio
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years, catches have declined to about a quarter of the catch in normal years
(Hatziolos and de Haan, 2006). This natural extreme volatility makes sh
stock management especially complicated. Both the impact and the delays
in recovery of El Nio are likely to be deepened by overshing (Deutsch
and Grslund et al., 2006). In 1972 the anchoveta population collapsed due
to both heavy shing pressure and a strong El Nio (Brainard and McLain,
1987). Other El Nio events occurred in the early 1980s and in 1998
(Huntington and Frid et al., 2004). Climate change models predict more
frequent occurrences of El Nio, and it is expected that the anchoveta
stocks will become even more volatile (Hatziolos and de Haan, 2006).
Anchoveta sustains a large and diverse food web, including sea lions,
seals, dolphins, sea birds and other sh species. Since the development of
the industrial anchoveta shery, the amount of anchoveta available for sea
birds has declined signicantly. The sea bird population has declined
from about 2030 million in the 1950s to about three million today (Majluf
and Barandiarn et al., 2005). This was already recognized by Tovar and
Guillen et al. in 1987. They concluded that The shery thus aects the
guano bird populations, by reducing their food base before, during and
after an El Nio event (Tovar and Guillen et al., 1987, p. 217).
Because Peru has become the worlds main supplier of shmeal and sh
oil, the global aquaculture industry is increasingly dependent on this one
marine ecosystem (Deutsch and Grslund et al., 2006). The sustainable
management of anchoveta is therefore of interest for the international
aquaculture industry and global markets for sh.
Two main discourses can be distinguished on the issue of sustainable
sheries. The rst discourse, with a less inclusive approach towards sustainable sheries, mainly focuses on the state of the managed sh stock.
The goal in this approach is to ensure the long-term sustainability of the
sh stock. Over-exploitation of the stock is prevented by regulating the
shing industry. The second discourse uses a more inclusive denition of
sustainable sheries, including the ecosystem approach and equity issues.
An ecosystem approach
considers ecosystem interactions and the health of the marine ecosystem in the
management of marine resources. The goal of the ecosystem approach is to
develop and manage sheries in a manner that addresses the multiple needs and
desires of societies, without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to
benet from the full range of goods and services provided by marine ecosystems.
(Huntington and Frid et al., 2004, p. 4)
This second discourse also questions the sustainability of the current extent
of the use of shmeal and sh oil to produce sh feed. In Peru, the discussion
on whether it is sustainable to view anchoveta purely as a sh to produce
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shmeal and oil has recently intensied. Since the whole industry is set up as
a feed production export industry, a local campaign has started to try to get
people to view anchoveta as food instead of feed. In this view, anchoveta is
seen also as food for Peruvians. Also, exporting anchoveta as a table sh next
to feed would be an opportunity for the industrial shery.
The Situational Context: Few Other Initiatives
For Peru, the anchoveta shery is one of the major sources of income.
Fisheries exports are the second largest earner of foreign exchange
(Hatziolos and de Haan, 2006). Main buyers are China and Europe.
The Peruvian government started regulating the anchoveta shery in the
1960s (Castillo and Mendo, 1987). The Peruvian General Fisheries Law
dates back to 1992. It prohibits expansion of the eet and processing capacity. The law intends to comply with the FAO Code of Conduct for
Responsible Fisheries (Hatziolos and de Haan, 2006) and includes provisions for a third-party self-monitoring system to ght illegal sheries. The
law has been adapted several times since then, weakening the legislation.
There have also been diculties with enforcement. The governmental
measures are mainly focusing on managing the anchoveta stocks.
Government controls include satellite tracking systems on vessels, closed
shing seasons, limits on minimum size of sh landed and consideration of
stock assessment in setting harvest limits (Huntington and Frid et al.,
2004). Yet several problems remain, including the eects of the sheries on
marine biodiversity and the ecosystem, the management of the Southern
stock of anchoveta, which is shared with Chilean sheries, overcapacity of
the shing eet, social issues, pollution by the factories and the public availability of information. One of the main problems is the overcapacity of
both the shing eet and processing industry (Hatziolos and de Haan,
2006). For example, due to the number of vessels and their large carrying
capacity, the eet is only allowed to sh for 120 days a year, even though
the anchoveta stocks could allow for a 200-day shing season (Majluf and
Barandiarn et al., 2005). The overcapacity is both economically inecient
and creates continuous pressure to allow for more shing.
As described in Section 7.2, the main use for shmeal and sh oil is the
aquaculture industry. Even though the level of shmeal and sh oil use in
sh feed will continue to decline, the total demand will keep rising, due to
the ongoing expansion of the aquaculture industry (Huntington and Frid
et al., 2004). This demand for sh feed creates a continuous pressure to
maximize shing eorts, even though the anchoveta shery is already
fully exploited. Moreover, this seemingly inexhaustible demand does
not support eorts for innovation or change. However, the aquaculture
158
industry is looking into substitutes for the long term. Main replacements
named are the further improvement of the use of plant material, the use of
bycatch and the development of alternatives through biotechnology (ibid.).
Compared with the almost overfull situational context in the shrimp case,
the context of the anchoveta partnership is extremely quiet. A large part of
the international sheries governance system is not relevant for anchoveta.
Even though it is a transboundary sh stock, it is not considered a straddling sh stock or a highly migratory sh stock. Therefore the international agreements on these stocks are not applicable to anchoveta. Also,
the anchoveta partnership is the only known international partnership in
this eld. In fact, the partnership could turn out to be the beginning of an
international sh feed governance system if a roundtable for sustainable sh
feed will become reality (see below). Because of the relatively empty
governance system for sustainable anchoveta, or in a broader sense, sustainable sh feed, the potential added-value of the partnership, both for the
Peruvian and the international context, is high.
Partnership Background
The anchoveta partnership started as a Dutch intersectoral partnership
between the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Aairs, IUCN NL and the
company Nutreco, whose daughter company Skretting is the worlds largest
sh feed producer, with a 40 percent market share. The partnership developed out of the transition biodiversity process organized by the Dutch
government, an interactive process to develop long-term strategies to conserve biodiversity. The Dutch partners were all involved in this process.
The partnership has organized two conferences. Even though the organizational form and membership of the partnership are not formally
arranged, one could say that in the process of organizing these conferences,
the Peruvian government and industry and the International Fishmeal and
Fish Oil Organisation (IFFO) have joined the partnership. Peruvian civil
society groups are not partners.
The rst conference was held in Peru in 2005. It was hosted by the governments of Peru and the Netherlands, and was co-hosted by the Sociedad
Nacional de Pesquera (SNP), which represents over 70 percent of the
shing industry in Peru. The meeting was co-sponsored by Nutreco and
IUCN NL. The conference was attended by about 50 people, representing
dierent governments, intergovernmental organizations, research institutes, certication organizations, industry and local and international civil
society groups. The meeting produced a joint statement by the Peruvian
and Dutch governments. The governments wanted to develop a joint workplan, in which the following subjects needed to be included: evaluation
159
criteria for economic and social eects of the shery, mechanisms to disperse the latest scientic and technical experience to the public in and
outside Peru, and further development of integrating the ecosystem components in the anchoveta sheries management (Anonymous, 2005).
The second conference was organized by the Dutch and Peruvian
governments, SNP, IFFO, Nutreco and IUCN NL and took place in the
Netherlands. Many of the people who attended the rst meeting were
present again. During this meeting, the idea for a roundtable for sustainable shmeal came up. The roundtable would not only focus on Peruvian
shmeal and sh oil but would try to involve other regions. Conclusions
of the meeting included the initiative of IFFO to research the possibilities
of a global roundtable for sustainable shmeal and sh oil, the initiative of
Nutreco for a business-to-business working group between Peru and the
Netherlands to map potential issues and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign
Aairs to coordinate the follow-up actions.
Until today, the partnership has mainly been successful in agenda-setting.
Major contributions of the partnership are attention for transparency,
ecosystems and independent certication in regard to the anchoveta shery.
No new sustainability measures have been implemented due to the partnership. The partnership could develop into a roundtable, an outcome not foreseen at the start. An important reason for trying to organize a global
roundtable is to involve other major actors, like the Chinese. A negative sideeect of the development of a global roundtable could be that there will be
less attention to the specic Peruvian problems and the implementation of
the partnership action plan. It seems like this is already the case. The partnership process is slowing down, while the development of the roundtable
is also extremely slow.
Intersectoral Relationships: A Powerful Industry
All three Dutch partners have a process-oriented perspective on the partnership phenomenon. They are convinced of the potential of an intersectoral
partnership approach. They are cooperation-oriented and are used to
working together. Even though their relationship is not formally equal for
example, the Ministry of Foreign Aairs subsidizes the work of IUCN NL in
the partnership the partners in practice seem equal. Also, because the Dutch
partnership evolved from an earlier initiative in which all three partners were
involved, all of them joined at the same time, enabling these equal positions.
In Peru, the existing rules of the game guiding intersectoral relations are
quite dierent. Due to the rule of authoritarian regimes until the end of the
twentieth century, civil society does not have a powerful position in
Peruvian society. Government and industry are not used to consulting
160
NGOs regularly. The position of civil society is slowly improving, however.

The rst partnership conference was the rst time that the Peruvian
government, sheries industry and civil society groups, universities and
international civil society groups were all active participants during the
same meeting on the issue of anchoveta. This was a major step for the
parties involved and it was confrontational at times. Peruvian representatives of the less and more inclusive discourses on sustainable sheries
exchanged views for the rst time. The meeting enabled civil society and
university groups to bring issues from their more inclusive perspective onto
the agenda, among others the ecosystem approach and the inaccuracy of
and lack of transparency on shing statistics. For some NGOs, the meeting
was also an eye-opener; they realized that the government and industry
were really trying to manage the anchoveta shery properly. Only, their
denition of properly was very dierent from that of the NGOs.
The partnership has not (yet) changed the existing rules of intersectoral
relations in Peru. The main reason is the fact that the Peruvian intersectoral
relationship has an extremely unequal power balance. The Peruvian
anchoveta shery is so important for the Peruvian economy that the industry
nds itself in an extremely strong power position. The shery is an important
political issue, the lobby of the industry is very inuential, several of its representatives are politically active and the relationship between government
and the industry is in general very close. Not surprisingly, the anchoveta
shery representatives are part of the Peruvian elite. Consequently, the visions
of the government and industry are in general the same.
For NGOs the story is quite the opposite. Few Peruvian NGOs are active
on the issue of anchoveta shery because the issue is simply too big, and
the shing industry is simply too powerful. However, the NGOs also have
not prioritized the anchoveta issue themselves; the eorts in Peru of the
international environmental movement are more focused on forest conservation because of the high biodiversity in Peruvian forests. Other explanations are that the partnership conferences were not organized with equal
representation among societal sectors in mind. During the rst conference
of the partnership, for example, some representatives of the more inclusive
discourse on sustainable sheries felt more like observers than partners,
and experienced the participation between societal sectors as unevenly balanced. In addition, artisanal shers were not represented, excluding equity
issues from the meeting.
International Sectoral Relationships: Careful First Steps
Power relations were also the main drivers in the international sectoral
relationships. The company Nutreco is aware of the strongly increasing
161
demand for natural resources; We have to start managing scarcity, as the

interviewee put it. Nutreco wants to cooperate with Peru to produce sustainably because the company realizes sustainable management is simply a
necessity in order to ensure its supplies in ve to ten years. It also feels
increasing pressure from society to guarantee that its products are sustainable. Even though Nutreco is a large customer of the Peruvian anchoveta
shery and a major player in the international sh feed sector, its economic
power was not strong enough to convince the Peruvians to increase their
eorts towards sustainability. Due to the booming aquaculture industry,
the global demand for shmeal and sh oil, especially from China and
Chile, is so high that if Europeans stopped buying from Peru for sustainability issues, there would still be plenty of other customers. Furthermore,
Peru is a powerful IFFO member, which decreases the opportunities for
IFFO to play a more independent role.
Right from the start of the partnership, the Peruvian industry distrusted
the interest of the Northern parties in the way Peru manages its sh stocks.
The industry feels very strongly about maintaining the autonomy to
manage its national natural resources, and does not want to share the management with other countries or organizations. The industry felt pressured
to start working with the independent certication scheme Marine
Stewardship Council (MSC), among others, because dierent sh feed
sheries in South America are already working with or are thinking about
MSC certication. During the partnership conferences, certication was
discussed, despite the sensitivity of the issue. In particular, the Peruvian
industry does not want external mingling on social issues. Moreover, the
industry is skeptical about private international standards; working with
(governmental) FAO-based standards is considered more acceptable. Until
today, the industry has been of the opinion that they are managing the
anchoveta stock sustainably and they feel that they do not need an independent certicate to prove this. Moreover, the industry does not have a
tradition in external accountability. The industry realizes, nonetheless, that
sooner or later it will have to start working with eco-labeling. Also, because
of the partnership, the Peruvian anchoveta industry has gained more
understanding of the sustainability concerns of its clients and other actors
and the value of communicating about its own sustainability eorts. The
partnership gave the Peruvian government and industry the opportunity to
inform an international forum about the measures already taken to make
the anchoveta shery more sustainable.
All three involved Dutch organizations are convinced of the added-value
of the partnership given the fact that government, business and civil society
are all involved on the Dutch side. They very consciously made the eort
to engage the right counterparts of all three sectors of society from Peru.
162
Consequently, the Dutch partners succeeded in nding the right Peruvian

people in their own sectors. However, because all three Dutch organizations
have a process perspective on partnership and therefore view partnership
especially as a way for new actors to work together and build trust, there
was little pressure to attain concrete sustainability measures. This discouraged some participants with an output-oriented view, especially those who
also have a more inclusive perspective on the sustainability of the
anchoveta sheries. The dierent actors involved therefore have dierent
opinions on the added-value of the partnership conferences.
7.5
CONCLUSIONS
In this chapter, we have tried to improve our understanding of partnership as governance mechanism in development cooperation, using the
marine biodiversity empirical eld for our research. Although our work is
relevant for understanding the role of international intersectoral partnership in general, our conclusions are especially useful for intersectoral
NorthSouth partnerships that focus on a combination of development
cooperation, sustainable development and trade. The presented transactional model used in this chapter has proven a useful tool for analyzing
international intersectoral partnership. The model unravels the dierent
inuences on partnership performance by focusing on the situational contexts and on discourse, power and rules in intersectoral and international
sectoral relations. Because in practice these causes interact, the model can
be used as a benecial instrument to weigh the relative inuence of each
dimension.
Both the shrimp and the anchoveta partnership did not fully realize the
potential of working through international intersectoral partnership. Of
the ve levels at which intersectoral NorthSouth partnerships were
expected to establish new relationships and produce new outputs (engaging
stakeholders, realizing integrative solutions, increasing intersectoral cooperation, strengthening civil society and promoting sustainability) only two
were partly realized. Both partnerships did bring together relevant stakeholders from all three sectors of society, and thus did bring together several
relevant views on the sustainability problems at hand, even though not all
relevant stakeholders were involved. The main successes of the partnerships therefore can be found in the sphere of agenda-setting and increased
understanding among partners. However, the concrete outputs that were
produced hardly integrated the perspectives of the dierent partners; thus,
integrative solutions were only partially developed. Also, the partnerships
did not contribute to improved intersectoral cooperation in the longer run,
163
and attention for sustainability, including all its dimensions, has not
increased. These conclusions cannot be seen as denite, since both partnerships are relatively recent initiatives and are ongoing.
Both cases show that important success and failure factors may lie
outside of a partnership, in the situational contexts. In the shrimp partnership, the pressure from the international NGO community outside the partnership on the NGOs inside was overwhelming, and in the anchoveta
partnership, earlier societal pressure on the company Nutreco to become
more sustainable was one of the driving forces to start the initiative.
Moreover, the potential added-value of a partnership is dependent on the
number of other initiatives that are working on the same issues. In the
shrimp case, the question is really what the partnership can contribute to a
governance system in which numerous public and private governance
mechanisms are already in place. The contribution of the anchoveta partnership to the governance system in Peru, on the other hand, could become
signicant, since the partnership has been able to place new issues on the
agenda, for example the ecosystem approach. The partnerships contribution to the international governance system could become inuential if
the partners succeed in enabling an international roundtable on sustainable
sh feed. With that, the partnership could actually become the start of an
international governance system for sustainable sh feed. The development
of the roundtable is, however, extremely slow.
The case studies have also made clear that partnering is extremely problematic when dierent discourses meet. It seems that a basic consensus
among partners on the strategies for sustainable development, on development cooperation and on the role of partnership as governance mechanism
is needed in order for partnership to be successful. The consequences of
this prerequisite can already be seen in the current practice of partnership,
not only in the eld of marine biodiversity but also, for instance, in the eld
of forest biodiversity (see also Visseren-Hamakers and Glasbergen, 2007).
Often the NGOs with more pragmatic strategies towards sustainability and
with more process-oriented perspectives on partnership as governance
mechanism become and remain involved in partnership. The NGOs
with more inclusive views on sustainability and more output-oriented
approaches often do not become involved or leave partnerships due to the
perceived lack of progress. This practice has substantial impact on the
role of partnerships. It means that some discourses are not represented or
are under-represented in partnerships, disabling their potential in addressing certain sustainability issues.
This is exactly what happened in the shrimp case, where true partnership, in which all actors cooperate towards a common goal, was impossible
due to the domination of one discourse. Because of the late involvement of
164
civil society, the partners with an economic discourse on development

cooperation and with less fundamental objections towards the development of shrimp aquaculture as an export product were able to set the tone
of the partnership. Due to this positioning of the partnership, NGOs with
fundamental critique on industrial shrimp aquaculture were hesitant to
play a role and nally convinced most of the more pragmatic NGOs to
leave the partnership. Both cases show that discourses on the phenomenon
of partnership also inuence partnership performance. In the shrimp case,
some of the partners that viewed partnership as a way to reach concrete
goals are cooperating successfully in a dierent setting, the dialogue
between Dutch importers and NGOs working on Eurep Gap certication
criteria. In the anchoveta case, the partnership did enable the representatives of less and more inclusive discourses towards sustainable sheries to
exchange views, but because the Dutch partners all have a more processoriented perspective on the partnership phenomenon, there has been little
momentum for concrete steps towards increased sustainability. In fact, the
development of both partnerships is losing momentum due to the fact that
few partners are proactive. It seems that working in partnership is viewed
by many as additional work and not as part of their core business. This attitude is preventing the partnerships from realizing their potential in the
longer term.
Existing rules also have a large inuence on partnership performance.
Both case studies demonstrate that, in particular, existing rules in intersectoral relations have a large impact. Most organizations in both the North
and the South are not used to working together in intersectoral partnerships that include all three societal sectors. Generally, the Southern
governments and industries have a good and close working relationship to
further develop export industries. It is dicult for them to view civil society
as an equal partner, since the Indonesian, Malaysian and Peruvian governments and industries do not have a tradition in proactively involving civil
society; civil society usually has a weak position in Southern intersectoral
relations. In both the North and the South, if civil society is invited to
become involved, it is often through consultation, and not as an equal
partner. In the cases when NGOs do become partners in intersectoral partnership, the relationships within the partnership are of a very dierent
character, because the partnership for the government and industry means
the continuation of an existing relationship and for civil society the partnership means a new type of relationship with both government and industry. Also, civil society groups sometimes have diculty fullling this new
role as partner. They have to commit themselves publicly to the partnership
and have to implement projects, while some NGOs have little experience in
implementation. Businesses especially show little patience when NGOs
165
have trouble committing to the often incremental improvements achieved

by intersectoral partnership.
In conclusion, the existing rules for intersectoral relations are so strongly
established that the analyzed partnerships have not been able to improve
this cooperation structurally. Moreover, the existing weak position of the
Southern NGOs in local intersectoral relations has been incorporated in
and reinforced by the partnerships. Practice shows that it is a tall order for
partnerships to change existing rules and that the potential of partnership
to increase intersectoral cooperation is dicult to realize.
Existing rules in international sectoral relations also impact partnership
performance. The core business of most civil society groups is campaigning, trying to bring about change in governments and industries by showing
their current unsustainable behavior and proposing improvements. They
are less used to working in partnership with these organizations in order to
enable more sustainable behavior step by step, making compromises and
taking public accountability for these compromises. Some NGOs that are
increasingly using the partnership approach instead of the campaigning
approach are criticized by other civil society groups. The shrimp case is a
good example of this split in civil society. In this case the campaigning
NGOs convinced most of the NGOs that were willing to work in partnership to make shrimp aquaculture more sustainable to discontinue their
involvement in the partnership. Existing rules for intergovernmental relations also aect partnership performance. Governments are used to cooperating with each other in bi- or multilateral governmental arrangements
that generally include a number of specic formalities. These intergovernmental formalities sometimes stand in the way of a more informal manner
of cooperation in partnership.
The case studies point out that power inequalities, both in intersectoral
and in international sectoral relations, have large impacts on partnership
performance. Also, it is extremely dicult to change power imbalances
through partnership. Especially in the anchoveta case, true partnership
was hampered mainly by existing unequal power relationships. The importance of the anchoveta industry, both for the national economy and for the
global supply of sh feed, dominated both intersectoral and international
sectoral relations.
The traditional power imbalance in NorthSouth development cooperation relations, as described in the introduction, was less present in the analyzed partnerships. This was not only due to the fact that the partnerships
did not follow the rules of the game of traditional development cooperation, with the Northern country bringing a large budget into the relationship, since relatively little money was spent on the analyzed partnerships.
Another explanation can be found in the inclusion of the market sector
166
through the intersectoral approach in the partnership. Because the analyzed partnerships are bi- or trilateral NorthSouth partnerships, the
economic partners from the North were only one of the many international
buyers of the market partners in the South. Consequently, the most
powerful actors in the NorthSouth partnership were in fact the Southern
economic partners. This reversed the power imbalance compared with traditional development cooperation relationships. Thus, the partnership
approach enabled the South to become the most powerful partner. This
indicates that intersectoral NorthSouth partnership can contribute to the
emancipation of the South.
This could, in turn, have a negative backlash for the position of civil
society groups. As described above, civil society does not have a powerful
societal position in the existing intersectoral relations in the South.
Governments and market actors are often very close. They share the same
discourses and goals and are not used to consulting civil society groups.
Therefore, the fact that the South can become the most powerful country
due to the partnership approach can disable the input of civil society in partnerships. The views of some NGOs, often those who support a more inclusive approach to sustainable development, can become under-represented in
the partnership approach. This is precisely what the case studies have
shown. The studied partnerships have indeed reinforced existing power
asymmetries, as described in the introduction. However, the existing power
asymmetries that were reinforced were not the international sectoral relations, but the intersectoral relations in the South. The potential of the
partnership approach to emancipate civil society in the South is obviously
extremely dicult to realize. This potential can only be achieved if the partnership is proactively managed with this emancipation goal in mind.
These conclusions touch upon a fundamental issue concerning partnership performance. By focusing on shrimp aquaculture and the production
of shmeal and sh oil for aquaculture, the partnerships legitimize sectors
that could in essence be unsustainable. By focusing on export industries, the
partnerships also do not question the sustainability of the trend of increasing numbers of natural resources and basic products being produced in the
South for Northern markets. The development of export industries in
developing countries for markets in developed countries is not unique for
sheries; this is a broader trend. Other export crops are soy and palm oil:
protein is being exported from poorer countries to richer countries, instead
of being used by the local population. By addressing issues in these sectors,
the partnerships reinforce these trends and existing institutions, instead of
questioning their sustainability. In this manner, partnership will only
realize piecemeal improvements towards sustainability instead of breaking
unsustainable trends. The question is whether partnership can help solve
167
these more fundamental sustainability problems, since their essence is

involving all relevant sectors of society. Most of these actors have a stake
in maintaining the industry concerned, and will not automatically be
willing to discuss shifting trends or changing to dierent economic activities. Partnership seems to be more valuable as a governance mechanism for
making existing trends more sustainable than breaking unsustainable
trends. This contradicts the expectation that because relevant stakeholder
and views are involved, more integrative solutions could be developed
through partnership.
NOTE
1. The authors especially want to thank Johan Verburg of Oxfam Novib. Our transactional
model (Figure 7.1) is based on a very inspiring meeting with him. We also would like to
thank Professor Dr. Pieter Leroy, Verena Bitzer, Mara Francken and Maritte van
Huijstee for their useful comments.
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the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Nairobi, Kenya: UNEP.
Van Tatenhove, J.P.M. and B. Arts et al. (eds) (2000), Political Modernisation and
the Environment: The Renewal of Environmental Policy Arrangements, Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Verhagen, H. and N. Dorji et al. (2003), Building Partnerships for Sustainable
Development. Lessons from the Netherlands, Benin, Bhutan and Costa Rica,
Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute (KIT).
170
Visseren-Hamakers, I.J. and P. Glasbergen (2007), Partnerships in forest governance, Global Environmental Change, accessed at http://sciencedirect.com/
science/journal/09593780.
Zuzunaga, J. (2002), Some shared sh stocks of south eastern Pacic, paper
presented at the Norway-FAO Expert Consultation on the Management of
Shared Fish Stocks, Bergen, Norway.
PART 3
Partnerships and the liberal-democratic

governance structure
8. Partnerships for sustainability:

an analysis of transnational
environmental regimes
Philipp Pattberg
Governance for sustainability is one of the great challenges humankind is
facing at the beginning of the third millennium. The perennial question
is how to organize the co-evolution of societies and their surrounding environment. Within the last decade, the concept of partnershiphas gained currency in these discussions, both as an empirical observation and a normative
programme. This chapter takes a governance perspective on recent developments in global environmental politics in particular on partnerships
between divergent actors such as business and non-prot organizations
and asks what we can learn from research about the formation and inuence
of transnational environmental regimes for the burgeoning partnership
debate.
Innovative forms of partnership can be observed in a range of dierent
organizational settings and issue areas. Firms may engage in strategic
alliances with suppliers and competitors, develop informal industry norms
and practices or even formal inter-rm regimes, regulating the behaviour of
a wide range of business actors in sectors ranging from chemicals to minerals and mining. International organizations seek the assistance of corporations in implementing universal social and environmental norms or
engage in partnerships with business actors and non-governmental organizations to introduce globally applicable schemes for sustainable corporate
reporting. Civil society representatives take part in deliberations involving
corporations, governments and international organizations with a view to
establishing a sustainable framework for the planning and operation of
large-scale dams.
Some forms of institutionalized rule-making and implementation even
deliberately exclude public authorities and create social obligations that
are private in their nature, but transcend national boundaries in issue areas
ranging from forestry to organic farming and corporate environmental
reporting. Take, for example, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a
173
174
Partnerships and the liberal-democratic governance structure
transnational partnership of environmental and social NGOs, timber

producers and traders, labour activists and retailers that sets detailed rules
and procedures to regulate the behaviour of economic actors along the
supply chain in global forestry. In the words of Stephen Bass (2002, p. 7):
It is notable how FSC has been able to: develop norms of behaviour;
develop procedures for compliance; tackle the issue of multifactor coherence; and ensure a case-based approach to judgement and appeal. In other
words to develop law . However, the FSC is not an exceptional case.
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Marine Stewardship Council
(MSC), but also initiatives such as the Rugmark Foundation labelling
scheme for carpets produced without child labour, the Earth Island
Institutes Dolphin Safe label for tuna, the Common Code for the Coee
Community (4C) or the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development
(MMSD) initiative are further illustrations of a growing market of nonstate processes in which issues are dened, rules are made and compliance
with these rules is monitored. As far as their output is concerned, these
partnerships resemble international cooperation, with the important
dierence that it is not predominantly states, but non-state actors who
generate the principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures and
the expectations associated with them. Hence, we might speak of private
rule-making partnerships as specic types of transnational regimes that
have emerged in many areas where international regulation is either absent
or weak.
As a result of this similarity, key questions with regard to transnational
regimes resemble many of the questions posed in international institutional
theory for instance, What accounts for the emergence of instances of
rule-based cooperation in the international system?, How do international institutions aect the behaviour of state and non-state actors in
the issue areas for which they have been created? or Which factors, be they
located within or without the institution, determine the success and the
stability of international regimes? (Hasenclever, Mayer and Rittberger,
1997, p. 1). In analogy to these questions, this chapter is interested in the
institutionalization of transnational governance; its particular aim is to
understand the emergence of rule-making partnerships in the eld of
global sustainability politics and the causal pathways through which these
transnational regimes gain inuence in world politics. The relevance of
these questions is underlined by the growing trust the international community and a host of non-state actors are putting in governance beyond the
state, often without a thorough discussion of the interests and pay-os
involved.
Partnerships for sustainability
175
8.1 TRANSNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL

GOVERNANCE RESEARCH: FROM NON-STATE
ACTORS TO NON-STATE RULES
Given the increasing interest in non-state actors of all kinds including civil
society organizations, business corporations and scientic communities
the view that the discipline of international relations (IR) is rmly based on
a state-centred ontology can hardly be substantiated. Nonetheless, most
research on non-state actors in world politics has focused on the inuence
these actors have on intergovernmental policy-making. In contrast, the
governance role that non-state actors full beyond their cooperation with
public actors has frequently been overlooked.
A notable exception is the debate on private authority in world politics,
which focuses on inter-rm cooperation and its impacts on the international political system. Studies on private authority have paid considerable attention to processes of institutionalization in the form of informal
industry norms and practices, cartels, production alliances and private
inter-rm regimes (Cutler, Hauer and Porter, 1999). Other studies have
focused on the emergence of private authority in the eld of international
political economy more generally, distinguishing between moral, marketbased and illicit forms of authority (Hall and Biersteker, 2002).
Second, a more actor-centred perspective on transnational governance in
world politics can be found in Peter Newells (2001) assessment of novel
strategies taken by environmental NGOs to target business actors. From
the perspective of international political economy, strategies of consumer
boycotts, shareholder campaigns and the general exposure of corporate
misconduct are analysed as instruments of governance because they induce
behaviour that is rule-bound and socially regulated (ibid., p. 89).
As a third contribution, the management literature on strategic alliances
and partnerships (Hartman and Staord, 1997; Austin, 2000) particularly
focuses on the ways in which the new relationship of business and other
non-state actors aects corporate business goals. Among others, better risk
management, cost reduction and productivity gains, the development of
new products and the intrusion into new markets, the reorganization of
production chains and the construction of barriers to other companies
through distinction are seen as incentives that explain the proliferation of
businessNGO collaboration at the global level (cf. Waddell, 1999). Finally,
in the context of a growing body of literature on so-called new forms of
governance, the issue on non-state global governance has gained popularity (see e.g., Reinicke et al., 2000; Cashore, 2002; Brzel and Risse, 2005).
In parallel to the above-mentioned perspectives on transnational governance, scholars have attempted to understand the relationship between
176
IR and the concept of transnational governance with a special view to

global environmental politics (cf. Falkner, 2003). Although not a genuine
approach in its own right, recent research in global environmental politics
has greatly contributed to the establishment of a new research agenda on
private transnational governance. In particular, research on the role of
business in global governance, the privatization of environmental governance and the idea and practice of standard-setting and certication has
been most inuential (Clapp, 1998; Kern et al., 2001; Newell, 2001; Jagers
and Stripple, 2003; Levy and Newell, 2005).
By and large, the contributions from the various perspectives have shed
light on the empirical richness of the phenomenon and led to some preliminary conclusions that, as yet, mainly relate to conceptual and typological distinctions between similar, yet analytically dierent, phenomena.
This chapter focuses on a specic type of transnational governance,
namely transnational environmental regimes. It examines when and how
such cooperative partnerships among non-state actors emerge and what
inuences can be observed. The empirical illustrations are primarily
drawn from two cases the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible
Economies (CERES) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
CERES started operating in 1989 after publishing the so-called Valdez
Principles, utilizing the huge public outrage around the Exxon Valdez oil
spill, which occurred on 24 March the same year. A group of socially
responsible investors, mainly organized into the Social Investment Forum
(SIF: http://www.socialinvest.org), and 15 large environmental groups,
started discussing the possibility of using the power of investors (shareholder resolutions) against the power of the boardroom. The idea behind
CERES is to engage companies in dialogue and work towards the subsequent endorsement of environmental principles that establish long-term
corporate commitment to continual progress in environmental performance. The ten-point code of corporate environmental conduct establishes
an environmental ethic with criteria by which investors and others can
assess the environmental performance of companies (CERES, 2002b,
p. 31). Principle No. 10 requires an annual self-evaluation by the endorsing
company, based on the CERES reporting form, by which the required continual progress towards environmental responsibility can be measured.
An early example of forest certication, and widely recognized as the
most vigorous in terms of its actual standards, the FSC was established in
1993 out of an unusual alliance of forest managers, environmentalists,
labour representatives and large timber retailers. The FSC has a unique
internal governing structure, securing equal decision-making power to
economic, social and environmental stakeholders. Its regulation of business actors is contained in the Principles and Criteria that set out detailed
177
standards for forest managers and enterprises along the supply chain
(FSC, 2000).
8.2 THE EMERGENCE OF TRANSNATIONAL

ENVIRONMENTAL REGIMES
Beyond Demand-side Explanation
The emergence of transnational governance and its theoretical implications
are evolving into a prominent eld within the study of IR in general and
global sustainability politics in particular. Dierent theoretical approaches
and single or comparative case studies oer promising explanations for the
formation of private institutions that regulate business activities at the
global and transnational scale. However, the problem seems to be that most
theoretical approaches are not specically tailored to the newly emerging
phenomena and that empirical studies that address them tend to isolate
causal factors or at least fail to specify their relationship and the causal
pathways operating in the process of institutional formation. One common
assumption, for example, is that partnerships to regulate business behaviour have emerged as a reaction to increased capital ows across borders
and the assumed decline in the regulatory capacity of states (Evans, 1997;
Hauer, 2003). Yet, such a mono-causal demand-based explanation is
hardly convincing because it leaves open whose demand for transnational
regulation is sucient for the establishment of new institutions. Other
approaches from institutional theory either highlight transaction costs and
changing market dynamics (North, 1990) or the fundamentally political
nature of institution-building in the global economy (Fligstein, 1996).
However, most explanations fail to account for the interaction of larger systemic transformations (i.e., change at the macro-level) and the decisive conditions at the organizational level (i.e., change at the micro-level).
To avoid the shortcomings of a single-factor account, I introduce four
factors that help to illustrate the formation process of transnational
regimes in global sustainability politics (cf. Pattberg, 2005b), building on
organizational theory, institutionalism and constructivist approaches:
1.
2.
3.
macro-systemic transformations, such as globalization or hegemonic

reconguration, as well as contextual factors at the macro-level;
problem structure, characterized by interdependent interests as well as
dierent levels of information and knowledge;
organizational resources that enable actors to reduce transactions costs
or improve their strategic position;
178
4.
ideas and models that allow actors to agree on a common framework

for their collaboration.
The four conditions form an integrated set of conditions that describes

the emergence of private transnational regimes because distinct variables
are systematically interacting with each other and thus jointly produce a
certain result (Enger, Mayer and Schwarzer, 1993, p. 273). This approach
draws our attention to a variety of interlinkages between dierent conditions that would not be observable using a single-factor account.
Consequently, three assumptions guide the empirical analysis. First, I
assume that a lack of eective public regulation at the domestic or international level forces non-state actors to address problems bilaterally.
Second, I assume that civil society pressure creates demand for regulation
that is not adequately addressed by public sources. Therefore, emphasis is
laid on the social construction of the demand for transnational regulation.
Third, I assume that a supportive ideational environment is a further prerequisite for the cooperation of antagonistic actors that is characteristic for
many transnational regimes; as a result, macro-level discourses are
analysed with regard to their adaptiveness to a partnership agenda.
Case study: the origins of CERES
The original demand for a new institutional arrangement of corporate
environmental reporting and performance had grown mainly out of the
concerns of institutional investors and their clients about the adequacy of
corporate environmental information. In the words of one board member
of the Social Investment Forum (personal communication CERES sta
member, 2004):
Big companies had little coherent information on the issue [of environmental
performance]; advocacy group information was not always applicable and accurate. Some of us had the idea of approaching environmental groups to do work
on the environment to try to nd out how to get information more consistently
that would benet the environment and serve investor interests.
Although reluctant in the beginning, environmental organizations soon

began to support this new approach because strategic perceptions were
already changing profoundly. Environmental NGOs increasingly realized
that with a regulatory environment favouring voluntary approaches and
systematic deregulation, both at national and international levels,
companies were of paramount importance with regard to realizing measurable environmental improvements. According to Deborah Doane (2005,
pp. 234), NGOs realized that more momentum could be achieved by partnering with the enemy. The processes of economic integration and the
179
increasing velocity of globalization dynamics have given transnational

corporations (TNCs) a stronger voice in inuencing policy outcomes.
However, these processes also exposed companies to public scrutiny and
thereby led to the imposition of external rules on these actors (Clapp, 2005,
p. 284). The decisive event that convinced companies of the usefulness of
corporate codes of conduct coupled with a reporting obligation was the use
of shareholder petitions by institutional investors.
On this account, social investors came together with environmental
NGOs with a view to building bridges with business, understanding that
the success of many programmes to protect the environment would depend
on designing an economy that is sustainable over the long run, requiring
corporate involvement and commitments. Among investors and environmental activists, there was growing agreement that companies are one of
the central causes for many current environmental problems because it is
they who emit pollutants, extract the raw materials and use high quantities
of energy. As one observer (personal communication CERES board
member, 2004) of the early negotiations comments: We came together with
a view that we could inuence corporations in a positive way by entering
into a dialogue. To conclude, it seems that the emerging demand for distinct private regulation in the eld of corporate environmental performance and reporting has largely been driven by the macro-systemic
transformations in the nature of global capital formation and the resulting
strategy changes, both within rms and NGOs (cf. Bartley, 2003). After this
analysis of the demand for a transnational regime in the area of corporate
environmental reporting and management, I now turn to arguments about
the actual supply of solutions, both at systemic and organizational levels.
When institutional investors and the representatives of major environmental organizations convened at Chapel Hill, North Carolina in April 1989
to discuss ways to improve the environmental and social impacts of investments, a whole range of controversial issues was waiting to be solved. For
social investors and their clients, the lack of information about the environmental performance of companies was a real risk for their businesses. Either
information came from the companies themselves, displaying advanced
public relations skills rather than substantial information, or from advocacy
groups addressing their specic constituencies. Neither served the need of a
growing social investment community. Little help came from governmental
regulation at that time, because measures focused on specic substances, like
in the case of the Toxic Release Inventory established in 1987, rather than
on environmental performance in its entirety. NGOs, for their part, began
to realize that conventional lobbying strategies aimed at governments were
becoming less eective, while at the same time business actors emerged as
the real threats to the environment. In particular, the catastrophe of Bhopal
180
in 1984 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 brought corporate misbehaviour to the forefront of public concern. As a result, companies,
although reluctant at the beginning, started to look for credible ways to secure
brand reputation and prots in the midst of a hostile public environment.
After a couple more meetings among the original coalition members, the
negotiations led to the formulation and public announcement of the Valdez
Principles on 7 September 1989, resulting in considerable media coverage
and attention. Already this early phase of negotiations showed a remarkable feature. Debates were not based on positional negotiation and confrontational strategies, but on a common framework of reference from
where future visions could develop. Two ideas, one practical, the other
more visionary, served as inuential institutional models. First, there is the
system of standardized nancial accounting that emerged in collaboration
between public and private actors in the United States and is controlled and
monitored by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. As Nash and
Ehrenfeld comment (1997, p. 512): Ceres ambitiously aspired to play a role
like that of the Financial Accounting Standards Board and to eventually
formulate generally accepted principles for environmental reporting.
The second idea that had a considerable impact on the coalition
members in nding mutual grounds for common action, was the approach
of using shareholder petitions to change corporate behaviour, as in the case
of the Sullivan Principles applied to US companies operating in South
Africa under the apartheid regime. The Sullivan Principles originated in
1977 when Reverend Leon Sullivan, a Baptist minister, issued his code of
conduct in an attempt to end discrimination against black workers in South
Africa oppressed by the nations policy of apartheid. This initiative helped
to focus attention on the issue of racial injustice in South Africa within
international business by promoting criteria for socially responsible investment practices. This strategy to pressure corporate behaviour in South
Africa served as the basic blueprint for CERES (Nash and Ehrenfeld,
1997, p. 513). On this account, both the idea of nancial accounting and
the Sullivan Principles were of considerable importance in the process of
institutionalization, because they created a common framework of reference under which adversarial standpoints could be integrated into a shared
practical vision.
Shortly after the public announcement of the Valdez Principles, coalition
members engaged in an intense dialogue with corporations to test their
willingness to adopt the principles and commit themselves to periodic
reporting. However, although the Aveda Corporation became the rst signatory to the Valdez Principles on 22 November 1989 (CERES, 1999), it
took another three years to institutionalize cooperation with a wider range
of corporate actors. In its own words (CERES, 1998, p. 4):
181
[i]n the early years (198992), the CERES Principles were mainly adopted by
companies that already had strong green reputations, as exemplied by such
rms as The Body Shop, Ben & Jerrys, Seventh Generation and Aveda. But the
momentum behind the CERES concept continued to build.
This happened as a result of strategic changes within the coalition. After

the campaign to win corporate supporters to the CERES Principles had
not produced the envisaged results as only a handful of companies signed
the Valdez Principles after their public announcement in 1989 the various
investment groups represented in CERES began to place resolutions before
the stockholders of inuential companies, gaining widespread media attention. In many cases, shareholder resolutions are the rst step towards
intense dialogue with corporations, often at the highest executive level, that
leads to formal endorsement of the Principles. Sunoco became the rst
Fortune 500 company to endorse the new CERES Principles in February
1993; General Motors followed in 1994.
When CERES started to get more institutionalized, neither the investment community and the environmental organizations, nor the endorsing
companies knew what the precise outcome would be in terms of joint gains
and mutual benets. A good example is the engagement with GM, the
worlds largest automobile corporation. The CERES Performance Review
of GM (CERES, 2002a, p. 5), conducted in 2001 and covering the rst ve
years of institutional cooperation, notes:
The worlds largest corporation was joining hands with a relatively unfamiliar,
yet potentially very inuential, coalition of environmental groups and socially
responsible investors. The outcomes were uncertain, and there were many sceptics on both sides. . . . Together GM and CERES hoped to harvest potential
benets in admittedly unknown and probably rough terrain.
What has proved more important than a clear understanding of future

gains were four distinct organizational resources involved in the process of
institutionalization: the ability to frame the problem in a way that is meaningful to other stakeholders, the information necessary to solve it, the
impact to make an actual dierence in the given issue area and the credibility to construct a joint solution acceptable to all the participants. Social
investors were able to address the problem of corporate environmental performance because they not only represented social visions, but substantial
capital interests as well. Through ling shareholder petitions, they made
companies aware of the growing demand for environmental disclosure. But
investors needed the support of non-partisan environmental organizations
to oer corporations the reputational benet and added-value necessary to
engage them in cooperation. The companies, for their part, provided the
182
information requested by investors and the commitment envisaged by the

NGOs to make a real dierence on the ground.
Reconsidering the Emergence of Transnational Environmental Regimes
After the detailed discussion of the formation of a transnational regime in
the corporate environmental reporting domain, this section briey reconsiders the initial theoretical assumptions. First, does a lack of eective
public regulation at the domestic or international level encourage non-state
actors to address problems bilaterally? In the CERES case, the lack of
public regulation is certainly a key factor that explains why private actors
began to cooperate on the issue in question. However, other empirical cases
seem to conrm that public regulation does not necessarily have to be completely absent, but rather inadequate in terms of scope, precision or timeliness. For example, although international instruments to cope with tropical
deforestation existed before the establishment of the Forest Stewardship
Council, in particular the International Tropical Timber Agreement and the
Tropical Forestry Action Plans, these could not meet the specic demand for
accurate and transparent sourcing of sustainable timber. Similar observations can be made in the area of marine conservation, where the Marine
Stewardship Council emerged despite a thick network of national and international sheries regulation. Finally, the World Commission on Dams
(WCD) equally emerged in a highly conictive issue area in which public
regulation was absent and in which both civil society organizations and the
dam industry had an interest in regulation.
The second issue relates to the social construction of a demand for regulation. The analysis of the corporate environmental reporting domain indicates that the problem was, in fact, not exogenously given but instead
constructed by societal actors. In the CERES case, socially responsible
investors turned the corporate neglect of environmental information into a
business issue that threatened corporate reputation and prots. A similar
observation can be made in the FSC case, where environmental NGOs used
the strategy of consumer boycotts to force companies to rethink their
timber procurement policies. This novel strategy created the demand for
sustainable timber and adequate ways of securing it in the rst place.
A third theoretical question centres on the role of macro-level discourses
and more concrete problem-solving models that may be derived from
general ideas. Although it is dicult to assess the role of larger debates precisely such as the rhetoric of cooperation and partnership (embodied in the
concept of sustainable development, Agenda 21 and other macro-level discourses), several more specic ideas can be observed that helped to bridge
dierent interests in the course of the partnering process. In the CERES
183
case, it has been the practice of nancial accounting and the experience
activists had gained through anti-apartheid shareholder campaigns that
served as a blueprint for action. In the case of the FSC, it has been the
instrument of certication that was already operational in other sectors
combined with a visionary approach towards ownership (granting similar
decision-making powers to economic, social and environmental actors)
that was derived from the general idea of sustainable development rising to
prominence around that time. In sum, the ideational environment therefore
appears as an important background factor for the emergence of transnational environmental regimes.
Finally, what is the role of changes in the relations between state and
non-state sources of authority? Where do actors see more eective strategies? With regard to these questions, the empirical examples support the
assumption that the formation of transnational environmental regimes
reects a general shift in the conguration of actors in world politics. With
public actors either unable or unwilling to provide regulation on a range of
issues, private actors increasingly approach problems bilaterally. Business
has emerged as an inuential and at the same time highly visible actor in
world politics, while civil society organizations react to the privatization
of politics by targeting companies directly instead of lobbying states.
Therefore, a reconguration of actor relations and the subsequent broadening of the strategic toolkit are equally essential background factors for
our understanding of the emergence of novel institutional arrangement in
global sustainability politics.
8.3 THE INFLUENCE OF TRANSNATIONAL

ENVIRONMENTAL REGIMES
How Do They Matter?
Similar to research on international regimes, the question of eects and
eectiveness follows from the initial interest in the emergence of new institutional phenomena. After having established a preliminary understanding
of the reasons for their emergence, the question now is: do they matter?
Potential inuences of transnational environmental regimes can be broadly
classied in three categories: regulatory inuences related to the establishment of new norms, rules and standards at various levels of community;
cognitive and discursive inuences related to the framing of issues and key
concepts of the decision-making process as well as to more general
processes of social learning; and a variety of more direct material and structural inuences on the ground.
184
Regulatory inuences occur when actors change their behaviour to

accommodate existing rules and regulations that derive from a transnational
regime. They relate to changes of social norms or of local, national or
international rules on the subject matter of a transnational environmental
agreement. For example, changes in the behaviour of actors that are the
primary target of transnational regimes often measured as standarduptake and rule-compliance can be considered the regulatory inuence of
a specic transnational regime. In addition, where governments adopt new
legislation based on the norms and rules codied in a transnational agreement, we would speak of regulatory inuence, although of a more indirect
nature.
A second type of inuence can be labelled cognitive and discursive. In
relation to cognitive and discursive eects, transnational environmental
regimes usually operate within a eld characterized by scientic uncertainty. The development of adequate standards for sustainable forestry, for
example, will depend on expertise in issue areas ranging from biodiversity
conservation to the global timber trade and consumer preferences.
Brokering knowledge and organizing eective learning processes among
dierent stakeholders is therefore key to inuencing the behaviour of relevant actors. In this view, transnational regimes produce and disseminate
knowledge through a network of actors bound together by the constitutive
rules of the institution. In addition, a regime may activate learning
processes that enable actors to full new roles and take over new responsibilities. Ultimately, a regime may bring about changes in the discourse
about an environmental problem for instance, by successfully dening the
content of key normative concepts such as, in the case of forestry, sustainable forest management.
Finally, where we observe changes in market access, market shares or
cost structures that can be linked to a transnational agreement, we would
speak of direct material or structural inuences. In discussing the social
and political eects of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the following section examines what types of inuence can be ascribed to this specic
transnational regime on sustainable forestry.
Case study: the Forest Stewardship Council and its eects on stakeholders
In the case of the FSC, regulatory inuences can be attributed to the
process of certication that forms the basis of the FSCs work. In
September 2006, approximately 74 million hectares of forest area worldwide were certied in FSC terms. That amounts to roughly 1.8 percent of
the total global forest cover, which stands at 3.9 billion hectares, including
commercially operated as well as protected areas. The FSC has issued more
than 5000 certicates to forestry companies and businesses. Conservative
185
estimates are that 100 million cubic metres of timber from FSC-certied
sources reach the market each year, while the total supply of certied
timber products is estimated at about 234 million cubic metres on an annual
basis (Atyi and Simula, 2002). However, only a small fraction of certied
timber is actually traded as a certied forest product, while the large
majority of certied timber reaches the market without reference to its
certication status.
Next to the regulatory inuence of private environmental regimes on
their primary stakeholders, a number of observations can be made that
relate to the integration of FSC norms and regulations into public regulatory systems. First, governments might endorse the FSC, for example
through their public procurement policies. A recent forest products market
review by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (Rametsteiner, 2002, p. 163)
nds that public procurement has become a growing source of demand for
certied forest products. In addition to a range of policies already existing
at the community level, several governments have announced public procurement measures that directly or indirectly favour certied timber. The
German government, for example, decided in 2002 that public procurement
should exclusively rely on the FSC for wood products. In addition, the
RedGreen coalition government also clearly stated its commitment to
forest certication in general and the FSC in particular in its 2002 coalition
contract (cf. World Wide Fund for Nature Deutschland, 2002). In a similar
vein, the British government has enacted the Central Government Timber
Procurement Policy, while the government of Denmark, within the context
of the ght against illegal logging, has taken a decision in 2001 to recognize
the FSC label as an example of a credible instrument to provide assurance
that timber is not only sustainably, but also legally, produced. Altogether,
procurement policies and public endorsement of forest certication exist in
Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden,
Switzerland, the United Kingdom and some states of the United States.
However, as a strong environmental consciousness among voters is largely
conned to OECD countries, and consequently governmental action to
accommodate such views is limited, endorsement seems to have little
impact beyond industrialized countries.
A second form of integration can be observed in the inuence of the FSC
on national policies and the corresponding empowerment of actors in
national debates. The multi-stakeholder process of the FSC is credited with
having had a benecial inuence on policy discussions and stakeholder
relations, especially in countries with otherwise weak forestry governance
(cf. Bass, Font and Danielson, 2001). A study of South Africa (Mayers,
Evans and Foy, 2001) has revealed that stakeholder consultations on
186
forestry have contributed to bringing actors to national debates that have

so far been excluded. With regard to the actual inuence of private forest
governance on national forest policies, a recent study argues that, while
certication has in most cases been a complementary instrument to induce
compliance with national laws, [i]n countries like Bolivia, there has been
a more interactive process between recent legal forest reforms and
certication, where incentives to landowners that engage in certication
have been specically introduced into the forestry law (Segura, 2004, p. 9).
A second example is Mexico, which has reacted to the increase of FSC
certication occurring after 1996 (the FSC headquarters was situated in
Oaxaca until 2002) with a national forestry law closely mirroring the FSC
standards on sustainable forest management.
The second broad category of inuence that private environmental
regimes exercise is cognitive and discursive. Cognitive and discursive
inuences occur predominantly through a number of social learning
processes among organizations and within the FSC itself. On this account,
the FSC constitutes a learning network that includes dierent organizational actors. This organizational diversity, both in structure and content,
seems to facilitate eective learning processes. Consider the example of
leading retailers of wood products. It was the specic structure of the FSC
as a network of local, regional and global organizations that has led to successful learning. Only the involvement of local and regional experts, forest
managers and producers enabled retailers to learn about the many unnecessary intermediate traders participating in the business. The result was
not only a cheaper product for the retailers and a higher prot margin for
local producers and managers, but also a decline in illegal logging activities
in the respective areas (personal communication environmental NGO representative, 2004).
In addition to new knowledge about their supply chain, leading retailers
have also beneted from insights into the environmental community and
their strategies. One representative of a leading retailer for home and wood
products sums up his experience (personal communication business representative, 2004):
What we have learned in the process of partnership through both FSC
International and FSC Germany was what others expected from us as a leading
company in home-construction and do-it-yourself products in the eld of
environmental management and engagement. In addition, we also learned what
was possible and what not in terms of strategies and policies with regard to
environmental issues.
In return, what the environmental community learned from business was a

better understanding of economic thinking and basic concepts of business
187
strategy. This provided the environmental organizations with information

that changed their strategic approach to business, too. As one observer to
this learning process notes, it was quite dicult at the beginning to reach
an understanding because environmental organizations had a lot of brilliant ideas, but little knowledge of the internal processes of business and
the hard facts of economic life. Some seven years later, however, the two
sets of organizations are close partners with a good understanding of each
others goals and strategies (personal communication business representative, 2004).
In addition to processes of social learning that occur within the FSC
network, a number of discursive inuences can be observed. Most importantly, the FSC has established itself as the most credible system in global
forest certication and thereby substantially shaped the discourse on what
sustainable forest management actually is (or should be). The eects of this
discursive power can be observed not only within the forestry arena, where
a number of certication schemes have been established as a reaction to
the FSCs success, but also beyond forestry, for example in the diusion of
the stewardship model to other issue areas such as sheries or sustainable
tourism.
With reference to direct material or structural inuences, a number of
observations can be made. A central question in this context is: what are
the costs of certication and who pays for them? Stated dierently, how
does the FSC as a transnational environmental regime aect the economic
incentive structures and the distribution of costs and benets within the
forest arena? Although comparative empirical data on the costs of
certication is largely absent or simply does not keep up with the steady
growth of forest certication, both in area and geographical distribution,
some cautious conclusions can be drawn. First, the incremental costs of
forest management will largely depend on the general management level
within a particular forest economy. As the prevailing levels of infrastructure, management know-how, information systems and human resources
vary from country to country, and often from region to region, costs will
also vary accordingly. With regard to the direct costs of forest management
certication, there is evidence that FSC certication in the tropics is more
costly than in temperate or boreal forest for two reasons: rst, non-tropical
forests are less complex and thus require less auditing time and preparation; and second, temperate and boreal forests often already have wellestablished management procedures in place. Hence, raising management
standards to the required level is less costly. In addition, smaller forests are
also disadvantaged because the unit cost per hectare is considerably higher
than for larger forests (de Camino and Alfaro, 1998). With regard to the
question of who bears the additional costs of certication that derive from
188
raising existing forestry standards to the level of FSC rules and regulations,
studies have shown that costs have not been evenly distributed but tended
to be concentrated at the lower end of the value chain. Bass and colleagues
conclude that [f]or the most part, costs borne at the producer end of the
chain have not been passed on to buyers in the retail sector (Bass et al.,
2001, p. 71).
The initial expectation of most forest managers with regard to certication has been a rise in exports and higher prots through premium
prices. However, evidence for such a development is scarce. Early market
studies (e.g., Winterhalter and Cassens, 1993) have shown that some willingness to pay a premium price exists, but the analysis at that time suggested that there is not yet convincing evidence of an existing price
premium for sustainably produced, certied timber (Baharuddin and
Simula, 1994). This assessment seems still valid today. A recent study from
the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) nds
that premium prices are rare in DIY retailer supply chains. The only situation where premium prices for certied timber have occurred is when
there has been a mismatch between supply and demand, if buyers are competing for certied wood with few sources (Bass et al., 2001, p. 64). To conclude, the incentive structures prevalent in most tropical countries do not
lend support to the assumption that there will be rapid increases in the area
of certied forests in the near future, although premium markets may exist
in some areas for some time.
Reconsidering the Inuence of Transnational Environmental Regimes
The previous section has illustrated the existence of various types of
inuences of the FSC. Next to inuences that derive from the regulatory
content of the FSC regime, a number of cognitive and discursive inuences
as well as more direct material and structural eects also seem to be relevant. In particular, two observations are noteworthy. First, although the
regulatory inuence seems to be rather modest when measured by standard
uptake and compliance only, the transnational forestry regime of the FSC
has not only induced a number of unintended direct material and structural
eects, but has also been integrated in a number of public policy systems,
thereby considerably widening the scope of transnational governance. And
second, cognitive and discursive processes have not only strengthened, and
in many cases also changed, the roles and responsibilities of private nonstate actors in the eld, but also triggered a remarkable convergence of
organizational models within and beyond the global forestry domain.
Broadening the empirical perspective, these observations seem to hold for
other regimes, too. For example, as one of the major impacts of CERES, its
189
media strategy and its generation and dissemination of knowledge have contributed to changing the perception of climate risk among large transnational business corporations. Moreover, CERES later evolved into the
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), implying both a mainstreaming and a
globalization of the idea of environmental or, in the case of the GRI, sustainability reporting.
Although comparative data on transnational regimes is scarce, a number
of scope conditions for the inuence of transnational environmental
regimes can be identied. First, the regulatory inuence of a given transnational environmental regime may depend on the real or perceived
legitimacy with regard to its principal stakeholders. In particular, in a
competitive environment of numerous transnational regimes existing in the
same issue area, the support of a credible civil society may be a key asset.
In addition to soft factors like legitimacy, the inuence of transnational
regimes may also depend on the willingness of states to support such
governance forms (Raustiala, 1997). However, the shadow-of-hierarchy
argument seems to be of minor importance, since most transnational
regimes in the environmental eld have emerged in issue areas where public
regulation was absent or at least fragmented and weak. Second, the cognitive and discursive inuence of transnational environmental regimes may
largely depend on their internal setup as a learning organization (Pattberg,
2005a; Siebenhner, 2005) and their ability to link themselves to larger
existing discourses. For example, the FSCs strong inuence on the global
discourse on sustainable forestry and labelling can be interpreted as a result
of its successful attempt to emphasize its link with the broader concept of
sustainable development and the embodiment of a tripartite stakeholder
architecture therein (Bass, 2002).
Finally, material and structural inuences, for example the shifts in costs
and incentive structures among producers, depend on larger systemic features of the international system. In particular, the integration of countries
into world markets, and particularly into green markets in the North, is a
central condition for direct inuence. This assumption is plausible in particular with regard to transnational regimes that predominantly rely on
market instruments (e.g., certication). However, direct material and structural inuences may well be induced by transnational regimes that have a
less market-driven approach. For example, although the WCD does not
employ a certication system for sustainable large dams, it still seems
reasonable to expect that changes in economic incentive structures may also
occur as a result of the WCD recommendations.
In sum, the analysis of a number of transnational environmental regimes
suggests that measurable inuences of novel institutional arrangements go
far beyond a narrow problem-solving account. Not only have a number of
190
unintended consequences of transnational regimes occurred, but also the

existing discourse that surrounds the issue areas of forestry and corporate
environmental reporting triggered the diusion of the organizational
model and, as a consequence, the emergence of a wider organizational eld
of transnational governance in general.
8.4
CONCLUSIONS
In this chapter, I have discussed both the formation and the actual impacts
of rule-making partnerships in global sustainability politics. With regard
to the question of emergence, I have argued that four key factors help to
understand the formation of the transnational regimes analysed in this
chapter. First, in the absence of eective public regulation, initial demand
for private regulation tends to be created by non-state actors who manage
to transform the practices to be regulated (e.g., timber trade, corporate
reporting, construction of large dams) into a business case. In the cases I
analysed, the initial response of business actors was to seek solutions on
their own. Examples include the wide array of self-labelling that occurred
in response to civil society campaigns against large timber retailers and corporate environmental mission statements in the wake of the Exxon Valdez
oil spill. However, industry responses were heavily contested, because a
neutral frame of reference was missing. In addition, evaluating the accuracy of environmental claims made by business actors was dicult, if not
impossible. In this situation, supply for a solution came from the distinct
mixture of organizational resources available. NGOs and other civil society
actors traded their credibility and knowledge for the possibility of companies making concrete environmental improvements. As a fourth factor, a
supportive ideational environment including broad concepts such as
sustainable development that provided space for a common language, but
also more practical issues such as certication helped to bridge existing
dierences and unite actors around a shared vision for future action.
In terms of the inuence of transnational regimes, I observe that transnational environmental regimes certainly have regulatory and structural
eects. However, the analysis suggests that their strongest eects lie in the
least tangible area of cognitive and discursive eects. This may not be particularly good news for those wishing to measure the eects of transnational regimes. However, this nding is a cautionary note for researchers
not to restrict their evaluation of the success of transnational regimes to
those numbers that are easily available, because in isolation they are likely
to miss the more interesting eects of transnational regimes. In particular,
the normative and discursive inuences that are found in a number of
191
empirical cases indicate that interest-based strategies of business actors,

NGOs and governments take place within an increasingly organized
transnational arena.
Following from these ndings, what are the implications for our ongoing
discussion about the partnerships paradigm in global sustainability politics?
First, formation processes should not be understood in a mono-causal way.
Similar to our case of transnational environmental regimes, partnerships in
sustainable development, or examples of the numerous Type II partnerships
of the 2002 Johannesburg Summit, may not evolve as a simple reaction
to demand for alternative governance mechanisms. Rather they may be coproduced by various push and pull factors. In addition to a combination of
macro- and micro-factors in explaining the emergence of transnational
regimes, as shown in the analysis provided above, eld-level dynamics play
an increasingly important role in understanding the process of partnership
formation. Second, the discussion of inuence of transnational environmental regimes guides our attention to the fact that unintended consequences such as shifts in costs to small-scale forest operations might be more
relevant for our assessment of this new phenomenon than a strict focus on
indicators such as standard uptake and compliance. Therefore, research on
partnerships for sustainable development needs to reect these ndings
when theorizing and empirically assessing the eectiveness of partnership
approaches. In addition, a number of scope conditions that I have discussed
with reference to transnational environmental regimes might also apply to
partnerships for sustainable development.
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9. Democracy and accountability: the

challenge for cross-sectoral
partnerships1
James Meadowcroft
This chapter examines the democratic credentials of strategic cross-sectoral
partnerships for sustainable development. Over the past decade, collaborative interactions that draw together novel combinations of actors from
government, business and civil society have increasingly come to be seen as
critical to promoting sustainable development (WSSD, 2002). But worries
about the real impact of such partnerships remain. For the most part,
debate has focused on eectiveness: can partnerships actually promote
better environment and development outcomes? Here I would like to
address a related anxiety that partnerships have weak representative and
participatory foundations, and that their widespread deployment will
ultimately undermine democratic norms and practices. The argument is
organized into six parts: (1) a brief introduction; (2) a presentation of the
democratic critique of partnerships; (3) an initial reply to this critique;
(4) a more positive statement of the democratic potential of partnerships;
(5) consideration of the additional complexities posed by international
partnerships and (6) the implications for the future.
9.1
INTRODUCTION
Today partnerships are everywhere. To some extent this reects the evolution of political idiom. The term has a positive normative resonance
intimating ongoing interaction, mutually shared goals and collaboration
on the basis of equality. So it is constantly pressed into service. But the
move toward partnerships also appears to herald a deeper change in modes
of governance, as states and other actors respond to growing societal complexity, to the diculty of applying traditional approaches to handle emergent problems and to the internationalization of economic and political life
(Kooiman, 2000; Pierre and Peters, 2000).
194
Democracy and accountability
195
A comprehensive democratic audit of partnerships would imply a

detailed assessment of the particular characteristics of the vast array of
institutional forms gathered under this label. Partnerships may be understood to vary according to the area of environment and development decision-making concerned; the geographic and jurisdictional scale
of partnering activities; the sectors from which participants are drawn
(state/business/civil society); the purposes and functions of the initiative;
the selection of participants and operational procedures; as well as linkages
to other mechanisms of governance and processes of democratic decisionmaking. For an individual partnership, the evaluation of democratic
impacts would depend also on the way all this was operationalized, the
political contexts in which the partnership was created and operated, and
its interactions with other actors and processes.
Detailed discussion of dierent types of partnership lies beyond the
scope of this chapter. And so the arguments presented here are necessarily
general, assessing the extent to which the partnership phenomenon writ
large represents a challenge to democratic rule. Nevertheless, it is possible
to specify at the outset that the kinds of partnership with which we are
essentially concerned are those where actors from more than one societal
sector engage strategically to manage problems related to sustainable development. Such bodies necessarily have a public character (even if all the
participants are private actors, such as businesses or NGOs) because
they claim to undertake actions (rule-making; fostering technical and/or
social innovation; managing an issue area or development process; promoting education and so on) that serves public ends. Thus, the discussion
does not primarily relate to partnerships that are basically commercial
arrangements (for example, publicly funded but privately managed infrastructure projects), or that are essentially vehicles through which agencies
distribute funding to recipients (including many of the so-called type II
partnerships arranged in the run up to the WSSD in Johannesburg).
Instead, the concern is with problem-solving partnerships that take up the
collective management of societal problems.
A decade ago, William Laerty and I applied the term cooperative management regimes to capture the character of this type of partnership, which
involves organizations with their roots in dierent domains of societal life
coming together around practical problems linked to the promotion of sustainable development (Laerty and Meadowcroft, 1996). But there are many
other ways to conceptualize such arrangements. Some researchers have
referred to the emergence of joint environmental policy-making (Mol,
Lauber and Lieerink, 2000; Mol, 2003). Others have emphasized the growth
of rule-making in which government has no part business/business linkages, civil society/civil society unions and business/civil society partnerships
196
(Pattberg, 2004; 2005). And the ideas of network management, interactive

governance, collaborative environmental governance, and cooperative
environmental governance have also informed discussion (Glasbergen, 1998;
Glasbergen and Driessen, 2002; Koontz et al., 2004; Edelenbos, 2005).
9.2 THE DEMOCRATIC CRITIQUE OF

PARTNERSHIPS
The core of the democratic critique of partnerships involves two interrelated arguments. The rst suggests these processes are not really democratic: the constitution and operation of partnerships falls short of the
norms of representation, interaction and accountability that democracy
entails. The second suggests that by tolerating or actively encouraging the
emergence of such bodies, democratically elected governments are potentially alienating powers that should be used to promote the public good.
With respect to the rst line of argument, points are made concerning
representation, participation, power dierentials (equity) and accountability. To start with, most partnerships are hardly models of democratic representation. Participants typically reect a narrow subset of all those who
might be aected by the issue under discussion. Those who could speak for
the disadvantaged (the poor, minorities and so on), or those whose views
are inconvenient to the multinational corporations, government agencies
and establishment-oriented environmental groups sponsoring the process
are most likely to be excluded. Even if there is no deliberate intention to bar
these interests, underprivileged constituencies are less likely to generate
professionalized organizations that form attractive partners for such exercises. And if there are many such processes (on dierent topics, at dierent
scales) the resources of groups that do exist will be stretched further.
Moreover, the wider the political/geographic scale over which partnerships
are established (moving from locality to region, to country and to the international realm) the more tenuous any claim to representivity that can be
made on behalf of participating bodies, because the groups are bound to
be increasingly remote from any direct contact with the constituencies they
are supposed to be representing. Above all, these mechanisms take up
issues of public policy without giving the concerned individuals and collectivities the right to choose who is to speak in their name. They embody
representation from above, rather than applying the democratic principle
that people are entitled to select (and de-select) those who are to act on their
behalf.
Then there is participation. Although governments talk glibly about
encouraging participation in decision-making, they systematically conate
197
participation by citizens and participation by stakeholders. But these are

quite dierent. Participants in multi-stakeholder processes are not ordinary
citizens coming together to take part in the governance of their community.
What you have instead are leaders and paid ocials of lobby groups
meeting with government personnel in an attempt to stitch up a deal that
can then be sold to the public. Thus to the extent that partnerships are
participatory at all, they privilege elite, over democratic, forms of participation. And as an ever great role is given to organized groups, the relative
inuence of ordinary citizens acting as citizens is correspondingly
diminished.
Next there are the power dierentials, which mean that partnerships are
not the equitable ventures that some pretend. Although participants in a
cooperative venture are formally equal, they are not really equal. Business
participants are certain to wield greater inuence. They already enjoy
the ear of government ocials, who are eager to maintain a positive economic climate, and are conscious of every nuance that might impact on
investment and jobs. Financial resources give the for prot sector an
unfair advantage for corporations have no diculty attending discussions, preparing material, bringing forward experts and so on. In contrast,
civil society organizations are poorly funded, and they lack the personnel
and assets required to participate on an equal footing. Similar dierentials
exist among organizations based in dierent regions with NGOs from
developed states being comparatively wealthy in comparison with those
from the South. Indeed, this is true also of governmental organizations,
where poorer countries may lack the resources to participate in partnerships on an equal footing. Thus real power inequities can vitiate the egalitarian pretensions of partnerships.
Finally, there are issues of accountability. To whom are such partnerships
accountable? Certainly not to voters, who have no say in their constitution.
Nor to local governments or national parliaments, where members may
struggle to nd out what is actually happening. Moreover, the participating groups are also unlikely to be internally democratic. Business corporations are not run on democratic lines. Executives and boards have more or
less unlimited control over their day-to-day operations. And NGOs the
supposed standard bearers of civil society in such processes actually
have rather dubious democratic credentials. Leaders are often un-elected.
Members may have little say over the orientation of the organization. And
while all sorts of groups claim to speak for one interest or another, there
are no formal mechanisms by which they can be called to account for their
actions. Without such mechanisms, those who take decisions are not
responsible to those who must bear the consequences, and the feedback
link that is so critical to democratic politics is missing.
198
The second line of argument focuses on the systemic implications of partnerships, and the claim is that by devolving authority to such bodies, democratic institutions are abandoning their responsibility to govern in
the public interest. When areas of societal decision-making are handed over
to bodies made up of representatives of particular groups, there can be no
guarantee that the public interest and the common good will prevail. In fact,
they are almost certain not to prevail, because the interests at the table all
have particular axes to grind. The systematic turn toward partnerships thus
appears either as a move towards private governance or a move towards
corporatist governance depending on the conguration of actors and the
role assumed by government. If government stands back from the process,
leaving things to private actors (businesses and civil society organizations in
various combinations), or if governments adopt a passive role (even if they
are formally at the table), then we are headed towards private interest
governance where the dierent spheres of social life are divided up and
ruled by implicated interests as they see t. If government is a more active
partner then we are headed towards neo-corporatism where the state and
major sectoral organizations work together to devise solutions that they
impose on society as a whole (Ottaway, 2001). Either way, democracy is the
casualty.
For democracy is not just about consensus. It is also about the majority taking decisions, and pushing through reforms that are judged to be
in the best interests of the community as a whole. In the context of
sustainable development this seems particularly pertinent, because organized interests that benet from current (unsustainable) practices will
certainly resist change. And the cosy collaborative relationships established in private interest or corporatist governance may simply encourage
complacency, mutual accommodation and incrementalism, rather than a
determined drive for change. Thus, by weakening democratic control,
partnerships may contribute more to political sclerosis than to innovation
for sustainability.
9.3
A DEMOCRATIC DEFENCE OF PARTNERSHIPS
There are various ways that one might respond to this sort of critique. One
option is to accept that the democratic credentials of partnerships are
weak, but to suggest that other advantages particularly positive environment and development outcomes outweigh this shortcoming. In governance, there are always trade-os, and perhaps this trade-o is acceptable.
On the other hand, it may not be necessary to concede this democratic
deciency so readily. To mount a democratic defence of cooperative
199
management approaches we will rst respond to the criticisms of the

sceptics, and then move on to oer a more positive account.
Let us take the elements of the critique one by one, starting with the four
points focused on the partnerships themselves representation, participation, power dierentials (equity) and accountability:
Representation Partnerships operate on the basis of functional representation. Individuals sit at the table because they represent an organized
stakeholder in a particular issue matrix. There is nothing illegitimate about
this. Election is not the only form of representation appropriate to a democratic polity. In dierent circumstances a representative may be nominated
by a sponsoring agency (a scientist chosen for a government advisory
panel), appointed by the party to be represented (a lawyer selected by a
client), or picked by an independent adjudicator (a trustee designated by a
court). Representatives can also be self-selected, as when one speaks up on
behalf of a group to which one belongs, or for a cause one believes to be
just. In fact, there are many types of representation, but what is important
is that the mechanism employed corresponds to the function required.
In this case, the purpose is to draw conicting interests into a collaborative eort to resolve societal problems. Clearly, these interests are entitled
to be heard, and to be represented in any process that will aect them. Each
interest constitutes a facet of a problem that needs to be understood and
managed in a multi-faceted manner. But interests are constituted through
social practice, and they are articulated though societal organizations.
Thus, representatives of such organizations are best placed to contribute to
processes that require a pooling of knowledge, and engagement to develop
a shared understanding and to explore possible solutions. The organizations concerned exist because they serve some function in the wider society,
be it administering public programmes, meeting economic demand, articulating a desire to protect the environment and so on. They are rooted in economic and social life, in the practical ways in which society actually
operates. The answer to the question Who does an NGO represent? is:
those who share its concerns and support its work. The fact that the group
does exist, engages in societal action and survives the cut and thrust of
public life with a reputation for authenticity, proves such a constituency is
there to be represented. The answer to the question Who do corporations
and business interests represent? is: all those whose economic future is connected to the enterprise or industry. Of course, this is not to suggest
that supporters of environmental groups have identical interests in other
respects, any more than do all those involved with a business (management,
workers, consumers, suppliers and so on). But it is to suggest that in each
case there is an organized interest, with a legitimate claim to be represented,
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and one that has the potential to contribute positively to collective management initiatives.
Participation Those involved in partnership processes are generally
leaders, ocials or experts from organized groups. They are not ordinary
citizens, but members of diverse elites with specialist professional knowledge. It is precisely this that equips them to participate in interactive
problem-solving bodies. Of course, there are also mechanisms that can
encourage direct citizen participation in decision-making particularly at
the local level. But with the exception of the referendum (where everyone
can vote), representation is also a dicult issue for citizen-based participatory forums. For example, the randomly selected members of a citizen
jury can in one sense be taken to represent all citizens (because they are just
like them), but in another sense they represent no one but themselves. And
such bodies face a challenge in terms of the integration of specialist knowledge, long-term continuity and iterative learning that are so important in
relation to sustainable development. In any case, independent of the potential for greater individual citizen involvement in governance for sustainable
development, partnerships oer the possibility of a net participatory gain.
Groups that were previously excluded from the policy process (particularly
civil society organizations) can become more closely involved with dening
and solving problems.
Power dierentials Participants in cooperative ventures have varied
capacities to mobilize power resources. But this reects the social reality
that power comes in various kinds and is distributed unevenly a fact that
has implications for all governance practices, including the operation of
elections. And yet, within the partnership framework each party can be
treated with equality: each acknowledges the others as legitimate interlocutors; each has an equal right to be heard, to listen and to deliberate, and
to work with others to devise a common way forward. Thus, partnerships
can contribute to equalizing rather than exacerbating power inequalities.
Since the forces representing environmental interests are typically less wellresourced than economic interests, partnership should prove favourable to
their cause, and certainly not less favourable than traditional processes of
lobby politics.
Accountability Partnerships are not directly accountable to voters in the
same way as are elected politicians and governments. On the other hand,
that does not mean that partnerships are unaccountable. On the contrary,
there are at least four distinct forms of accountability that operate in welldesigned partnerships for sustainable development.
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First, individual participants are accountable to the groups from which

they come. They must explain their actions and the orientation adopted by
the partnership to their sponsoring organization. Company boards, NGO
steering committees and public agencies will want to know what is being
agreed and why.
Second, beyond these groups stand broader communities of interest
from which the participating organizations have sprung. Thus, environmental groups must have an ear to the constituencies that support them and
business interests cannot ignore the views of shareholders, suppliers and
consumers. Government ocials also have wider audiences to please in the
political sphere. Of course, the particular linkages that are pertinent and
active in any specic case depend upon the character of the participating
organizations, the nature of the partnership, and the rules under which it
operates. But in any well-constituted partnership, each member has both
an organized group and underlying constituencies to which lines of
accountability can be established.
Third, there is a form of collective accountability. Each participant is
accountable to the partnership as a whole for their role in the process
participation in dialogue, development of practical activities, implementation of the agreed course of action and so on. And participants who fail
to adhere to agreed procedures and substantive orientations (including the
eort to engage their home group in the required courses of action) may be
called to account by other participants.
Finally, the partnership as a whole is in some sense accountable before
the bar of the public opinion, and the judgment of representative political
processes. Partnerships and their members do not function in a vacuum,
but in a very public environment where their doings may be subject to
scrutiny by many agencies, and to supervision by elected bodies. Groups
left outside the process, actors from other issue areas (whether or not they
are involved in other partnerships), academic commentators and research
institutes, public audit and assessment bodies, the media all these and
more track the activity of partnerships. And, of course, elected government
at the local, regional and national level can also monitor performance. And
if the condence of a signicant proportion of these external audiences is
lost, the partnership will be in real trouble no matter how satised are its
members. True, each of these modes of accountability represents a potential rather than a certainty. But with the careful design of processes and
reporting requirements they can be made more real. And even in the most
opaque partnership they always have the potential to be activated.
Turning now to the systemic implications of the wide-scale development of
partnerships, is it really true that they will drain authority away from
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elected institutions and promote private governance or neo-corporatist

manipulation? With respect to the rst part of this claim, partnerships are
unlikely to remove a function from elected parliaments and municipal
assemblies because these bodies do not have the capacity to deal directly
with the detailed management of a vast array of complex, knowledgedense problems of the sort under discussion here. Modern government is
already too complex, and the competing claims on politicians time are too
great. The real alternative to devolving substantial authority to multistakeholder processes is either to ignore many problems for the time being,
or else to rely on administrative initiatives accompanied by traditional
lobby mechanisms. Of these choices, partnerships are the more, rather than
the less, democratic option.
As for the private governance charge, it simply does not stick. In partnerships involving participants from more than one societal sphere, none
of the actors can act entirely as private actors. The partnership context
obliges them to act publicly, as responsible interlocutors, framing their
arguments in terms of the public interest. Moreover, when government
agencies are partners in the venture they have a particular responsibility to
look to the general interest. And whether or not they are direct participants, government can always keep such processes under review. In fact, in
relation to the many self-governance mechanisms that are long-standing
features of developed countries (for example, self-regulation by the
professions), this is exactly what occurs. The charge of environmental
corporatism also has very limited traction. In contrast to traditional neocorporatist arrangements, the processes we are discussing involve a greater
range of interests (not just state, labour and business). Negotiations
are not consolidated in the hands of a few peak organizations (political
leaders, trade unions and employers federation), but fragmented into
many distinct problem contexts. The process is not exclusionary, but
potentially inclusive.
One of the general problems with the position staked out by the sceptics
is the failure to appreciate that democratic politics is not constituted simply
by the electoral process, no matter how important that may be. The operation of a complex matrix of institutional practices gives government by the
people a real meaning. Freedoms of speech and association, the media, the
rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, all these contribute to a
system of rule that is reasonably democratic. Within this context, the creation of cooperative management bodies does not necessarily undermine
elected ocials, but can open a new terrain of practical problem-solving,
of representation of groups, and a eld for elected political representatives
to exercise supervision.
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9.4 THE DELIBERATIVE POTENTIAL OF

PARTNERSHIPS
Having provided an initial response to some anxieties about partnerships,
it is now time to consider whether it is possible to make a more positive
armation of their democratic potential. Central to this case is the notion
that collaborative management ventures constitute a signicant site for the
development of deliberative democratic interactions.
As its name suggests deliberative democracy locates acts of collective
deliberation at the core of the democratic process. It is typically contrasted
with aggregative approaches to democracy that emphasize the act of
casting a ballot as the critical step in summing community preferences. For
deliberative democrats it is the reasoned discussion and exchange which
should precede any voting process that allows participants to deepen their
understanding of a collective problem, to move beyond their initial preferences and to construct a shared vision of the public interest.
Central to this understanding of democratic deliberation are the ideas
of reasoned debate, public justication and political equality (Bohman,
1996). Collective choices are to be made through reasoned discussion,
rather than by blind acceptance of the views of established authorities, by
deals concluded among vested interests, or by recourse to intimidation.
As they deliberate, participants advance arguments and listen to counterarguments; they employ critical reason to weigh alternatives and make judgments. Deliberative democracy implies the public justication of proposals
and outcomes. To advocate publicly a particular course of action as appropriate for the collectivity implies establishing a link to some notion of the
public interest or the collective good. It is not enough to say this alternative
will benet me, for the logic of the deliberative context is oriented towards
determining what is right and good for the community. Finally, if deliberation is to be democratic, it requires substantive political equality: all concerned
interests should have access to the process, and each participant should enjoy
an equal opportunity to present perspectives, hear contributions and take
part in debates and decisions. Needless to say, every individual cannot be
involved personally in each deliberative context; representative mechanisms
are essential for the working of modern democracy. But the overall structure
of decision-making processes must be fair for all. In particular, inequalities of
wealth and status should not corrupt deliberative interaction.
In the environmental sphere there has been considerable interest in the
deliberative ideal: indeed, among green political theorists it has now
become almost an article of faith (Gunderson, 1995; Barry, 1999; Smith,
2003). Deliberation is viewed as promising for a number of reasons. The
emphasis on representation of all aected interests may help groups that
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have traditionally been excluded from inuence such as those speaking on

behalf of the victims of environmental degradation, future generations and
the non-human natural world. The focus on reasoned debate gives environmental advocates hope that their sound arguments (rather than the
inuence of powerful economic actors) will more often hold sway (Barry,
1999). Deliberation can encourage reexivity the collective interrogation
of existing practices and the examination of alternatives (Eckersley, 2004).
And it becomes possible to adjust preferences that have been shaped by
dominant ideological perspectives and economic relations. Moreover, the
integration of lay and scientic perspectives, engagement with complex
ethical issues and discussions of dierent weightings of societal risk, may
all be facilitated by deliberative approaches (Meadowcroft, 2004). And all
this is especially true when one moves beyond traditional pollution control
and nature conservation to consider the transformation of existing patterns
of production and consumption in the context of sustainable development.
But if more deliberation is good for the environment, and/or good for
constructing a more eective and acceptable approach to managing environmental problems, how is it to be secured? To answer this, it is worth
pointing to three slightly dierent forms of deliberative interaction operative on the politico-constitutional, the societal, and the meso levels
(Meadowcroft, 2004).
The politico-constitutional level includes core institutions of the state (legislature, executive and courts) as well as constitution-making processes.
Measures to promote environmental deliberation here include enshrining
environmental rights in the constitution: for example Robyn Eckersleys suggestion that a constitutional obligation to apply the precautionary principle
in environmental decision-making would ensure more thorough deliberation
about environmental risks (Eckersley, 2004). But they can also include more
general reforms such as the introduction of elements of proportional representation into rst-past-the-post electoral systems, which could be expected
to facilitate the entry of Green parties into legislatures and so promote more
inclusive deliberation in national political institutions.
The societal level relates to public debate in the widest sense to the
enhancement of democratic deliberation in the media, within associations
of all types, and among the citizenry at large. The idea is that higher
standards of public debate would improve the context in which electoral
contests take place as well as inuencing the way in which ocials carry out
their duties. Green thinkers have emphasized that civil society, as an
autonomous and dynamic deliberative domain, can check the instrumental and bureaucratic rationality characteristic of the administrative state,
and promote more thorough going protection of environmental values
(Torgerson, 1999; Dryzek, 2000).
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The meso level refers to deliberative interactions at the interface between

state and society, where the personnel and structures of the state meet individuals and groups rooted in civil and commercial life. It is an intermediate
zone somewhere between the high politics of the politico-constitutional
realm and the open interactions of societal interchange. An extension of
deliberative mechanisms at this level requires the development of an array
of venues and processes concerned with specic environmental and natural
resource issues, which draw interested actors from the public and private
spheres into closer deliberative democratic interaction. And here, of course,
we return to partnerships for sustainable development.
Viewed from the context of deliberative democracy such partnerships
can provide an excellent opportunity for extending deliberative democratic
practices. As we have seen, they allow the representation of aected interests. They provide a forum where participants can engage with an issue on
a basis of relative equality, considering arguments on their merits, and
interacting to derive common understandings. Features of such processes
that are particularly promising from the perspective of deliberative democracy include:
The dierentiated contexts in which they operate. Partnerships come

together around particular issues, and participation can target those
implicated in the problem matrix.
Their practical focus. Partnerships are intended to engage with real
issues, and this grounds the deliberative interactions in the experience
of participants, and focuses attention on meaningful outcomes.
Their potential to move beyond discussion to active management. By
collectively executing decisions and implementing solutions (rather
than just recommending options) participants must take fuller
responsibility for the agreements constructed through deliberation.
The possibility for long-term learning. If cycles of assessment and
review follow decision and implementation, the body can draw
lessons from experience and employ adaptive management.
The potential to improve deliberation at other levels of the political
system, including representative bodies and broader societal discussion. This can be through increasing the level of understanding of
specic problems, building links among important groups, bridging
key discourses (science, law, the popular press) and so on.
Far from seeing cooperative management bodies as a threat to democracy, they can be understood as part of its deepening to reect increased
societal complexity and dierentiation. Today many concerns exist about
the declining vitality of democratic institutions in the developed world, as
206
reected in declining voter turnout, weakening party identication, a loss

of faith in politicians and cynicism towards political processes. The extension of collaborative management initiatives can be seen as one component
of a response to such concerns. By increasing the deliberative content of
environmental management, they can enhance the democratic experience.
9.5
THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION
At this point it is necessary to admit that one critical problem has so far
been avoided in this discussion. This is the fact that while many partnerships are international in scope, the essential arena for representative democratic processes in the modern world remains the country/state. In short,
there is an apparent disjuncture between representative democratic political processes grounded in national polities, and partnerships operative in
an international institutional environment. There is no democratic transnational government and no likelihood of one in the near future. The worry
about a proliferation of partnerships undermining decision-making by
elected bodies makes more sense when it is understood in terms of a transfer of authority away from elected domestic institutions towards nonelected transnational institutions. And this is seen to parallel the alienation
of sovereignty that has already occurred in relation to international bodies
such as the WTO that now constrain the action of national governments
while remaining well-insulated from popular inputs.
Moreover, there are longstanding concerns about the inequalities embedded in the international system and in the existing institutions of world
governance such as the UN, the IMF and the World Bank. In the international realm the worries about representation, participation and accountability considered earlier return with a vengeance. Above all, the magnitude
of the power dierentials that separate rich states from poor states, and rich
consumers in the North from poor producers in the South, make the constitution of partnerships with a genuine deliberative content dicult. So, is the
democratic potential of international partnerships necessarily compromised?
One way to approach this question is to turn to the new theories
of transnational democracy that have emerged over the past decade.
Three pertinent perspectives could be termed: liberal internationalism,
cosmopolitan democracy and discursive democracy. The rst approach
emphasizes institutional reforms to strengthen representation, transparency and accountability within the existing mechanisms of international governance. The idea is to make state-to-state interactions more
equitable, and to enable an invigorated international civil society to contribute to global governance and to hold ocial processes to account
207
(McGrew, 2001). Fairer rules for international exchange and greater openness to representatives of international civil society is key here.
The second orientation, closely associated with the writings of thinkers
such as David Held, anticipates a reconstruction of the existing international order to integrate national jurisdictions within a broader framework of international law (Held, 1998; 2000). It would represent a new
global settlement with self-governing collectivities at dierent scales ordering their aairs within an overarching legal structure. And the extension of
democracy into transnational spaces would help reinvigorate democracy
within nations, regions and cities.
Finally, there is the discursive democratic option championed particularly by John Dryzek, which emphasizes the discursive underpinnings of
international governance (Dryzek, 2000; 2006). Rather than focusing primarily on institutional innovation, discursive democracy emphasizes the
potential for alternative projects to subvert dominant discourses, and thus
to alter the intellectual frame within which transnational governance
occurs. The perspective has a close anity with deliberative democracy, but
the discursive label is applied to emphasize that the focus is not the design
of ideal deliberative forums, but rather the emergence of discursive stratagems through which civil society can transform the understandings embedded in global governance practices. It is about changing the categories
through which actors make sense of the world, and by so doing, transforming the way they act in the world.
Presumably, partnerships could be accommodated by each of these
competing conceptions of transnational democracy. And any advance
towards democratizing international life would improve the possibilities
for more authentically deliberative partnerships. International partnerships t well with liberal internationalism, reecting a more active international civil society, encouraging greater openness and participation in the
international sphere, and complementing formal state-to-state interactions.
Collaborative management approaches could also nd a niche in the
complex web of overlapping communities and jurisdictions envisaged by
cosmopolitan democracy. Yet, barring a catastrophe that swept away existing systems of international governance, the cosmopolitan vision could
only be approached in a far distant future. Even Helds more modest proposals for immediate reform stretch the bounds of the possible to breaking
point (Held, 2004). Since the questions about partnerships are immediate
and practical, little help is to be found here. With respect to discursive
democracy, international partnerships might be understood to provide
a forum where emergent discourse coalitions could articulate their bids
for ascendancy. Or they could be seen as deliberative institutional mechanisms that could become more prevalent as the (neo-liberal/state-centred)
208
discourses currently underpinning the global order lost sway. And yet,
Dryzeks deep suspicion of the state, and his fear that civil society will be
co-opted by a close association with government, would probably make
him uneasy with the intimate cross-sectoral collaboration that partnerships
entail. His faith has always been placed in discourses in the public sphere,
where civil society can continuously interrogate established authority. But
perhaps a vigorous development of broader processes of transnational discursive democracy could at least exert democratizing pressure on the terms
in which partnerships are established and operate.
When considering this problem there is another element that should not
be forgotten, and that is the potential of the state to promote democratic
processes as it acts in both domestic and international spheres. First, to the
extent that government organizations (agencies, ministries, state-funded
initiatives and so on) participate directly in international partnerships, they
can promote norms of representation, transparency and accountability
consistent with deliberative democracy. Second, to the extent that governments participate indirectly in partnerships (through international bodies
in which they are direct participants), there is another opportunity to
uphold democratic norms. Third, the domestic oversight function that
governments exercise assessing whether particular governance arrangements promote the general good applies to international partnerships
active on the national stage as well as to domestic partnerships.
Governments can inuence the national legal and political contexts within
which international partnerships must operate, and they could even choose
to attempt to inuence the substantive orientation of specic partnerships.
Fourth, this supervisory role can be expanded to the international sphere.
As external agents, governments can monitor such partnerships, independently decide whether they promote the collective good or are intervening
in areas of national interest. So even though the international order itself
does not function on representative democratic lines, its operations can be
shaped by states that do. Developing a theme that has been touched upon
by Beck, and indeed reects a broader tradition in international relations,
Robyn Eckersley has applied the term transnational states to capture this
image of states that act beyond their borders to uphold democratic and
egalitarian norms (Eckersley, 2004).
9.6 IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF

PARTNERSHIPS
I have argued that far from presenting a threat to democratic modes of rule
partnerships for sustainable development have the potential to increase the
209
democratic deliberative content of existing institutional arrangements. My

point is not that partnerships necessarily promote democratic values.
Rather it is that they represent an opportunity to enhance democratic interactions. There is little doubt that the partnership form can serve to erode
democratic control. For example, in the United Kingdom there has been
discussion whether regional development bodies constituted by the
national government as partnerships have really functioned to erode the
inuence of (democratically elected) local governments over the development process. Here tensions between democratic constituencies (at
the national and at the local level) play out in the partnership form.
International partnerships that carefully excluded important aected interests might serve as a cover for purely self-interested action by powerful
players. With respect to private rule-making bodies (where business and
civil society representatives establish standards), there may be diculties
ensuring genuine deliberative interactions in the face of the vast dierentials of power among potential participants. And one may wonder
whether some partnerships simply serve as back channels to impose the
values of Northern states or consumers onto peoples in the South. And yet,
the democratic potential of partnerships remains.
A few additional observations will help place this conclusion in context.
In the rst place, this discussion has dealt with cross-sectoral partnerships:
those that pull together organizations from more than one of the three traditionally dened sectors of modern life state, economy and society. But
what about partnerships that involve organization from just one societal
sphere, say business groups, or NGOs, or agencies from various levels of
government? Clearly, such initiatives can play an important role in governance for sustainable development. And they too may be organized so as
to promote deliberation among participants and to develop collective
understandings and novel solutions. Now while there is no reason to believe
that a proliferation of such formations poses a threat to democratic governance, their potential for positively advancing deliberative democracy is
unclear. For the activation of deliberative norms within a given body does
not necessarily imply an extension of deliberative democracy more generally. Although single-sector partnerships may be eective at advancing the
participants objectives, and these may coincide with the goals of actors
from other societal spheres, or indeed with the designs of policy-makers,
they do not necessarily promote the broader deliberation and reexivity, as
well as the collective assumption of responsibility that (well-designed)
cross-sectoral initiatives should entail. If a case is to be made for the deliberative democratic contribution of single-sector partnerships, it would have
to turn either upon the specic content of the particular practice (which
encouraged wider deliberation in society more generally), or upon the
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educative eects of the deliberative engagement spilling over into the

other activities of the implicated actors. Perhaps in some circumstances
self-governance initiatives lead to enhanced self-understanding and
responsibility, and a fuller integration with broader processes of public
deliberation. And yet, considering the already close contacts that exist
intra-sector, and the distinctive logics that inform these activities, it is not
clear that such spillover will predominate.
Even when dealing with partnerships that involve participants from
more than one societal sector, the potential contribution to enhancing
deliberative democracy should be understood as highly variable. Many
partnerships are essentially concerned with implementation in the narrow
sense with the delivery of specically dened services or the distribution
of grant money to deserving recipients. There may in fact be little room for
creative deliberation and collective problem-solving in such contexts. And
the bodies may actually play much more of a coordination role and/or serve
a symbolic function. In such cases it is implausible to argue that there is any
real contribution to the broader development of deliberative democracy. At
the beginning of this chapter, reference was made to strategic partnerships
and to engagement with issues of strategic signicance for sustainable
development in an eort to transmit the idea of partnerships that are oriented towards substantive problem-solving and the management of critical
issues. Here the broader opportunities for authentic deliberation, as well as
the intrinsic importance of the issues under discussion, aord greater
opportunities to raise the deliberative content of societal interactions. Of
course, much depends on the way processes are actually undertaken the
representation of aected interests, the quality of the deliberative mechanisms and the activation of accountability channels. And issues such as the
extent to which the partnerships pass over into active management and
implementation, the possibility for iterative processes stretching over time
involving review, readjustment and learning, also inuence the potential of
an individual process to enhance democracy more generally.
This suggests that the democratic credentials of partnerships cannot
simply be taken for granted. Instead they must be constructed and reconstructed by the ways partnerships operate, and by the ways established representative democratic institutions interact with partnerships. In each case,
important elements have been identied by those concerned about the
democratic deciencies of partnerships.
From the side of the partnerships themselves, issues that require attention
include the representation of social interests, the quality of deliberative
interactions and the accountability linkages. There is a great deal of excellent scholarship that examines these issues in relation to the eectiveness of
partnerships, and for the most part, eectiveness and democracy pull in the
211
same direction because partnerships that exclude key interests, depend on

bargaining and power games rather than deliberation, and eschew accountability, are unlikely to work (for example: Gray, 1989; Renn, Webler and
Wiedemann, 1995). Of course, at the margin there may be trade-os. But in
addition to issues that relate to the constitution and operation of partnerships there is also what might be described as their public and political outreach the extent to which they present their activities to those outside the
specic problem sphere, open their work to broader scrutiny, and contribute
to wider processes. Such opening allows partnerships to interact more fully
with the public sphere, to be exposed to give-and-take in the broader currents of public debate and democratic decision.
From the side of elected institutions it is a question of engaging with
partnerships taking them seriously as governance processes, treating
them fairly (because they represent legitimate expressions of societal perspectives), but also scrutinizing their activities and consciously structuring their eld of operations. Elected governments can frame the
circumstances in which partnerships operate, facilitate the dissemination
of information about partnerships, encourage participation by disadvantaged groups and encourage a pluralist culture of public monitoring and
assessment. State of the environment reporting, systems of environment
and sustainable development indicators and the monitoring of societal
trends, all provide critical background information for governments and
other societal actors to form judgments about the relative success of particular governance arrangements. Public funding should be available
for an array of bodies involved in policy assessment and review: environmental assessment organizations, public audit bodies, independent
research centres and academic analysts all have an important role to play
in judging whether particular governance initiatives are working in the
public interest. By encouraging this activity, democratic governments can
further public and political reection about the performance of partnerships. Thus elected governments have a supervisory role: although they
may leave particular spheres of activity to partnerships of various kinds,
they also have a responsibility to their electors to make sure that partnerships continue to serve public ends. And, as we have seen, this is a responsibility they must seek to discharge in the international realm as well as
within their own territorial jurisdiction, although the ways that this can
be done will certainly vary.
In short, with respect to partnerships, representative democratic institutions must assume a role of meta-governance, rather than just governance as such. They need to consider how specic initiatives relate to overall
policy goals, reconcile conicting claims and objectives and ensure that
dierent governance modes are operating for the public interest. And if
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more governance is done by partnerships and more meta-governance by

elected bodies, the value of democratic deliberation may be enhanced.
NOTE
1. I would like to thank the Canada Research Chairs for supporting the programme of
research that gave rise to this chapter.
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10. Bringing the environmental state

back in: partnerships in perspective
Arthur P.J. Mol
In the mid-1980s a number of American scholars brought together various
articles in an edited volume, with the title Bringing the State Back In
(Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol, 1985). The volume aimed to provide
an alternative to the long-lasting domination of society-centred analysis in
various (neo-Marxist, pluralist, structural-functionalist) perspectives.
Notions of state autonomy, states as actors and state-centred analysis,
among others, brought states back into the centre of analyses and explanations of social change. But the volume also gained its reputation by
linking these analytical alternatives to prescriptive courses of action, especially in times when deregulation, privatization and marketization were
strongly celebrated by the neo-conservative governments of Reagan
(United States) and Thatcher (United Kingdom). The contributing
sociologists and political scientists aimed to combine theoretical perspectives that showed that states do matter with concern about a too onedimensional programme of reducing the position and role of the state in
what we would now label governance. While the volume far from embraced
the state as a gloried institution, it condemned the fact that the state was
beginning to lose much of its relevance in social theory and empirical
research. For both conceptual and normative reasons, Evans and colleagues argued, the state should be brought back to the centre of social
analysis, as (1) it was still a relevant category for understanding social
developments and dynamics and (2) a focus on the state would contribute
to balancing too one-dimensional prescriptive programmes, both of neoliberal (economic) development or glorifying state power. Incidentally, it
was probably not by accident that in none of the chapters environmental
protection was emphasized, as, during the 1980s, the idea of strong state
involvement and intervention for sustainability was hardly debated,
neither from a political nor from a theoretical point of view. In those days
the environmental state, that is, that part of the state system involved
in and focused on environmental protection, was hardly under pressure
(cf. Mol and Buttel, 2002).
214
Bringing the environmental state back in
215
The title of this chapter suggests a similar point of view, be it in a

dierent era and in confrontation with a dierent scholarly debate. At least
during the last decade we have witnessed in the environmental social sciences a major transformation on how we look at states and governance
when societies deal with environmental challenges in global modernity.
One but by far not the only one of the more recent trends in the literature on innovations in environmental governance and reform is the notion
of partnerships. Without too much exaggeration it can be stated that the
idea or notion of partnership has successfully made it into the centre of
debates, discourses, practices and institutional arrangements in environmental governance in at least a number of developed states. And in the
international arena, the notion of partnerships has become salonfhig
(socially acceptable), following the 1992 UNCED conference and, even
more strongly, after the Johannesburg Summit in 2002. In their most simple
form, partnerships have been dened as an arrangement existing between
two or more organisations (or individuals or institutions) in working
towards a commonly dened goal (Darlow and Newby, 1997, p. 4).
Partnership logic can be fundamentally distinguished from substitution
logic. In substitution logic, private actors and arrangements can substitute
for public sectors and arrangements if the latter fail to live up to their
promises, expectations, or natural roles and functions. In partnership
logic, there is an inclination to partner in order to solve emergent societal
issues and deal with problems of governance (Linder and Rosenau, 2000),
which thus leaves room for states to play their role in partnerships for
sustainability.
In this chapter I will explore the shifting analyses and understanding
of the position of the environmental state in environmental governance by
analysing the notion and literature on environmental partnerships. With
partnerships and thus a more society-centred analysis of environmental
governance becoming dominant, is there a need to call once again for a
strengthening of the state in social science analyses, more or less along
similar lines as Evans and colleagues did in the 1980s? Or should we celebrate
the reduced importance of the state in environmental governance, now
that we have entered the age of globalization? The chapter will begin by outlining the historical roots of the idea of partnerships related to environmental governance, against the background of a changing social order.
Subsequently, in Section 10.2, I will distinguish two broad categories or types
of partnerships, limiting myself in the rest of the chapter to only one of
them. In Section 10.3 the debates around environmental partnerships will be
reviewed. Finally, Section 10.4 will focus on the state in environmental partnerships, listing four critical issues that argue indeed for the need to bring
the environmental state back into environmental partnership literature.
216
10.1 THEORETICAL ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL

PARTNERSHIPS
While the notion of partnership is of relatively recent origin in the environmental social sciences literature (see Murphy and Bendell, 1997, for a
very timely use), the ideas that lie behind it are not. Although some might
want us to believe that the notion of partnership in environmental governance is a typical product of the twenty-rst century, the origins go back to
at least the mid-1980s. If, for the moment, we loosely dene environmental
partnerships as the ideas, practices and (institutional) arrangements that
provide non-state actors and non-conventional politics with substantially
more room in environmental governance, we can trace the historical roots
of the environmental partnership idea back to the literature on state failure
in the early 1980s. The fundamental origin of environmental partnerships
lies in the notion that the nation-state falls short in the provisioning of collective goods, in this case environmental quality.
Some of the key publications in this regard come from Germany. Martin
Jnickes (1986) Staatsversagen analysed the fundamental inability of the
nation-state to protect the environment in the 1980s, and called for an
innovation or modernization of environmental politics, later to be labelled
political modernization (e.g., van Tatenhove, Arts and Leroy, 2000; Mol,
2002): a reorientation towards a more preventive, proactive and exible
strategy using new instruments and closer cooperation with non-state
actors. With a similar analysis of the environmental states fundamental
inabilities, Joseph Huber (1982; 1985) came to a slightly dierent solution
with his strong plea for involving the market into environmental reforms.
Finally, around the same time, Ulrich Beck (1986) formulated his risk
society hypothesis and identied subpolitical arrangements as an alternative for the conventional environmental politics of the nation-state.
Inspired by these and several other authors and ideas, from the mid1980s onwards, environmental social science scholars started to develop
ideas, investigate practices and formulate theories on governing environmental problems, in which the environmental state was given a less dominant and monopolistic position. This was, of course, also helped by the
emergence of a small number of innovative strategies within a few environmental pioneer states (most notably in the European Union (EU), but
also some states within the United States) including voluntary agreements,
environmental management systems, self-regulation and labelling and
certication schemes. We still see many of these innovations back in some
of the current literature on environmental partnerships. One can safely say
that the academic work in Northwestern European countries on state
failure, ecological and political modernization, and the risk society from
217
the late 1980s, and the studies in the United States in the 1990s on reinventing government, resembles much of the themes that can currently be
found in the literature and studies on partnerships. Poncelet (2001) and
Blowers (1998), for instance, provide evidence of this by drawing direct
lines between the ideas and discourse of ecological modernization and the
emergence and functioning of partnerships and cooperative governance.
Around the same time (the second half of the 1980s) ideas of public
private partnerships in the provisioning of environmental services (water,
waste, energy, etc.) started to develop, especially in the United States and
to a lesser extent, and later, in the United Kingdom and the European continent. While here also the fundamental idea is to bring non-state actors
together with state actors around tasks traditionally fullled by the public
sector (and hardly ever around tasks traditionally fullled by the private
sector), the orientation and literature is slightly dierent. The majority of
the literature comes from the management and organization sciences and
the orientation is less focused on state failures and governance, but rather
on eciency, the bringing in of new capital and the introduction of market
logics. This literature and debate had spread wide particularly through the
involvement of multilateral institutions and banks, and also became
prominent after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the transitional processes
followed by that event.
A third historical root of partnership ideas can be traced back to the
emerging literature in international and global environmental policymaking, where conventional realist and regimes theories were challenged
by the notion and later school of thought of (global) environmental
governance. In the absence of a global state authority, and with the growing
emergence of global environmental challenges in the 1990s, the international and global arena proved particularly fertile for ideas and practices
of cooperative environmental governance between various state and nonstate partners (e.g., Streck, 2002). This was also strongly pushed by a
number of international conferences where the idea of partnership was
widely circulated, not in least at the 1992 UNCED conference in Rio de
Janeiro and the 2002 summit in Johannesburg (or the Rio10). During this
last conference in particular, a rapid growth in the number of international
and global partnerships for sustainable development was recorded (UN
Commission on Sustainable Development, 2006).
This literature on international environmental governance cross-fertilized
in the 1990s with the more general literature on new governance arrangements, network governance and a number of other notions, which are all less
restricted to just the environmental domain and the international arena. In
general, as Davies (2002) notes, the partnership literature resembles the
positive rhetoric of inclusiveness, transparency, redistribution of power and
218
equity that prevails in ideas of sustainable governance. In a similar way,

Glasbergen (1996) lauds partnerships for institutionalizing consensusbuilding practices and participatory dialogue into environmental decisionmaking and governance processes.
Some of these traditions or historical roots more or less came together
and were strengthened in those studies that aimed to reect on the consequences of globalization and growing complexity for the role and position
of the nation-state in governance, not least in environmental governance
(or governance for sustainability). The literature on globalization and
global complexity radicalized the idea of state failure as global ows and
networks intruded all kinds of processes into the states territory, while the
nation-state had basically no control over them. The conventional idea of
the state had to make way for new notions. Bauman (1987) described this
as the transformation from a gardening to a gamekeeper state.
One of the early key publications that analysed what globalization meant
for, among others, environmental governance, is Limits to Competition,
written by a group of independent experts led by Petrella (Group of
Lisbon, 1995). Their call for social contracts, also in the environment eld,
resembles much of what would now be called partnerships. More recently,
Linder (1999, p. 38), for instance, argued how the global economy, new
communication technologies, the need for exibility, and consumerism
forced governments and business alike towards partnerships, as a vehicle to
overcome these challenges jointly. These global developments come
together with an intermingling of public and private spheres, making partnerships less contested and even logical. And in the Millennium Report,
Ko Annan (2000), the UNs Secretary General, gave a most adequate
summary of the widely perceived challenges in this global arena:
If we are to get the best out of globalization and avoid the worst, we must learn
to govern better, and how to govern better together. That does not mean world
government or the eclipse of nation states. On the contrary, states need to be
strengthened. And they can draw strength from each other, by acting together
with common institutions based on shared values. These institutions must reect
the realities of the time, including the distribution of power. And they must serve
as an arena for states to co-operate with non-state actors, including global companies. In many cases they need to be complemented by less formal policy networks, which can respond more quickly to the changing global agenda.
So, in conclusion, while the roots of new environmental governance ideas

go back to the mid-1980s, it is only from the second half of the 1990s
onwards that ideas of political modernization, subpolitics, network
governance, reinventing governance and globalization started to inuence
fundamentally the environmental research agendas on governance. This
219
provided fertile ground for the emergence and becoming mainstream of the
notion of environmental partnerships in the social science literature on the
environment.
10.2 ENVIRONMENTAL PARTNERSHIPS:

CLASSIFICATIONS
To say that the literature on partnerships is quite diverse is an understatement. Increasingly, it seems that little cannot be captured under the heading
of partnerships, certainly in the eld of environmental governance. Before
any assessment can be made we need to classify and disentangle the various
connotations of partnership, both in the academic literature as well as in
political practice and discourse. Most of the classications that have been
made up until now focus strongly on the kind of actors that enter into partnerships. For the purpose of my analysis I will distinguish two categories
(see Table 10.1), and continue my further analysis on the latter category in
particular, by looking at actor constellations.
A rst category of partnership literature is strongly embedded in the
publicprivate cooperation between government and business, with a
strong focus on ecient management of activities, contractual obligations
and relations, and transfer of responsibilities. Such partnerships are
perceived as an alternative to relying only on the state and authoritative
coordination mechanisms, or to a lesser extent just relying on private
business and the market. As noted above, this category dates back from the
1980s when the neo-conservative governments in the United Kingdom and
the United States started to promote publicprivate partnerships (PPP) as
an alternative to inecient state dominance in a number of areas. In this
category of PPP there is a strong focus on urban infrastructure development and management, and public services of water, waste and energy
(next to a number of other elds: health, education, post delivery, transport, etc.). These partnerships, although still diverse, have a clear instrumental focus and a wide literature reects on the various organizational
and management dimensions: eectiveness, eciency, organizational
modes, division of responsibilities, coordination structures and so on.
After its emergence in OECD countries the idea of PPP was swiftly taken
over by development agencies and international nancial institutions such
as the World Bank and the IMF, conditioning loans and assistance programmes with reduction of government expenditures and shrinkage of
state responsibility, using the arguments of eciency and eectiveness of
service provision (e.g., Miraftab, 2004). In these partnerships the focus
was and still is clearly on the partnering of state and market actors,
220
while later on especially after severe criticism communities and civil

society started to become involved to some extent. Only then we see the
argument of good governance being linked to the establishment of such
partnerships in developing countries. Linder (1999) has provided an interesting overview of six publicprivate partnership connotations, each giving
a specic denition of partnering:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Publicprivate partnership as management reform; an innovative tool

that will change how the government functions, largely by tapping into
how the market functions.
Publicprivate partnership and problem conversion: problems are
redened in order to attract private prot-seeking collaborators.
Publicprivate partnership as moral regeneration: self-reliance, initiative, hard work, integrity, prudence and so on are all brought to the
prot-making enterprise.
Publicprivate partnership as risk shifting: shifting high risk from the
public to the markets, for instance in infrastructures etc.
Publicprivate partnerships as restructuring public service, making it
less bureaucratic, more exible, less unionized, etc.
Publicprivate partnerships as power sharing: changing business
government relations through cooperation and trust; mutual benecial
sharing of responsibilities, knowledge and risks; give-and-take and
negotiating dierences. The question is how much and what kind of
control is shared.
This publicprivate cooperation category of partnership has had a considerable impact in terms of organizing and managing urban development,
in many countries. The dominant form of organizing urban infrastructure
(water, energy, waste, transport) by state agencies has been replaced in
many places by various forms of PPP constructions, with various reasons
put forward to legitimate such new constructions. At the same time
these forms of partnerships have also led to considerable debate, most
signicantly on issues of equity and equality: who is involved in these partnerships, for who are these constructions bringing more eective and
ecient services, are local governments able to balance the power of private
capital coming in (especially in situations of transnational corporation,
[TNCs] in developing countries) (e.g., Oppenheim and MacGregor, 2004)?
The World Bank has identied strong tendencies of state capture in these
publicprivate partnerships (cf. Hellman et al., 2000).
A second category of partnership is of more recent origin, has a less
instrumental/management focus, a wider constituency, a stronger focus on
collaboration and common objectives, and a less well-dened literature that
221
designs and evaluates them according to xed criteria. These partnerships

can range from dyads to multi-party arrangements, local to global levels,
short- to long-term time frames, and can be totally voluntary to fully mandated. Selsky and Parker (2005) label them cross-sector partnerships,
involving states, business and non-governmental sectors. Others refer to
social partnerships (Nelson and Zadek, 2000), intersectoral partnerships
(Waddell and Brown, 1997), strategic partnerships (Ashman, 2001), social
alliances (Berger, Cunningham and Drumwright, 2004), issue management
alliances (Austrom and Lad, 1989) or even public policy networks (Streck,
2002; Lehmann, 2006). Selsky and Parker (2005, p. 854) present a division
or classication in this partnership literature in four (sub)categories: partnerships between business and non-prot organizations, partnerships
between governments and business (coming close to the rst category above
but with a dierent emphasis; see for instance Lehmann, 2006), partnerships between governments and non-prot organizations and partnerships
engaging all three sectors. More limited partnerships between social/nonprot organizations and the private sector (often also referred to as
privateprivate partnerships) are recently emerging in the environment
eld, and have received overwhelming attention in the literature. This category has been put forward by Murphy and Bendell in particular (1997) in
their timely book In the Company of Partners, where they also materialize
Becks (1994) notion of subpolitics.
Partnerships between non-prot organizations and the government are
less discussed with respect to the environment, as these tend to emerge in,
for instance, welfare domains. However, especially in developing counties,
for example, China and Bangladesh, such partnerships do occur and can be
quite substantial, also in the eld of environmental governance. Most of the
recent interest in partnerships in the environment eld is related to the three
variations of this second category where civil society is present, because
(1) these partnerships strongly focus on new, alternative governance
Table 10.1
Two categories of partnerships
Origins
Applied label
Typical actors
Spatial reach
Typical example
Core literature
Category 1 Partnerships
Category 2 Partnerships
1970s
1990s
Publicprivate partnership
Government and private
sector
Local/national
Infrastructure
Management literature
Diversity of labels
Variety of actor combinations,
often including civil society
Also international/global
Environmental governance
Governance literature
222
arrangements rather than just a dierent management model; (2) they

acknowledge the growing role, force and power of civil society norms and
organizations, and are thus less controversial for environmental advocates;
(3) they are directly connected to the wider social science literature on the
changing conditions of our late-modern times. I will focus my further analysis of partnerships on these sub-categories of partnership governance in
particular.
While these ideas of partnerships are not restricted to the environment
domain, a substantial part of the partnership literature refers to the realm
of environment and sustainability. The ideas of partnership governance
have strongly emerged in the environmental eld, based according to
Poncelet (2001) on two specic, rather recent, socio-historical backgrounds: a specic cultural model of non-confrontation and a discourse of
ecological modernization. A cultural model guides peoples expectations
and provides a frame of interpretation on how dierent interests should
relate and behave. The frame of non-confrontation and common responsibilities has been propagated from the early days of the environmental crisis
onwards (with notions such as spaceship Earth), but was severely criticized
and opposed by environmentalists in the 1970s and 1980s, to become only
more acceptable from the late 1980s onward (e.g., with Our Common
Future, WCED, 1987). The discourse of ecological modernization as it
emerged in Europe in the late 1980s but spread wider in the 1990s (Mol and
Sonnenfeld, 2000) provides the shared ideological and substantial background for partners to dene common and joint solutions. However,
we should add a third background to the rapid emergence and strong
prevalence of partnerships in the environment and sustainability eld:
the strong relation between globalization/complexity and environmental
governance. As environmental challenges become not only more and
more global in nature, but also increasingly framed against the background
of complex, global dynamics, conventional notions of state-led governance
become particularly problematic. Earth system governance (Biermann,
2005) and governing environmental ows (Spaargaren, Mol and Buttel,
2006) are two among the many notions that point to the fact that in order
to address the new environmental challenges we need new forms of governance beyond, above, below and outside the state, and partnerships are one
of the answers to such calls. In that sense, environmental partnerships
cannot be separated from ideas and developments of globalization and
global complexities. Hence it should not surprise us to see much of the
recent partnership literature and examples being focused on (global)
environmental challenges, while the publicprivate partnership literature
of the late 1980s was strongly related to (sub)national management of
infrastructure.
223
10.3 ENVIRONMENTAL PARTNERSHIPS

IN DEBATE
Throughout the last two decades when the idea of partnership was
developed and put into practice in among others the eld of environmental protection, there has been a continuous debate on its merits and
deciencies. Many critiques are not unique for environmental partnerships
but resemble wider uneasiness with new modes of environmental governance, and thus should sound quite familiar to environmental social sciences scholars. One of them is the ambivalent environmental results of
partnerships. For instance, after studying partnerships between developed
country governments, transnational corporations and environmental
NGOs, Marina Ottaway is not too convinced of the contributions of such
cross-sectoral partnerships in improving local environmental conditions
and reforming local developing country governments: The so-called partnership between NGOs, developed countries, and transnational corporations is beginning to look like a game in which each actor tries to pass the
hot potato of reforming reluctant governments to somebody else
(Ottaway, 2001, p. 53). In a study on Leicester City partnerships, Roberts
(2000, p. 13) also draws ambivalent conclusions: there is a realisation that
partnerships have limitations as well as benets . . . partnership is not the
yellow brick road to a sustainable city that it is sometimes made out to be.
And also in several of the chapters in this volume, the environmental
ambivalences of partnership governance are noted. However, we can
nd these kind of ambivalences on eectiveness and eciencies with any
environmental arrangement, whether it is conventional state-centred or
new non-state governance. In analysing the debate on partnerships for sustainability in this section, I will focus not so much on the environmental
records of partnerships, but rather on other according to some, more
fundamental lines of criticism. I group these critiques together under
four denominators.
First, there is a substantial amount of conceptual criticism, all referring
to the particular vague notion of partnership, the a-theoretical underpinnings and the diversity of meanings that are brought under one denominator. A variety of authors claim that the sheer imprecise, vague and loose
denitions of partnership make it almost impossible to judge and evaluate
in general terms the functioning, advantages and disadvantages, strengths
and weaknesses of partnerships. Miraftab (2004, p. 92), for instance, discusses the terminological sloppiness of the partnership literature and
practices through the multiple interpretations of the private sector in partnerships; the strongly diverging conditions under which partnerships can,
do or are advocated to operate; the variations in the kind of governments
224
involved, the ways they are involved and the functions these governmental
authorities are believed to full; and the diversity and impreciseness of
objectives partnerships should full. Van Seters (2005) list 10 concepts,
introduced by as many dierent authors, which all seem to refer to more or
less the same kind of partnership arrangements: civil partnership, crosssectoral collaborative alliances, cross-sector organizational collaboration,
cross-sectoral partnership, local partnership, multisectoral network, multistakeholder initiative, new social partnership, strategic partnership and
social partnership organization.
Others equally note the large variety of meanings, arrangements and
contextual conditions of partnerships, which hardly permits one to draw
any lasting conclusions on whether partnerships do live up to their
promises (and what promises they have exactly). For some scholars, this
denitional ambiguity also serves the purposes of those in power, and they
connect this criticism with one of the points mentioned below. The origin
of this denitional lack of clarity and diversity, as well as a logical consequence of it, seems to be the dominant prevalence of typical studies on
partnerships: empirical and management-oriented case studies that try to
capture the (list of) conditions and forms under which particular partnerships are eective and successful. In their overview of the partnership
literature, Selsky and Parker (2005) conclude that much of the recent
literature on social partnerships take a rather instrumental view and pragmatic orientation, and focus on the achievement of short-term objectives,
especially through a limited number of case studies. Limited attention has
been paid to both understanding long-term impacts and consequences and
a fuller analysis and comprehension of the broader social background and
development of partnerships: after many productive years of relying on
case studies, the eld is ripe for theory building (Selsky and Parker, 2005,
p. 866). In doing so, they add, more political and critical perspectives on
CSSPs [cross-sectoral social partnerships] would reward research attention.
Most organizational literature is favourable towards these entities and [still]
discusses them in functional, normative and managerial terms.
A second group of critiques on current partnerships can be labelled
forward criticism, where partnerships do not live up to the new roles and
modes of exible governance that are increasingly believed necessary under
conditions of networked complexities. It directly opposes backward criticism ideas (see below). The common denominator is that, in practice, partnerships do not live up to their theoretical promises of non-hierarchical
multi-actor governance, because in implementation and design, actors and
arrangements still hang too strongly on conventional ideas of state governance, frustrating a fundamental shift to real environmental partnerships.
Teisman and Klijn (2002), while celebrating the idea of partnerships as a
225
new form of governance better adapted to and tting into the new network
society and the emerging global complexity, note that governments are
often not prepared to adjust their mode of self-referential organization
decisions to more joint inter-organizational policy-making. Today, partnerships seem to be primarily related to the domain of verbally expressed
intentions and theoretical advantages and benets of cooperation, according to Teisman and Klijn (ibid.).
The partnership idea has widely penetrated the language of politicians
on all levels, and partnerships do emerge as arrangements for debates and
discussion, but hardly appear in the realm of concrete decision-making.
While governments express the need for partnership, in practice partnerships turn into schemes of contracting out to market parties, where clear
rules, goals and targets are set. Governments and the representative democracy are still seen as the rm basis for governing the environment, and hesitations exist with respect to more complex governance arrangements,
where the roles of public and private actors get blurred. Davies (2002)
describes how local sustainable community partnerships in the United
Kingdom are frequently overruled by dictates from strong national
governmental agencies. And Stewart and Gray (2006) evaluate international partnership projects with a strong focus on Africa, to conclude that
much of the so-called new partnership approaches strongly resemble the
old government-dominated models, with a strong top-down way of policymaking. Governments did manage to maintain their privileged position as
partners, while to some extent other stakeholders were given a voice but certainly not as equal partners. This also seems to be the conclusion of
Bckstrands (2006) analysis of the dominancy of states, multilateral institutions and governmental authority in global partnerships, with hardly any
relocation of authority to the private sector. In all, while these critics
support the idea of partnerships as an adequate answer to the governance
challenges of globalization, they criticize the lack of actual practical implementation of partnership arrangements, resulting in inadequate and
halfway governance innovations.
The third set of critiques can be grouped together as backward criticism,
where partnerships are interpreted as postmodern innovations that are
inadequate to deal with the power relations behind contemporary environmental challenges. Typical doubts on and arguments against environmental partnerships in this line resemble the need to move back to
conventional models of governance, where the state had a central position
and was seen as the only force able to tame the treadmill of capitalist
exploitation and thus also to prevent pollution. Such analyses often end
in a plea for reinstalling past modes of state governance and calls for
strong environmental states that do more than just facilitate and mediate
226
conicting parties. A typical, though balanced, criticism of partnerships

within this line is given by Hancock (1998), where he doubts whether partnerships can work within a setting where capitalist enterprises are only
focused on short-term prot-making in order to survive. In evaluating a
number of partnerships on the environment in the EU and the United
States, Poncelet (2001) draws similar conclusions. Through the prevalence
of and focus on non-confrontational strategies and solutions, the fundamental contradictions and confrontations related to the capitalist economy
are outside the potentials of partnerships. But at the same time, partnerships, when becoming increasingly dominant, de-legitimize more confrontational strategies, strong interventionist states and the use of related
resources. This especially empowers the ruling political and economic
elites, while environmental NGOs who have invested their capital, expertise
and resources in more confrontational strategies are disfavoured. Healthy
conicts and vigorous debates between alternative approaches, interests
and ideas are played down in such partnership paradigms, where an ideology of common interests prevents any more radical solutions for protecting the environment.
This backward criticism to some extent is related to or spills over in a
fourth category of political economy and democracy criticism, emphasizing
the unequal power balances and the distributional consequences of partnerships. Davies (2002) analyses partnerships for sustainability especially
with respect to their promise of redistributing power, their increase in participation and stronger legitimacy. Most notably, she does so for partnerships that have a stronger involvement of local communities, with a special
emphasis on the so-called sustainable community partnerships in Britain,
which operated as pilot projects during the second half of the 1990s. While
she found that there was a redistribution of power, it was not to the advantage of the local people. This was partly caused by the fact that partnerships do not operate in a governance vacuum, but have to function within
existing institutional structures.
Andy Blowers (1998) analyses cooperative governance, ecological modernization and partnerships all along the same axis. While acknowledging
the value of these consensual models of environmental governance for
some environmental agendas, he strongly stresses the limitations of these
models by criticizing their reformist (instead of radical) agendas, their
economic-technological prevalence and preoccupation, their incorporation
of environmental NGOs instead of real participation, and their neglect of
power and social inequalities.
This comes very close to the criticism of Oppenheim and MacGregor
(2004), who see partnerships as being too often the combination of public
money and resources to produce private prot and disproportionally small
227
public benet, while, according to them, the essential rst element of successful partnerships should be democracy and equality.
For some scholars this criticism becomes even more relevant through the
active propagation of partnerships by, for instance, the World Bank, IMF
and USAID (USAID, 2006) and the dominant role of business in critical
processes involving public goods (among which the environment) in developing and developed countries. Miraftab (2004) focuses on partnership in
developing countries, where partnership constructions often go together
with state decentralization, leaving a powerless local state with insucient
means to guarantee the protection of the interests of the poor. The state is
then no longer able to full its tasks of steering the development, providing a level playing eld for all partners and guaranteeing equality
between uneven socioeconomic constituencies in the partnership. Powerful
economic actors then take the lead. According to Miraftab, successful
partnerships need strong state interventions, and any partnership that goes
together with state decentralization and marginalization ends up with
inequalities and privatization, in the interests of the powerful.
10.4
PARTNERSHIPS AND THE STATE
Partnerships can be seen as a new mode of governance that forms (one of

the) answers to the challenges of governing sustainability under conditions
of global modernity. Indeed, in these times of globalization and growing
global complexities, simple models of the gardening state are no longer
adequate and the search for new modes of governance is arguably one of
the central themes of contemporary (environmental) social sciences. In that
sense, conventional backward criticism on partnerships is no longer very
adequate and relevant: times are changing and governance modes need to
move along with that. In that sense it should not surprise us that many of
the themes that can be found in the partnership literature have been
reected in a more or less similar way in notions of political and ecological
modernization, reinventing government, subpolitics, network governance
and new multi-level and multi-actor governance arrangements. The
common denominator in this broad literature is that the nation-state
should redene its role following state failures and under changing conditions of globalization and complexity. While governance innovations and
reconceptualizations have been under criticism as specied above for the
partnership literature I would argue that the overall perception and
assessment of the search for and investigations in such new modes and
forms of environmental governance should be positive. It has widened
the governance agenda: to new, non-state actors; to new levels and the
228
interactions between levels; to new rules, resources and arrangements; and

to new modes and forms of governing and steering. At the same time the
new partnership arrangements show much diversity, empirical failures and
limitations, and the partnership literature lacks strong theoretical underpinnings and seems preoccupied by a strong normative and managerial
focus. I would conclude from this that much further study on partnerships
has to be done and that reforms of partnership-like arrangements, experiments and studies should be on the agenda, rather than turning our back
on partnerships.
There is one central tendency in the partnership literature that causes
concern, and that is the sheer neglect of any positive/constructive analysis
of the (environmental) state in partnership-like arrangements. The various
critiques on how partnerships take the state on board do show us the
boundaries of the new playing eld, but this criticism has not yet resulted
in adequate analyses on the place of the state in partnership governance
and the related renovation and reinvention of the environmental state
that should go with this. As far as I can judge, this shortcoming has four
dimensions, and each dimension in its own way calls for bringing the
state back in.
The rst dimension relates to the theoretical shortcomings in the partnership literature. While there is ample debate in recent social theory on the
changing position of the state in global modernity, the partnership literature seems to refrain from entering that theoretical discourse. In the social
sciences it is the globalization and global complexity theories in particular
that try to come to terms with a rapidly changing global modernity. In some
of the more radical, but prominent and widely cited, new social theories
or new rules of sociological method as one of the contributors calls it
(Urry, 2003) the state is no longer seen as a crucial category for understanding and analysing social development and change. Networks, ows
and uids have become the organizing principles, the architectural concepts, for an increasingly global complexity, instead of states and society.
While I do see much value in signicant parts of this new sociology of networks and ows (cf. Mol and Spaargaren, 2005), Im rather sceptical
regarding the theorys (lack of) conceptualization of governing and the
state. In short: in signicant parts of this literature, governmentability,
steering and control are no longer seen as relevant categories.
As for now, the partnership literature, with a similar focus on (actor)
networks and partly sharing intellectual sources and foundations with this
sociology of networks and ows, does not seem that radical in its conceptualization of governance and the state. But how then is the state conceptualized in partnership ideas; to what extent is partnership the new organizing
principle of sustainability decision-making; or do we interpret partnerships
229
as at best a marginal phenomenon to be relegated to the periphery of environmental governance? If partnerships have a lasting impact in terms of
environmental governance, could the transforming state be captured by
Concas (2005) hybridization of authority; or should we take global issue
networks (Rischard, 2002) as a core concept in which states are given a
place; or perhaps David Helds (2004) idea of global covenants, which
resembles the social contracts of the Petrella report (Group of Lisbon,
1995)? It is beyond the scope of this chapter to conclude the theoretical and
conceptual debates on the position of the state in partnerships. But the point
is that the partnership literature is in urgent need of further theoretical
underpinnings and it remains to be seen what theory or conceptualization
of the state comes out of this, up till now, strongly empirical and managerial partnership literature. Bringing the environmental state back in refers
here to the need to make theoretical and conceptual space for states in any
theory of partnerships, also under conditions of global complexity.
The second worrying dimension is a strong celebration of and emphasis
by many scholars in the recent governance and partnership literature on a
minimization of the nation-state and a prevalence of and preference for
privateprivate partnerships. In the literature on environmental partnerships in particular, all kind of arrangements and partnerships beyond,
outside and without a strong environmental state are celebrated as innovative, eective, legitimate, trustworthy and so on. The basic idea seems to
be that civil society takes over a number of qualications and roles that
were traditionally related to the state. In such partnerships civil society
balances the major economic powers and ensures legitimate arrangements,
forces accountability among the transnational companies, builds trust
among those dependent on the partnerships, balances unequal powers and
looks for equity. In contrast to conventional states, civil society and NGOs
are not bureaucratic, are more exible, are less ruled by a (political) elite, are
more grassroots democratic and are not preoccupied with national interests but connect local and global interests. To be sure, such private forms of
cooperation and governance have prevailed in the early writings of Murphy
and Bendell (1997), in Becks subpolitics (1994), in the literature on private
environmental governance, in the project on global civil society (Anheier,
Glasius and Kaldor, 2001; 2005) and also in ecological and political modernization studies. In the early and mid-1990s such frameworks were
launched, experimented upon and reported by academics against the background of a social order that was still predominantly (perceived to be) organized as a nation-state system. These new branches of literature in the 1990s
were helpful in showing that there is also a world outside the state when discussing, designing and implementing environmental governance, and in
that sense they were much needed. However, the environmental partnership
230
literature among other literature sometimes seem to take this latter position as the point of reference, as the preferential arrangement for dealing
with transnational and subnational sustainability issues in a exible, innovative, non-bureaucratic, democratic, transparent and legitimized way.
And that is worrying. As for instance Gerre, Garcia-Johnson and Sasser
(2001) conclude, private partnerships should go together with a strong state
that actively enforces environmental goals within and beyond their sovereign territory. These private partnerships should not weaken or replace
existing state programmes. Seidman (2005) also warns against the limitations of stateless governance and the limitations of civil society in taking
on watchdog and control functions traditionally fullled by the state.
Bringing the environmental state back in means here that environmental
protection without the state is only in very specic problem settings and
conditions sustainable in the long term. On average, there often remains a
need, role and position for active environmental states in new (partnershiplike) governance arrangements.
The third dimension that refers to shortcomings of the state in environmental partnerships relates to those partnerships where the state is
included, but put on a similar and equal footing with a multitude of other
actors. States then become one among a wide network of actors, all
analysed in more or less similar ways in terms of power, interests, responsibilities, accountabilities and resources. To be sure, I dont want to argue
that states have any pre-ordained higher morality, normative preferable
place, or formal ahistorical position in environmental protection arrangements. But I do think that in contemporary sustainability partnerships,
states and state authorities require a conceptualization that is fundamentally rather than marginally dierent (that is, not better) than those of other
(private) actors in partnerships. Bringing the state back in then means
making conceptual room for the specicities of states in partnership
arrangements, where issues of legitimacy, accountability, rule-altering
behaviour, democracy and balancing interests take their own turn and
dynamics. Regarding what kind of environmental issues, levels and
arrangements can some of these state functions, tasks and responsibilities
be (partly) taken over by other actors, and where do we witness the unique
qualities of states and state institutions? The contribution by Meadowcroft
in this volume (Chapter 9) is a very useful start to such an analysis with
respect to democracy, where he argues for a meta-governance role of representative institutions in partnerships. All this is not to argue in favour of
(a return to) classical statist arrangements in environmental governance,
like some of the backward critics seem to do. Under specic conditions,
legitimacy, accountability and democracy, for instance, can also be organized and safeguarded to a major extent through a global civil society, as
231
some of the case studies in this volume illustrate. But in other cases this
is not desirable, possible or the (non-monetary) costs are too high.
Environmental states and their democratic institutions will not always be
able to draw back into mediation, facilitation, network management and
information exchange within partnerships for sustainability.
The fourth problematic dimension of the state in the environmental partnership literature is of a more practical/political nature. As social scientists
we have always been conscious of the double hermeneutics, of the fact that
with our studies and writings we inuence our research object, for better or
for worse. Increasingly I feel that, while the partnership literature conceptualizes real existing tendencies in environmental governance, nation-state
organizations internalize the partnership ideas by (1) legitimizing noninterventionist environmental policies; (2) shifting the burden for failing
environmental governance towards non-state parties and supranational
institutions; (3) showing a preoccupation on mediation and network construction instead of designing and implementing substantial policies and
(4) reducing environmental experts and expertise in the environmental
state, while maximizing network (or partnership) managers and management. At least for the West European countries Im familiar with, I cannot
be very enthusiastic about that. Environmental partnerships become an
excuse for weakening environmental states, non-interventionists policies,
endless mediation and discussion. And specic sectors in society as well as
specic political ideologies cherish and celebrate such developments.
Growing complexity is then often combined with liberalization, to become
central arguments for the impossibility of interventionist, preventive and
precautionary environmental policy: a self-fullling prophecy for some
parts of the partnership literature and advocates. But at the same time we
do not see much hesitation by certain states to act preventatively and in a
precautionary way when issues of terrorism or security are at stake. And
partnerships in these areas come along with strong states (with all the
teething trouble that comes with that). Bringing the environmental state
back in, fourthly and nally, refers to a political project where states, state
authorities and state ocials can also be agents that dare to intervene and
make a dierence, also when uncertainties, globalization and complexities
make simple planning and goal achievement out of the question.
10.5
CONCLUSION
The call for bringing the environmental state back into the analysis of
social change resembles some of the ideas and research agenda of Evans
and colleagues (1985), as we have indicated above. But of course, there are
232
dierences. A marginalization of the state in social analyses follows now

from (the perception of) a changing social order, where globalization and
complexities dominate. In the 1980s it was rather the coming together of
dierent theoretical perspectives that threatened to marginalize the analysis of the state as autonomous actor in social processes. In the 1980s, the
political connotation was strongly related to the neo-liberal ideologies
and political practices of privatization, deregulation and marketization.
Although we witness similar debates of privatization (e.g., on environmental services) and deregulation (voluntary agreements, self-regulation), the
political background of partnerships seems to be ideologically less clear.
This makes current political debates on the environmental state confusing
at least. Environmental NGOs join multinationals in arguments for and
practices of partnerships in which states are marginally present. Originally
contrasting ideologies thus seem to join forces in state-marginalized forms
of governance.
Environmental partnerships, or partnerships for sustainability, are a
manifestation of the worlds search for new modes of governance following
the new conditions of a globalized modernity. No doubt this should
be assessed positively. The analytical and normative calls for bringing
the environmental state back should be interpreted against such a
positive/constructive background: partnerships may indeed contribute to
our understanding of, search for and design of new governance arrangements. But against that background, the environmental state needs a better
conceptualization. I have argued that we should be careful that our relatively
recent analytical innovations in studying environmental governance (so, in
our analysis, those on partnerships) are not getting out of control. There
is a constant threat of crossing a (thin) line where the analysis and understanding of new, innovative, experimental environmental governance
arrangements, in which the role of the state is dierent from earlier arrangements, is turned into a neglect of the state and its democratic institutions,
and normative standards for the prevalence of society-dominated forms of
environmental governance. Or to put it slightly dierently: the recent literature on partnerships is in danger of crossing a in the rst instance, thin
line, between conceptualizing new forms and arrangements of environmental governance that resemble and t the new globalized world order, and
putting the end of the nation-state (Ohmae, 1995), the stateless society
(Young, 1994), or the privatization of (environmental) governance (Clapp,
2005; Finger, 2005) on the analytical and political agenda of environmental
protection. With the analysis of Peter Evans and colleagues (1985) we
should oppose such line-crossing not only on academic but also on
normative grounds, because it concerns more than just our academic analytical models and explanatory power. Through the double hermeneutics
233
(Giddens, 1984) and self-fullling prophecies, the marginalization of the

environmental state in academic studies reects upon actual state action and
intervention, when environmental states and authorities are no longer
willing to take a (pro)active position and seem to be prepared to live with
the idea of a subsumed position vis vis all kinds of social and economic
forces in determining and implementing environmental agendas.
One of the recent interesting perspectives, where the need for state governance is combined with a thorough analysis of the changing conditions
of the state in the global age, is to be found with Ulrich Beck (2005). While
his earlier work on subpolitics resembles the idea of partnerships and the
need for (environmental) governance beyond the state, more recently his
analysis on globalization and cosmopolitanization brings the state forcefully back into the analysis, be it radically dierent from the environmental
state of the 1980s and early 1990s. According to him we have to get rid of
the idea of nation-states, of the nation-state outlook in politics and society
and of methodological nationalism in the social sciences, but not of the
state as such. The cosmopolitan state in a transnational state system and
with a common human awareness of the global form for Beck the core for
provisioning and protecting public goods such as the environment in the
global age. Of course, also for Beck, this should take place in wider networks and partnerships with non-state actors. But in the end only the cosmopolitan state is able to combat eectively and legitimately the global
neo-liberal tendencies of privatization and liberalization that are so often
endangering the environment. This puts a new research line onto the
agenda on a cosmopolitan environmental state.
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PART 4
The future of partnerships
11. Multi-stakeholder partnerships for

sustainable development: does the
promise hold?
Frank Biermann, Man-san Chan, Aysem Mert
and Philipp Pattberg
Multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development are often
hailed as a vital new element of the emerging system of global sustainability governance. In policy and academic debates alike, partnerships are promoted as the solution to deadlocked intergovernmental negotiations, to
ineective treaties and overly bureaucratic international organizations, to
power-based state policies, corrupt elites and many other real or perceived
current problems of the sustainability transition. Multi-stakeholder partnerships are now ubiquitous. They have been promoted in particular at the
2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, where
partnerships became known as Type 2 outcomes of the summit, along
with the traditional outcomes of the intergovernmental diplomatic process.
As of December 2006, 321 multi-stakeholder initiatives have been registered with the United Nations (UN, 2006). In addition, many similar agreements are in place but not formally registered.
And yet, the role and relevance of these partnerships remains contested
(Glasbergen, Chapter 1 this volume). Some observers view the new
emphasis on multi-stakeholder partnerships as problematic (Ottaway,
2001; Corporate Europe Observatory, 2002; IISD, 2002; SDIN, 2002),
since voluntary publicprivate governance arrangements might privilege
more powerful actors, in particular the North and big business, and
consolidate the privatization of governance and dominant neo-liberal
modes of globalization. Also, some argue that partnerships lack accountability and (democratic) legitimacy. Yet others see multi-stakeholder partnerships as an innovative form of governance that addresses decits of
inter-state politics by bringing together key actors of civil society,
governments and business (e.g., Reinicke, 1998; Benner, Streck and Witte,
2003; Streck, 2004). In this perspective, multi-stakeholder partnerships or
similar governance networks for sustainable development are important
239
240
new mechanisms to help resolve a variety of current governance decits.

Such governance decits have been discussed from dierent conceptual
perspectives (e.g., Andonova and Levy, 2003; Haas, 2004; Martens, 2007).
While some scholars regard governance decits as a generic phenomenon
in international relations (Haas, 2004), others focus on a particular
governance decit, for example the democratic decit and problems of
legitimacy (Bckstrand, 2006).
These conicting expectations regarding the role and relevance of multistakeholder partnerships remain open for debate. In this chapter, we
therefore provide a large-n assessment of whether the entire system of partnerships tends to live up to the positive expectations of their proponents,
or whether the evidence supports the arguments of the critics. We focus our
analysis on three governance decits that are repeatedly mentioned in the
literature on multi-stakeholder partnerships, and that partnerships are
meant to address.
First, partnerships are expected to address a regulatory decit in current
sustainability governance. In other words, they are seen as providing
avenues for cooperation and joint problem-solving in areas where intergovernmental regulation is largely non-existent. Second, partnerships are
believed to ll an implementation decit in sustainability governance, that
is, they could help implement intergovernmental regulations that do exist,
but that are only poorly implemented, if at all. Third, partnerships are
often expected to assist in solving a participation decit in global governance. In this view, intergovernmental negotiations are seen as dominated
by powerful governments and international organizations, while partnerships might ensure higher participation of less privileged actors, including
voices from youth, the poor, women, indigenous people and civil society at
large. Increased participation from such groups is seen as needed to
improve the implementation of international agreements and to strengthen
the overall legitimacy, accountability and democratic quality of current
governance systems.
While these claims of multi-stakeholder partnerships as solutions to perceived regulation, implementation and participation decits in sustainability governance are frequently made, there is surprisingly little systematic
research in their support. Evidence for the actual role and relevance of partnerships concerning the three governance decits is scarce and inconclusive.
This lacuna impairs a better understanding of multi-stakeholder partnerships in global governance. Are partnerships a sign of a new model of world
politics in which intergovernmental negotiations are complemented and
sometimes even replaced by networked governance of non-state actors? Or
is the contribution of partnerships rather limited? To what extent, if at all,
are partnerships superior to traditional ways of international cooperation,
Multi-stakeholder partnerships
241
such as the negotiation of legally binding agreements among governments

and their subsequent national implementation?
The current literature on publicprivate governance in general, and on
multi-stakeholder partnerships in particular, is still not suciently evolved
both theoretically and empirically to answer these questions, even though
important pioneering work has been done (Witte, Streck and Brenner,
2002; Andonova and Levy, 2003; Falkner, 2003; Betsill and Bulkeley, 2004;
Hale and Mauzerall, 2004; Dingwerth, 2005; Bckstrand, 2006). Yet the
literature continues to be hampered by fragmented research agendas,
inconsistent conceptualizations across dierent studies and the absence
of large-n studies. Most analyses dier regarding the policy level they
address, ranging from studies that focus on local partnerships (Bassett,
1996; De Rynck and Voets, 2006) to the analysis of nationwide arrangements (Williams et al., 1991; Selin, 1999), European partnerships (Marks,
1993; Bomberg, 1994; Heinelt and Smith, 1996; Rhodes, Bache and
George, 1996; Dehousse, 1997), or transnational partnerships (Brzel,
1997). Empirical studies also focus on dierent partnership functions, that
is, whether partnerships serve as mechanisms of rule- and standard-setting
(Pattberg, 2005a; 2005b), of rule implementation (Brzel and Risse,
2005) or for information provision and dissemination (Glasbergen and
Groenenberg, 2001; Tully, 2004). It is open to debate to what extent one can
generalize empirical ndings on one partnership type to other types.
Studies also dier regarding the policy area in which partnerships operate
ranging from studies on sustainable development and environment to a
variety of other issues including security (Considine, 2002; Krahmann,
2003), economy (Kenis and Schneider, 1987; Considine and Lewis, 2003),
tourism (Selin, 1999) or health (Williams et al., 1991; Altenstetter, 1994).
The predominant case study approach often results in a bias towards the
most visible and most successful publicprivate partnerships, which tends
to paint a universe that is more partnership-dominated than reality may
warrant. Overall, current research on partnerships falls short of placing
these governance arrangements in a wider context.
In order to improve understanding of the role and relevance of partnerships concerning the three governance decits identied above, this chapter
oers a rst large-n empirical assessment of the entire system of multistakeholder partnerships ve years after they were institutionalized at the
World Summit on Sustainable Development. We draw on three data sources:
rst, a meta-analysis of existing empirical studies of the performance of
partnerships for sustainable development; second, the United Nations
Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) database on partnerships
(a basic inventory of registered partnerships based on self-reporting); and
nally, data from the rst version of the Global Sustainability Partnership
242
Database that is currently developed by our project team. The Global

Sustainability Partnership Database covers all partnerships that have been
formally registered with the United Nations, and will later also include nonregistered partnerships.
The remainder of our chapter is organized around the three governance
decits that we have outlined above and that partnerships are believed to
resolve: the regulation decit, the implementation decit and the participation decit.
11.1 PARTNERSHIPS AND THE REGULATION

DEFICIT
One core claim in support of multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development is that they function where governments fail. When
governments cannot agree on eective international agreements, or when
these agreements are too general to elicit any meaningful action, non-state
actors step in with the creation of multi-stakeholder partnerships. One can
reformulate this claim in two hypotheses. First, if partnerships ll a regulatory decit, they will be more prominent in areas where public regulation
is largely non-existent. That is, there would be a negative correlation
between the frequency of partnerships in a given issue area and public regulation of that area. Alternatively, if this was not the case, then partnerships would at least be spread rather equally over a wide range of problems.
The evidence is inconclusive, but hardly supportive of either hypothesis
(cf. Figure 11.1). Partnerships are indeed unequally spread over issue areas,
with some areas, such as water (75 partnerships), energy (55) and natural
resource management (52), receiving most attention (based on data on their
self-declared primary theme when registering with the United Nations,
excluding cross-cutting issues). From these areas with highest partnership
density, at least energy and natural resource management are densely regulated at the national level, and by a large measure also internationally, for
example through the climate regime and the biodiversity protection regime.
Other areas of equal importance for global environmental change mining
(6), desertication (11), drought (12) or toxic chemicals (4) are relatively
neglected by partnership initiatives (see UN, 2006).
A systematic comparison of the distribution of partnerships with that of
multilateral environmental agreements per issue area, through an online
treaty locator (CIESIN, 2007), suggests that issues that are less regulated or
unregulated (like mining) also attract very few partnerships. Relatively
more partnerships exist in areas that are heavily regulated, such as marine
resources, oceans and seas. This hypothesis has also been analyzed by
243
Water
Energy for sustainable development
Natural resource management
Agriculture
75
55
52
38
34
33
Biodiversity
Oceans and seas
Sanitation
28
27
25
Climate change
Land
Forests
Marine resources
Waste management
Air pollution/Atmosphere
Drought
Desertification
Transport
Mountains
Chemicals
17
17
17
14
12
11
11
5
4
Source: Global Sustainability Partnership Database V.1 (2007).
Figure 11.1
Issue areas of WSSD partnerships
Liliana Andonova (2006, p. 48) based on older datasets from 2003. Both
Andonovas and our investigations seem to contradict the regulation decit
hypothesis. It seems that a fair degree of institutionalization and a relatively
high density of intergovernmental agreements facilitate partnership entrepreneurship, whereas areas with obvious governance gaps have been less
popular for partnerships.
A similar trend emerges from our country studies, the rst of which had
focused on all partnerships that claim to work in Chile (Tondreau, 2005).
Issues addressed by partnerships in Chile were heavily concentrated on
more managerial problems, such as sustainable management of forests,
improving mapping and citizen information, whereas almost no partnerships existed on issues of major importance but with little national and
international regulation, such as mining or aquaculture.
Thus, while some areas with major international conventions such as
energy and climate change are heavily populated with partnerships,
areas with no strong international agreements, such as forestry, are less
covered by partnerships. Hale and Mauzerall (2004) explain this by the
private and voluntary nature of partnerships that prevents them from
sharing the macro-perspective of the United Nations and international
partnership advocates, so that some key issues have not received the
attention they deserve (Hale and Mauzerall, 2004). This could result in
partnerships picking the low hanging fruit in highly regulated areas,
244
since they do not necessarily view problems in terms of urgency, but in

terms of manageability.
Another important factor that might facilitate partnership agreements
and that also contradicts the regulation decit hypothesis is funding.
Partnerships tend to emerge in areas that receive abundant funding from
governments, especially from the European Union and the United States;
areas such as climate change, air pollution, energy and water. The United
States have pledged in the Johannesburg process to invest US$970 million
over three years in water and sanitation projects, and the European Union
has oered to launch a US$700 million partnership on energy development. Both issue areas are now also most densely populated by partnerships. The pattern of partnerships emerging in areas with such nancial
priorities points to a conclusion that the emergence of partnerships is
rather supply-driven than responsive to governmental incentives and
perceived regulation decits in global governance.
In sum, multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development do
not live up to expectations that they ll regulatory decits in global governance. While our current analysis and previous studies do not focus on the
performance of individual partnerships in a given issue area, we can conclude that partnerships have been created rather unevenly across issues.
This uneven spread across areas, however, does not negatively correlate
with the regulatory density in an area. In fact, there is some evidence to
suggest that partnerships emerge in areas where there is already a fair
degree of regulatory institutionalization.
This is not necessarily a problem if partnerships serve to contribute to
the implementation of existing rules and regulations, it might be more
eective for them to ourish in areas with substantial public regulation.
However, the underlying question then is whether partnerships in fact contribute to implementation, as we analyze in the following section. In any
case, at least the claim that partnerships ll regulatory gaps where
governments fail to agree on taking action is hardly supported by the
evidence.
11.2 PARTNERSHIPS AND THE IMPLEMENTATION

DEFICIT
The second claim in support of partnerships for sustainable development
is that they help improve the implementation of intergovernmental
treaties, agreements and programs. In the ocial texts from the World
Summit on Sustainable Development, strengthened implementation is
generally seen as the most important rationale for partnerships. In
245
Johannesburg, multi-stakeholder partnerships were explicitly dened as

specic commitments by various partners intended to contribute to and
reinforce the implementation of the outcomes of intergovernmental negotiations of the WSSD [World Summit on Sustainable Development] and to
help the further implementation of Agenda 21 and the MDGs [Millennium
Development Goals] (Kara and Quarless, 2002, emphasis added). The
argument for partnerships asserts that international agreements are poorly
implemented and that the international community should focus on this
implementation decit through publicprivate cooperation and voluntary
action of environmental leaders (Bruch and Pendergrass, 2003).
To what extent do partnerships contribute to the implementation of
intergovernmental agreements and of global sustainability governance in
general? Although some studies have addressed implementation (Witte
et al., 2003; Speth, 2004; Streck, 2004), measuring the eectiveness of the
contribution of partnerships towards the implementation of international
programs remains dicult. We have analyzed four hypotheses that we
derived from the literature on the implementation decit. We hypothesized
that if partnerships are eective in lling the implementation gap, they
could be expected: (1) to have the required capacity, and in particular the
human and material resources; (2) to create additional sources of funding,
on top of what governments and UN agencies were already going to
provide; (3) to concentrate on direct environmental improvement rather
than creating new bureaucratic procedures and (4) to implement projects in
the least developed countries to prioritize the realization of the Millennium
Development Goals.
Sucient Capacity of Partnerships?
Regarding the rst hypothesis, there are reasons to doubt that partnerships
have the capacity and necessary nancial and personnel means to reach
their claimed sustainable development goals. For example, 65 percent of all
partnerships registered with the United Nations have declared to be still
looking for funds, along with 48 percent of partnerships that also search
for additional non-nancial resources such as computers or oce space. As
of 2006, all partnerships together sought additional funding of US$710
million, which equals 55.6 percent of what they had in funds at that time.
The community of more than 300 multi-stakeholder partnerships registered with the United Nations is very diverse, and there are thus several
reasons that might explain why the majority of partnerships is still looking
for more money: they could plan to expand because they see themselves as
rather successful; they could be new and in the formation stage; or unexpected problems could require additional funds. And yet, another and in
246
our view more convincing reading is that there is a more general problem
and that the vast majority of all partnerships simply lacks the nancial
means to reach the goals they set for themselves.
New and Additional Resources?
Second, we have analyzed whether partnerships create new sources of
funding in addition to what governments and UN agencies were already
going to provide. If partnerships generated a substantial amount of new
resources, this would be a positive indicator of their eectiveness in implementing the sustainable development goals. At the end of the World
Summit on Sustainable Development, all partnerships initiated around the
summit had less than US$250 million in resources (Hale and Mauzerall,
2004, p. 235). In the larger context, this sum is a trie and merely slightly
more than the ocial development assistance of a small country such as
Luxembourg. Admittedly, until 2004 in less than two years funding
increased four-fold to US$1.02 billion. However, the main reason for this
substantial increase was the reclassication of large intergovernmental
programs as multi-stakeholder partnerships, while the programs continue
to rely on governmental funding and on existing programs within the
United Nations and World Bank programs (Hale and Mauzerall, 2004,
p. 235). This is supported by the rather modest increase from 2004 to
December 2006 by merely an additional US$230 million, from 1.02 billion
to 1.28 billion.
In any case, this sum is still small compared with US$78 billion in overall
ocial development assistance of the OECD countries (OECD, 2004).
Even in the multi-sectoral partnerships, funding remains largely public:
business actors account for only 1 percent of the new funding, almost the
same ratio as non-governmental organizations, which has led Hale and
Mauzerall (2004, pp. 2356) to the conclusion that partnerships have
failed to bring a substantial amount of new, multi-sectoral resources to sustainable development activities. Our more recent analysis indicates that
not much has changed.
It is also dicult to estimate the percentage of funds that is genuinely new
and that has not been allocated for sustainable development before the World
Summit on Sustainable Development (Bckstrand, 2006). Partnerships were
often presented to developing country representatives as a more reliable
source of funding, as they were not dependent on the uncertain process of
negotiations (personal communication with members of government delegations to the World Summit on Sustainable Development and to the fourth
Preparatory Committee meeting, January 2007). This partially explains why
developing countries agreed to the partnerships regime at the World Summit
247
on Sustainable Development, but also supports suspicions that substantial

parts of the partnership funds are in fact reclassied public development
assistance.
Focus on Direct Impact?
Third, if multi-stakeholder partnerships contribute to closing an implementation decit, one could expect that they concentrate on direct environmental impacts. However, in a recent OECD survey (2006), which looks
mainly at partnerships registered with the United Nations that have an
environmental focus, only 28 percent of the responding partnerships considered themselves as providing direct environmental benets. The OECD
researchers interpreted this as an overestimate and suggested that at a closer
look, it was more likely that of the 32 partnerships only three or four had
direct environmental impact, with the rest facilitating impact further down
the line (OECD, 2006, p. 24). Another critical nding of the survey is that
most partnerships identify as main beneciaries of multi-stakeholder cooperation the partners themselves (79 percent) or the partners as well as
others (ibid., pp. 245). A similar pattern is found among the 321 partnerships registered with the United Nations. For example, 165 partnerships
report rather vague objectives as their primary goals, such as strengthening
the means of implementation, building institutional frameworks, and
supplying information for decision-making. A recent survey by the
International Food Policy Research Institute on 124 publicprivate partnerships in agricultural innovation in nine South American countries concludes that most of the partnerships reviewed are not based on genuine
demand; do not produce the expected synergistic eects from complementary use of resources, co-innovation, and joint learning; and do not respond
to common interests (Hartwich, Gonzalez and Vieira, 2005, p. 30).
Likewise, our 2005 study of partnerships implemented in Chile found
that only half of the partnerships list as objectives the actual increase in
coverage of services and life quality and reduction of environmental
impacts. Instead, most objectives seem to have only a rather indirect
impact on actual problems, for example through improving mapping that
helps to take better public decisions, access to credits that allow people to
improve their quality of life or giving consultancy services for better and
more sustainable results from agriculture (Tondreau, 2005).
Another proxy for the question of whether partnerships address the
implementation decit is the number of partnerships that monitor their
progress in implementing the Millennium Development Goals. In the 250
partnerships that Hale and Mauzerall (2004) studied, merely 69 percent had
a reporting system and less than 50 percent had a monitoring mechanism in
248
place. Because this study was conducted shortly after the initiation of partnerships, monitoring mechanisms might have been created later. However,
there is indicative evidence that the lack of monitoring persists. For
example, a more recent OECD survey (2006) states that many partnerships
that focused on environmental protection had no monitoring mechanism in
place. While 81 percent of the sampled cases planned an evaluation of the
eectiveness of the partnership, only 56 percent declared that they would
evaluate their contribution to the Millennium Development Goals.
This seems comparable to other multi-stakeholder processes. For
example, a 2004 McKinsey report on intermediate impacts of the United
Nations Global Compact does not nd any substantial improvements
towards the Compacts principles ve years after its initiation. The results
of the survey indicate that the foremost reason to sign the Global Compact
for non-governmental organizations was to network with other organizations (64 percent). Companies most often claimed that they aimed at
addressing humanitarian concerns (55 percent globally) or at becoming
familiar with corporate social responsibility (62 percent in non-OECD
countries). However, only 58 percent of the companies took any (at least
one) action in support of global compact goals. While 67 percent of companies indicated that their companies made changes to implement the
Compacts principles, only 9 percent claimed that the Global Compact had
a crucial impact on any of these policy changes (McKinsey, 2004).
Of course, improving means of implementation or building institutional
frameworks are important elements of the larger quest for the transition
towards a more sustainable development. Yet, given these data, the suspicion arises that a sizable part of current partnership activity is not implementation per se, but rather the construction of a bureaucratic procedural
universe in parallel to the existing intergovernmental processes. These activities may lay the foundation for eective implementation in the future but
this is far from certain.
Focus on Least Developed Regions?
Fourth, if partnerships were contributing to lling the implementation
decit, one would expect them to focus in particular on these countries and
regions where implementation is most urgently needed. One can analyze
this through looking at the designated countries of implementation of
partnerships registered with the United Nations (see Figure 11.2). Most
previous partnership studies have focused on countries as (lead) partners
and neglected the category of country of implementation. This category
indicates exclusively the broadness of implementation regardless of which
countries the partners come from. Interestingly, we found that it is not the
249
Partnerships implementing in...
92
South America
229
126
EU
195
Africa
150
171
Non-OECD Asia
151
170
198
OECD
0%
20%
123
40%
60%
80%
100%
Source: Global Sustainability Partnership Database V.I (2007).
Figure 11.2
Countries of implementation
least developed countries but the OECD countries that are the most frequent countries of implementation, followed by Asian countries and
Africa. If partnerships exist to further the implementation of the
Millennium Development Goals, such as bringing food and education to
the poorest, it is striking that there is no bias in the partnership universe in
favor of least developed countries as countries of implementation.
In sum, the general perception of partnerships as a response to the implementation gap seems overly optimistic. A number of indicators the
balance of issue areas and geographical areas, the lack of focus on direct
environmental impact, the potential to reach goals and to attract additional
funding all point to the conclusion that the current practice of partnerships does not show strong evidence that they contribute signicantly
towards lling an implementation gap in global governance.
11.3 PARTNERSHIPS AND THE PARTICIPATION

DEFICIT
Multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development are often seen
as a means to ensure larger participation of all stakeholders. Already
Principle 10 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development
stipulated that environmental issues are best handled with participation of
250
all concerned citizens, at the relevant level, and at the Rio Summit the
notion of major groups was introduced to acknowledge the necessity of
broad-based participation in decision-making to achieve sustainable development. Thus, the Agenda 21 of 1992 urged governments to retreat from
narrow sectoral approaches and move towards full cross-sectoral coordination and cooperation (UN, 1992, p. 8.12).
There are various arguments that support broader participation. Some
argue that ensuring participatory processes is a public good in itself
(Stiglitz, 2002, pp. 16871), while others add that participation also
increases the eectiveness of projects and of decisions in general, ensures
political sustainability, assists in a more acceptable development transformation and creates more transparent corporate governance (cf. Isham,
Narayan and Pritchett, 1995; Isham, Kaufmann and Pritchett, 1997).
Proponents of multi-stakeholder partnerships as means to increase participation oer three core arguments. First, because national governments
and public agencies have limited resources, information and skills, they
need to collaborate with other sectors to ensure eective governance
(Reinicke and Deng, 2000; Ruggie, 2002; Streck, 2004). Second, partnerships that bring together a variety of sectors in environmental decisionmaking will decrease the gap between societies and global institutions that
emerges from the impossibility of a global democracy. Finally, partnerships
are believed to reduce the costs of compliance to international agreements
through creating consensus among the major actors (Jobin, forthcoming).
Increased participation through partnerships is often related to their
assumed bridge-functions between state and non-state actors (Martens,
2007, p. 33). Yet the assumed positive eect of partnerships also relates to
their role in bridging the dierences of understanding between the global
North and South on environment and development issues.
Does this promise hold, and is the theory met by reality? We have analyzed three hypotheses. We assumed that if partnerships are eective in
strengthening participation, they will have: (1) an at least balanced distribution of lead partners from the global North and South and of actors
from developing countries in general; (2) an at least balanced distribution
of lead partners from state and non-state actors; and (3) a sucient participation of traditionally marginalized partners.
Balance between North and South
First, regarding overall representation and distribution of leadership roles
between North and South, this is hardly balanced among state actors in
partnerships for sustainable development. In more than a quarter of all
partnerships registered with the United Nations, industrialized countries
251
are the only state partners involved. In 60 percent of the registered partnerships, at least one OECD state is a partner. Developing countries are
underrepresented; 56 percent of all partnerships have no state partner from
the developing world. When we consider countries not as a partner but as
the setting for implementation, we observe a similar pattern: 70.4 percent
of partnerships led by industrialized countries have at least one OECD
country as their country of implementation. In comparison, only 17.4
percent of the partnerships that are led by developing countries have a
developed country as country of implementation.
The leadership of partnerships lies predominantly with industrialized
countries (see Figure 11.3). By the end of 2006, governments that were
leading partnerships registered with the United Nations were almost exclusively from the North. The only developing countries among the group of
the ten most-often leading governments were the host countries of the last
preparatory conference to the World Summit on Sustainable Development
(Indonesia) and of the Summit itself (South Africa).
The general trend that Northern actors play a major role in the initiation,
funding and operation of privatepublic governance is supported by sectoral studies as well. For example, Buse (2004) concludes for global health
partnerships that the most active governmental partners are the United
States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Canada, with the consequence that Southern governments and non-governmental organizations
15
Italy
USA
13
Japan
13
9
Australia
France
Indonesia
8
5
Canada
South Africa
Germany
Sweden
Source: Global Sustainability Partnership Database.
Figure 11.3
Lead partner governments
252
are systematically under-represented in the governing bodies of the partnerships. Even when Southern actors are represented, leadership and initiation might mean that decision-making power remains with more
powerful actors. Bartsch (2006) cites global health partnerships as cases in
which no real decision-making power is granted to governments and civil
society actors from the South even despite their representation.
Empirical studies of environmental partnerships have reached similar
conclusions. Andonova (2006, pp. 445) suggests that, the more countries
are involved in foreign aid transactions, the more their governments and
development agencies are likely to have interest and political skill to
participate in publicprivate institutions. On the other hand, according to
Andonova, environmental stress, level of involvement in international
institutions and domestic political environment have no bearing on the
state partners involved (with the exception of countries with the largest
populations that are more likely to build partnerships, and of the two host
countries of the World Summit on Sustainable Development and the Bali
preparatory meeting, South Africa and Indonesia).
Participation of Non-governmental Actors
Second, it has been argued that multi-sectoral partnerships would create
new opportunities for non-state actors and thus alleviate the participation
decit in global governance. Again, this is hardly supported by data on
current partnership practice. Across all issue areas, state actors and intergovernmental organizations dominate the partner population of partnerships for sustainable development. Only 16 percent of partnerships have no
government as a partner. Public actors are also more likely to take the lead:
national and local governments lead 29 percent of all partnerships, and
the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations another
30 percent. Taken together, public actors run almost 60 percent of all partnerships that have emerged from the Johannesburg process. Business actors
are in charge of only 3 percent of all partnerships registered with the
United Nations, which is noteworthy given that business actors were highly
supportive of the partnership idea during the Johannesburg Summit. Nongovernmental organizations lead an additional 8.2 percent of all registered
partnerships, with research and science organizations and networks (12
percent) and collective actors such as partnership fora or stakeholder councils, as well as cases of missing data accounting for the rest (18.6 percent).
Back in 2003, Andonova and Levy (2003, p. 23) had concluded that partnerships are mainly supply-driven (by what powerful actors have to oer).
The current sets of data analyzed for this study show that not much has
changed since then (see Figure 11.4). The only major change over the last
253
29% 29.8%
28.1%
24%
2003
2007
24.2%
18.6%
11.7%
8.2%
4.8%
2.6%
IGOs
NGOs
Governments
Local
governments
6.5%
7.4%
3% 2.6%
Industry
Research Other/Missing
Data/No Lead
Sources: Andonova and Levy (2003); Global Sustainability Partnership Database V.1 (2007).
Figure 11.4
Sectoral distribution of lead partners in 2003 and 2007
four years is a sharp decrease in the percentage of NGO-led partnerships

and a moderate increase in research and science networks as lead partners.
The decrease in the number of NGO-led partnerships is largely attributable
to partnerships registering themselves or their previous names as the lead
partner with the United Nations. The research and science networks that
take over leading roles, on the other hand, are evenly distributed over issue
areas and other basic characteristics of partnerships.
Participation of Marginalized Groups
Third, in addition to increasing participation of non-state actors in general,
it has been argued that partnerships would increase participation of the
often-marginalized stakeholders in global politics. These positive expectations are not supported by the data (see Figure 11.5). Of all partnerships
registered with the United Nations as of December 2006, less than
1 percent had partners from groups such as farmers, workers and trade
unions, indigenous people, women, youth or children. More institutionalized groups are better represented in partnerships, with 9 percent of all
partners in partnerships registered with the United Nations coming from
the scientic and technological community, 11 percent from business and
industry, 19 percent from non-governmental organizations, 30 percent
from governments and 18 percent from intergovernmental organizations.
This picture of partnerships contradicts the optimistic idea that they can
serve as a means to ensure the participation of groups that are otherwise
marginalized in global politics. Rather, partnerships seem to have created
mechanisms to select state and non-state actors that are already part of the
game, and to exclude others. As Buse (2004, p. 232) quotes one informant
254

Government
1978
NGOs
1283
UN & other IGOs
1163
Business & industry
758
Scientific & technological community
593
Local authorities
263
Youth & children
41
Women
31
Indigenous peoples
27
Workers & trade unions 15

Farmers 14
Other
545
Source: UN (2006).
Figure 11.5
Number of partners from dierent sectors and major groups
of his research on health partnerships: [i]f you dont have some money on
the table, some time, and expertise, you are not a partner.
Comparable imbalances are also found in the Global Compact that the
United Nations concluded with a number of actors to improve the environmental, social or human rights performance of companies by bringing them together with UN agencies, civil society and labor unions. The
impressive portfolio of the initiative, which attracted some 1430 small and
medium-sized enterprises and 1615 larger corporations, including 108 of
the businesses ranked in FT Global 500, is in stark contrast to low involvement of non-governmental organizations merely 7 percent of all participants are NGOs and lack of consistency in the commitments of business
partners: 40 percent of the companies listed on the Compacts database are
either inactive or non-communicating participants (most of them being
small and medium-sized enterprises). Similar to partnerships for sustainable development, small businesses and civil society have a limited participation in the Global Compact.
In sum, there is empirical support for the claim that partnerships reproduce or even intensify existing relationships in the international system
(Martens, 2007). This is not restricted to partnerships for sustainable development. Similar patterns are visible in other governance arrangements (e.g.,
partnerships established through the Global Compact) and other issue
areas (e.g., health partnerships). So far, partnerships for sustainable development remain dominated by states and international organizations, and
are predominantly led and populated by Northern actors. Participation of
255
major groups is limited to stakeholders that have certain competitive

advantages or useful resources, and traditional patterns of political exclusion of weaker groups tend to be reproduced at the transnational level
of partnerships as well.
11.4
CONCLUSION
Two contradictions seem to prevent partnerships from eectively lling the

governance decits observable at the global level. First, there seems to be a
contradiction between the tasks of addressing the implementation gap and
addressing the participation gap at the same time and to the same degree.
Although partnerships are expected to implement sustainable development
policies eectively and at the same time to ensure a certain level of participation, this appears dicult within the context of the World Summit on
Sustainable Development and its follow-up process. If partnerships are
created to ll the implementation gap, this will require like-minded state
and non-state actors to form a partnership and implement some or all
Millennium Development Goals. Yet if they aim at ensuring broadest possible participation, the chances of eective implementation could be hampered by partners with opposing interests. This contradiction from within
the partnership system is reected in the debate on the partnership
brokers, wherein some argued that if the partners cannot work out a way
to work together and develop mutual trust on their own, then perhaps the
partnership should not be formed in the rst place (Warner, 2003). It might
be, in this case, more realistic and useful for partnerships to focus on implementation, and limit the ambitions with regard to participation.
The second contradiction relates to the regulatory gap, which partnerships fail to ll. Despite the rhetoric about the partnerships being only an
additional eort and not a substitute for multilateralism, no intergovernmental environmental agreement has been signed at the Johannesburg
Summit. The only signicant outcome of this major summit was voluntary
partnerships between dierent sectors, with limited resources and no
binding authority. A competitive as opposed to complementary element
is especially visible in the Asia-Pacic Partnership on Clean Development
and Climate, which has the strong support of two governments that reject
the regulatory regime of the Kyoto Protocol and that seek voluntary partnerships as a replacement of multilateral environmental agreements. (For a
detailed analysis of complementarity see McGee and Taplin, 2006.)
Surely, the question is not whether one single partnership addresses the
three governance decits of regulation, implementation and participation.
The question is about the overall role and relevance of the entire system of
256
the almost 400 partnerships that have emerged in recent years to advance
sustainable development in the areas of water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity and to contribute to the implementation of the
Millennium Development Goals. Does this entire partnership universe help
resolve the three governance decits? Given the large number and variety of
partnerships, an answer to this question is dicult. Our large-n analysis
drawing on existing studies, on UN data and on our own Global
Sustainability Partnerships Database comes to a rather somber conclusion. While some partnerships might have some positive eect on
addressing the regulation, implementation and participation decits, this
does not seem to be the case for the entire system of partnerships.
Partnerships are most frequent in those areas that are already heavily institutionalized and regulated. They are predominantly not concerned with
implementation, but rather with further institution-building, and for many
of them it is doubtful whether they have sucient resources to make any
meaningful contribution towards implementation in the rst place. Finally,
the majority of partnerships strengthen the participation of those actors
that already participate: governments, major international organizations
and those civil society actors that have had a say in global governance
already before the partnership phenomenon emerged. The balance of evidence suggests that those that have been marginalized before have also been
marginalized in the partnership process.
If the entire system of partnership does not help much in lling the
governance gaps analyzed here, what then is their main rationale? Other
reasons for partnerships to emerge have been mentioned. Dedeurwaerdere
(2005, p. 4) for instance had suggested that self-regulatory institutions
remain subject to takeover by opportunistic individuals and to potentially
perverse dynamics. Some of these subsidiary purposes in partnership
building may be self-interest, as both public and private actors can be
expected to form a partnership not necessarily to foster their [partnerships] main rationale, but for a subsidiary purpose (Broadwater and Kaul,
2005, p. 3). Considering the amount of time and funding invested in each
partnership, it seems not surprising that partners themselves tend to be the
primary beneciaries of their partnerships.
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12. Multi-stakeholder global networks:

emerging systems for the global
common good
Steve Waddell and Sanjeev Khagram
Until recently nation-states and their intergovernmental organizations have
been seen as the key agents to manage the global commons and provision
of global public goods. However, the limits of the nation-state system as
conventionally understood have been increasingly apparent during the
decades of asymmetric and contested globalization dynamics (during and
since the end of the Cold War). Substantial disparities in wealth and seemingly intractable poverty of large regions, global pandemics like AIDS and
bird u, more extensive and pernicious forms of transnational crime, pollution of the seas and the growing pace of climate change are only a few
examples of challenges that indicate new approaches to global action,
policy and governance are needed.
One common response is to support strengthening of intergovernmental
organizations, from the United Nations to the International Criminal
Court. Another is to call for developing a global state and system of global
representative government. A return to the grassroots is passionately promoted by many. Yet others say that fortifying global market mechanisms is
the answer (Khagram, 2006). This chapter focuses on the development of
global multi-stakeholder networks understood here as global action networks (GANs). GANs are global governance arrangements dened by ve
characteristics. They are (1) global; (2) focused upon public good issues;
(3) interorganizational networks; (4) bridging agents among diverse organizations; and (5) systemic change agents.
Before the Cold War began, three particularly interesting and enduring
proto-GANs were established. The year 1863 marked the founding of what
eventually became legally an NGO but was an interorganizational network
created with intimate government involvement, known today as the
International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. In 1919, the government-laboremployer-constituted International Labour Organization was established.
261
262
In 1948, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) brought together governments, scientic communities and environmental NGOs.
The Cold War halted development of such multi-stakeholder strategies
for the management of the global commons and the provision of global
public goods. Global politics became equated with allegiance to nationstates individually and in international coalitions to such an extent that
problem-solving across these boundaries by diverse stakeholders became
highly problematic. But at its end, conditions were substantially dierent and richer for creation of GANs. Transcontinental transportation
and telecommunications had grown tremendously. Business and civil
society organizations had proliferated around the world and were increasingly globally networked. Transparent and participatory multi-stakeholder
processes had become much more widespread, eective and legitimate at all
levels of governance.
The subsequent post-Cold War round of global multi-stakeholder
network creation is associated with the international regimes of Ruggie
and Young (Ruggie, 1975; Young, 1999), the governance without government phenomenon noted in the 1990s (Rosenau, 1992), and the government as networks phenomenon (Goldsmith and Eggers, 2004) noted more
recently. From an intergovernmental organization perspective, Reinicke and
his associates refers to these multi-stakeholder networks as global public
policy networks (Reinicke, 19992000; Reinicke and Deng, 2000; Witte,
Reinicke and Benner, 2000). From a global problem perspective, Rischard
(2002) labels them global issue networks. With a focus on these networks
as societal learning and change systems, Waddell describes them as global
action networks (GANs) (Waddell, 2003a, 2003b; Waddell, 2004).
The chapter asks: What is the potential role of GANs in the protection of
the global commons and the production of global public goods? Are GANs
one of the important emerging mechanisms competing today for dominance
in global governance? Governance is conceived broadly as a set of legitimate and authoritative relationships and processes that dene public goals
and stimulate collective action to achieve them. Today national governments
and intergovernmental organizations are usually associated and often
equated with having the leadership role in governance in todays world.
However, at the global level, governance is obviously more complex, given
the lack of an entity with a monopoly of legitimate force over citizens an
attribute usually associated with the denition of a nation state.
Indeed, global governance is to date a very messy arrangement of
feuding powers that can be likened to the various governance arrangements
that were at play in feudal Europe. As many scholars have noted in their
comprehensive analysis of that period (among the most recent see Sassen,
2006), there were many arrangements for decision-making including the
Multi-stakeholder global networks
263
Church, independent cities ruled by merchant-citizens, kingdoms, empires,

guilds and so on. There was nothing obvious about the trajectory that produced a Europe with a governance arrangement dominated by territoriallybased nation states with citizen voters.
In fact, the emergence of the nation state in Europe was highly correlated
with its ability to address issues of the commons and provision of public
goods within particular territorial boundaries. As is so evidently clear today,
the spread of the nation-state form to many parts of the world has not
necessarily even been associated with the eective provision of public goods
and protection of commons within those territorial units (many countries
in Sub-Saharan Africa are obvious but by no means the only cases in this
regard). Given the apparent inability of nation-states to accomplish these
functions at the global level, their declining or at very least signicantly
transforming roles given contemporary globalization trends and patterns
seems inevitable. This chapter correspondingly examines in more detail the
potential of GANs in particular to complement and perhaps eventually
supplement nation-states and intergovernmental organizations in managing
the global commons and providing global public goods.
12.1 THE EMERGING FIELD OF GLOBAL

ACTION NETWORKS
The current universe of GANs approximates four dozen in number. They
include Transparency International, which has an anti-corruption agenda,
the Forest Stewardship Council, which promotes sustainable approaches to
forestry (and, in particular, certication systems), the Global Water
Partnership, which is an agent of integrated water resource management,
the Youth Employment Summit, which is focused on generating work for
un- and under-employed young people, and the Microcredit Summit
Campaign, which is promoting microcredit as a strategy to address extreme
poverty, among others.
The research for this chapter includes documentary investigation, web
reviews, interviews and participant observation over the span of nearly ten
years. Early 2006 data was gathered on 19 GANs through a structuredfocused comparative methodology to construct an initial landscape of this
emergent eld. The networks included in the sample are all currently active,
have been in operation for at least four years, and the three pre-Cold War
cases were excluded since they were formed in such a dierent context. This
sample was generated after an initial exploration of 30 networks in total
with the primary selection criteria being diversity of issue area focused on
by the GAN.
264
The following GANs have been analyzed for this study:
Building Partnerships for Development in Water and Sanitation (BPD)

To study, to explore and promote tri-sector partnerships as an
approach that would more eectively meet the water and sanitation
needs of poor communities.
Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) To promote and improve the implementation of corporate codes of practice that cover supply chain
working conditions.
Fair Labor Association (FLA) To combine the eorts of industry,
non-governmental organizations, colleges and universities to
promote adherence to international labor standards and improve
working conditions worldwide.
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) To promote environmentally
appropriate, socially benecial and economically viable management
of the worlds forests.
Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) To improve the nutritional status of one billion people, of which 700 million are at risk
of vitamin and mineral deciencies, over the period 200207, primarily
through fortication of commonly available and consumed foods.
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) To save childrens lives and protect peoples health through the widespread use of
vaccines
Global Compact To promote responsible corporate citizenship
so that business can be part of the solution to the challenges of
globalization.
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund)
To nance a dramatic turnaround in the ght against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) To promote international harmonization in the reporting of relevant and credible corporate environment, social and economic performance information to
enhance responsible decision-making, through a multi-stakeholder
process of open dialogue and collaboration in the design and implementation of widely applicable sustainability reporting guidelines.
Global Water Partnership To support countries in the sustainable
management of their water resources.
International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD)
By empowering stakeholders in trade policy through information,
networking, dialogue, well-targeted research and capacity-building,
to inuence the international trade system such that it advances the
goal of sustainable development.
265
Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) To safeguard the worlds

seafood supply by promoting the best environmental choice.
Microcredit Summit Campaign To reach 100 million of the worlds
poorest families, especially the women of those families, with credit
for self-employment and other nancial and business services by the
year 2005.
Partnership for Principle 10 (PP10) To translate access to information, participation in decision-making and access to justice as key
principles of environmental governance into action by promoting
transparent, inclusive and accountable decision-making at the
national level.
Social Accountability International (SAI) To promote human rights
for workers around the world as a standards organization, ethical
supply chain resource and programs developer.
The Access Initiative (TAI) To ensure that people have a voice in the
decisions that aect their environment and their communities. TAI
partners promote transparent, participatory and accountable
governance as an essential foundation for sustainable development,
access to information, participation in decision-making and access to
justice as key principles of environmental governance.
Transparency International (TI) To create a world in which government, politics, business, civil society and the daily lives of people are
free of corruption. Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for
private gain.
World Water Council (WWC) To promote awareness, build political
commitment and trigger action on critical water issues at all levels,
including the highest decision-making level, to facilitate the ecient
conservation, protection, development, planning, management and
use of water in all its dimensions on an environmentally sustainable
basis for the benet of all life on earth.
Youth Employment Summit Campaign (YES) To build the capacity
of young people to create sustainable livelihoods and to establish an
entrepreneurial culture where young people will work towards selfemployment.
12.2 FIVE DEFINITIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

OF GANs
Two caveats are necessary with respect to the eld landscape developed
based on this 19-GAN sample. First, the cases of GANs t the denition
more rather than less. Part of the goal of the analysis was to assess this
266
very question of denition, so a signicant range is noted. As well, as in any

quickly changing eld, descriptions and details themselves are rapidly
changing. For example, ocial and formal budgets for organizations can
shift 50 percent from year to year. This is not simply a product of nancing
successes, but of changing strategies (such as shifting from a centralized to
decentralized network) and cycles of activities that are not annual (such as
holding a global assembly).
With these caveats, the following quite informative patterns about the
eld were derived from an analysis of the 19 GANs in the sample.
1.
Global
Although the GANs aspire to be global, most are as of yet active in fewer
than 50 countries. However, all GANs have active participants on all continents (with the possible exception of Australia), which eliminates some
international partnerships focused upon specic regions such as Africa, as
is the case with the Global Partnership to Eliminate River Blindness. Most
are active in the most populous countries in the world. Four factors
inuence how planetary the GANs are. These are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Funders as donors. Several of the networks, such as the Global Fund to

Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis (the Global Fund), are products
of a donor agency framework of Northern countries trying to achieve
some outcome in Southern countries. Therefore, although they may be
global there is important asymmetry within the global nature between
donor and recipient. Of the 19, all are active in Southern countries
but only 11 conduct programmatic activity in Northern countries.
Their stage of development. Obviously, a global network does not
spring up overnight. Even when sponsored by an existing global
network, substantial eort and time is required to give life to a new initiative that spans the world. Thus, it is expected that at least a
signicant sub-set of GANs will increase their activities into more
countries as time passes and they become more eective and legitimate.
The robustness of stakeholder organizations. As multi-stakeholder networks, the GANs depend upon legal and cultural frameworks that
permit and encourage diverse stakeholders to form independent organizations. In China and Arab countries, there are still signicant roadblocks to robust civil society and business organizations. In some
countries, the question is more the capacity of local stakeholder groups.
The GAN membership strategy. Some of the networks are closed to new
members, set signicant hurdles to membership or are very specialized.
For example, although anyone can join the Ethical Trading Initiative,
267
companies must agree to monitoring and ethical performance standards that many would nd overly onerous. Building Partners for
Development in Water and Sanitation is quite specialized and would
not be of interest for countries committed only to public sector planning, development and delivery of water and sanitation services.
2.
Focused on Issues for the Public Good Issue
None of the GANs (across the sample or the larger population) is a forprot organization. Their multi-stakeholder character means that they must
be able to integrate diverse goals, and their formal organization is almost
always as an NGO or non-prot organization (or a program of one) or,
occasionally, an intergovernmental organization as is the case of the Global
Compact. The issues GANs focus on in some ways reect divisions not
uncommon with governments, their agencies and ministries. However, the
issues are often relatively specialized rather than a Ministry of Health,
they are constructed around specic health challenges and diseases; rather
than a ministry of public works, the Global Water Partnership and World
Water Council have much narrower, distinctive and complementary roles.
On the other hand, some of the GANs focus upon cross-cutting issues that
traditional governmental structures have great diculty addressing such
as the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development and the
Global Reporting Initiative, which are concerned with triple bottom line
(economic, social and environmental) reporting.
3.
Inter-organizational Networks
Operating at a global level, the role of individuals as participants and

members in the networks is very marginal as opposed to the role of organizations. Transparency International began as a network of individual
members and it still has a modest (and diminishing) role, but it quickly
shifted to a network where a specic organization is usually accredited as a
national chapter. In some cases, the distinction between individuals and
organizations is nessed the Global Reporting Initiative, for example,
species that individuals do not represent an organizations interests
because of concern that this will undermine the needs of the whole but
in fact, Organizational Stakeholders is a key membership category.
Usually the GANs are born of organizations coming together. These can
be independent individual organizations or associations of organizations
the GAN then being a network of networks like the World Water Council.
But very often the GANs work involves anointing, strengthening or even
creating its constituent organizations or networks. For example, The Access
268
Table 12.1
Organizations versus partnerships versus networks

Organization
Partnership
Network
Number of legally
distinct dominant
organizations
Organizing structure
One
Small to
modest
Very large
Hierarchical
Multi-hub
Operating logic
Operating focus
Participation
Administrating/Managing
Organization
Closed
Spoke and
wheel
Coordination
Task
Highly
controlled
Coherence
System
Loosely
controlled
Initiative organizes groups of NGOs (usually three) in a specic country to

form a local TAI-(country name) network.
For students of organizational studies, all organizations are networks
and therefore the terms require further description. Table 12.1 proposes distinctions between three dierent types of relevant organizations to describe
more clearly the dierence that GANs represent. They tend to have
network characteristics, although some may more closely resemble partnerships. The distinctions between whether a specic entity is a partnership
or network is further muddied by development issues most start as partnerships but grow to networks.
4.
Diversity Embracing Boundary Spanners
GANs span several types of boundaries. GANs are all bridging North
South divides sometimes this divide reects the traditional donor/recipient one, but increasingly there is a sense of true globalness with more peerlike relationships. Another classic divide spanned is richpoor. They
include all levels individual, group, organizational, organizational sector
(business-government-civil society), country and region. Wealthy corporations with substantial resources work side by side with NGOs in many of
the GANs. One study demonstrated the importance of bridging the divides
between policy-makers (usually governments and international NGOs),
techno-experts (scientists, business people, engineers), funders (foundations and donor agencies) and communities (local activists and community members) (Snyder, 2005). Of course, being global, GANs also aim to
span cultural, racial, ethnic and linguistic dierences and the diverse values
embedded in these. Many GANs success also hinges upon being successful global-regional-national-local boundary spanners.
269
In many ways GANs are the rst truly global assemblies. Unlike some
traditional global boundary spanners that depend upon creating strong
collective identities such as religious organizations at least as important
for GANs is the ability to preserve the distinct identities of members. If
people coming from the diverse perspectives cannot successfully articulate
and represent them and mobilize the resources of their stakeholder group,
their value to the GAN will be lost.
5.
Systemic Change Agents
This is perhaps the most complicated of the attributes and is dicult to

explain or to assess. A system is a set of independent but interrelated
elements comprising a whole with regard to an activity, goal or function.
A complex system contains sub-systems, processes and elements (often
referred to as agents). These are like a systems DNA, in that a system
contains the necessary elements for its reproduction and potential transformation a global system, therefore, contains sub-systems that are complete within themselves, but cannot on their own create a global system.
GANs are bringing together at the global level the diverse agents necessary to make improvements with respect to a specic global commons or
global public goods. The systems around these global commons or global
public goods can be described as underorganized (Brown, 1980), and GANs
aim to improve the organizing of them. GANs identify priority actions and
norms to give the systems direction. They set boundary denitions for these
systems to decide who is in and who is out and the boundaries can shift
as the GAN develops. For example, the Partnership for Principle 10 (PP10)
was originally narrowly conceived as a multi-stakeholder complement to
support a particular methodology developed by The Access Initiative (TAI
a global civil society coalition) for ensuring that people have a voice in the
decisions that aect their environment and their communities. However,
PP10 concluded that its real value would be to give life to a much broader
umbrella network for stakeholders using various methodologies to realize
the objective.
The very founding of a GAN indicates that at least some stakeholders
concluded through deliberation (the Global Water Partnership) and/or
through negotiation over conict (the World Commission on Dams) that
change on a global scale was needed in an approach to an issue. However,
it is also important to distinguish between types of change in terms of
depth. Societal learning and change theory suggests that if key sub-systems
of all of society are being brought together, the potential for change is
much deeper (Waddell, 2005b). The key sub-systems are the social subsystem represented by community-based organizations (NGOs, religious,
270
labor), the economic sub-system led by business and the political subsystem represented by governments and their agencies including intergovernmental organizations when considering global society. Of course, to
achieve global change is particularly challenging because of the need to
bring together the dierent geographic and organizational levels as well.
Change has been classied as being of three types (Bartunek and Moch,
1987; Nielsen, 1996; Pruitt and Waddell, 2005). First order change is
doing more of the same often understood as scaling up. The very formation of a GAN indicates that change of at least the second order is being
promoted, since it represents doing something very dierently. Second
order change involves redening the rules of the game. For example, the
Global Fund is basically a mechanism for funders to pool their resources
and take a more systemic and global perspective to improve coordination
and eectiveness (rst order would be when one or more funders simply
expands budgets). But nancial resource mobilization as the key driver has
not changed and the approach can basically be described as one of reform
under the direction of stakeholders who by and large maintain their traditional power relationships.
Third order change involves basic power realignments, re-visioning of
how organizations and people relate to one another, and developing
fundamental change in relationships and organizational boundaries and
roles. The Forest Stewardship Council, for example, represents a third
order innovation because it is based in the premise that business, environmentalists and social activists must nd a very dierent way of operating
(by working collaboratively). These distinctions are further elaborated in
Table 12.2. In Table 12.3, indicators of third order change are described at
the individual level.
Other Characteristics
GANs missions and goals are complex. They have two levels of outcomes.
One is a collectively dened goal that all participating organizations can
buy into. It derives from the fundamental rationale for founding a GAN
the need to bring together distinctive competencies and resources on a
global scale. This goal may be called a system-organizing goal. The
International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development aims to bring
together diverse stakeholders in creative and strategic ways to make a trade
system that reects a sustainability imperative. This overarching goal is
seemingly broad, but it must encompass the particular objective that leads
organizations to participate. The corporation Unilever participates in the
Marine Stewardship Council not only to develop sustainable sheries, but
ones that will also be protable for it. Success in a GAN is determined by
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Table 12.2
Types of change in problem-solving initiatives
Criteria
First Order Change Second Order Change Third Order Change
Desired
outcome
More (or less) of

the same
Reform
Transformation
Purpose
To improve the
performance of
the established
system
To change the
system to address
shortcomings and
respond to the
needs of stakeholders
To address
problems and seize
opportunities from
a whole-system
perspective
Participation Replicates the

established
decision-making
group and power
relationships
Brings relevant
stakeholders into
the problem-solving
conversation in ways
that enable them to
inuence the
decision-making
process
Creates a
microcosm of the
problem system,
with all participants
coming in on an
equal footing as
issue owners and
decision-makers
Process
Conrms existing
rules. Preserves the
established power
structure and
relationships
among actors in
the system
Opens existing rules

to revision. Suspends
established power
relationships;
promotes authentic
interactions; creates
a space for genuine
reform of the system
Opens issues to
creation of entirely
new ways of
thinking about the
issues. Promotes
transformation of
relationships toward
whole-system
awareness and
identity; promotes
examination of the
deep structures
that sustain the
system; creates a
space for
fundamental system
change
Indicators
More of the same
Changes in the way

tasks are performed,
while maintaining
the same power
relationships
Fundamental shift
in relationships
and the way
stakeholders
interact
Source: From Pruitt and Waddell (2005).
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Table 12.3
Indicators of third order change for individuals
From
To
Seeing others as separate and dierent,

dened by their roles, their positions
on the issues, or their place in a
hierarchy
Seeing others as fellow human beings;

were in this together; and all have
something important to contribute
Seeing oneself as separate from the

problem situation, looking for others
to change in order to resolve it
Seeing oneself as part of the system

that sustains the situation, accepting
responsibility for changing oneself
Disconnected relationships within

stuck problem systems
Creative relationships energized by

mutually owned ideas for addressing
problems
Source: Developed by Bettye Pruitt.
collective commitment to both the overarching goal, and to the support

stakeholders provide each other to reach at least some of their individual
objectives (the second type of goals). This emphasizes the importance of
clearly articulating these two dierent sets of goals and ensuring reciprocal
and collective commitment to them, while recognizing that both individuallevel as well as collective goals can shift (and probably should if the GAN
is achieving third order change) over time.
Size of GANs
The size of the networks is dicult to describe, given their diverse ways of
organizing resources and given that all of them depend upon leveraging
resources from their participants. In terms of direct resources, they are very
modest in size. For the 17 GANs providing sta size, the average was 25;
annual operating budgets start at US$0.63 million and average US$9.9
million per year. However, removing the Global Fund that is huge and
clearly an outlier, the means for the sample are 18 sta and budgets of
US$4.2 million annually.
Impacts of GANs
In terms of achievements or impact, very diverse outcomes and indicators are cited. The Forest Stewardship Council cites US$10 billion in
products traded with its label and 74 million hectares certied. The Access
Initiative points to assessments on the public availability of environmental
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information being undertaken for nearly 40 countries. The Global Water

Partnership points to an external review that stated that GWP provides
good value for the donors money in promoting sustainable water management; the Global Reporting Initiative refers to 800 corporations that
are using its framework and 20 000 individuals who have joined. The
Microcredit Summit Campaign says that by 2006 it will reach its goal
originally set for 2005 to reach 100 million of the worlds poorest families, especially women, with credit for self-employment and other nancial
and business services. For all GANs, putting and keeping their issue high
on the global agenda is crucial. Most still do not identify or measure the
system organizing and cohering eects of their network growth or programmatic activities.
Variety in Governance Structure
There is a great innovation and variety in GANs governance structures.
Although some of this variation is undoubtedly the product of personal
idiosyncrasies of key individual leaders and dierences in the issues they
focus on, the range of governance structures also reects experimentation.
Given the dictum that structure should follow strategy, it also reects
experiments with dierent strategies and theories of change. This latter
point is particularly evident with respect to participation and membership
both associated with obligations and formal decision-making rights like
voting in elections for board members.
In all GANs, membership is primarily associated with organizations and
often with a geographically-based unit (e.g., a national chapter). But about
eight of the 19 GANs see mass membership as a particularly important
strategy. For example, the Youth Employment and Microcredit Summit
Campaigns see increasing participation as a measure of success. These
types of networks openly promote participation and have hundreds of participating organizations. Another ve of the GANs surveyed have quite
signicant requirements for membership. Any company joining the Ethical
Trading Initiative (ETI) must agree to apply the ETI code of conduct to its
global supply chains; to become a member of PP10 requires making
specic and signicant commitments to support its goals.
For a third category of six GANs in the sample, membership is conned
and even closed to a small group. NGOs maintain decision-making control
of Social Accountability International and the International Centre for
Trade and Sustainable Development, The Marine Stewardship Council has
a self-perpetuating board and donors maintain control of nancing GANs.
In some hybrid cases, local/regional structures have a mass member strategy where the global structure is closed, as with the Global Compact and
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Youth Employment Summit. In both these examples, the formal accountability between the two is tenuous.
This all leads to the question of control and issues of stakeholder representation. Members are often grouped into categories on the basis of
(1) geography and/or (2) stakeholder group. Nine of those surveyed formally aim for representation by the latter method. The Microcredit Summit
Campaign has 15 Councils, the Marine Stewardship Council has eight
issue groups in two categories, and the World Water Council has ve colleges. Of the 19 GANs in the sample, ve were primarily controlled by
NGOs, seven by intergovernmental organizations and another six jointly
by NGOs and business stakeholders. Only one was being driven either
jointly by governments and intergovernmental organizations or by stakeholders across the public, private and civil society sectors.
12.3
THE WORK OF GANs
As mentioned, realizing global system change is a common activity of

GANs. Perhaps the most basic task of GANs is to put and keep an issue
on the global stage. Transparency International made corruption an issue
when it was dicult to talk about in part because of complicit government and involvement of an intergovernmental organization. The Youth
Employment Summit Campaign has made its issue a global one for
governments, businesses and other stakeholders. GANs act as global stewards to promote attention and action for their issues.
One way to understand the work of GANs arises from comparing them
with the dominant traditional global governance mechanism intergovernmental organizations. In Oran Youngs terms, intergovernmental
organizations represent collective action strategies because they are the
product of government representatives writing rules and then trying to
apply them. Intergovernmental organizations come from a constitutional
law model (Young, 1999). GANs, in contrast, represent a social action
strategy because they are the product of stakeholders in an issue experimenting to try to develop responses to key issues and then drawing out generalizable knowledge and action. In a sense, GANs are working through a
common law model.
In other words, rather than taking action based on a theoretical
description of the way things should work, as intergovernmental organizations tend to do, GANs are much more practical and focus on development of applied knowledge that is socially embedded with the issue
stakeholders. Since the stakeholders collectively develop the solutions,
they know their role and responsibilities and have agreed upon them.
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This is very dierent from knowledge being developed by experts who

write it up in reports that often do not reect the system stakeholders
perspectives. This is why the issue of enforcement is so often pointed to
as necessary (but usually impossible) in traditional intergovernmental
organization processes. For GANs, it is much less important because the
way they do their work builds stakeholder understanding about, and commitment to, the solutions.
The Marine Stewardship Council focuses on specic sheries and
connects stakeholders so they can create collective commitment to a
process for managing sheries. This requires ongoing experimentation.
MSC is now leading multi-stakeholder experiments with issues about
shing practices impact on bird life. This multi-stakeholder strategy is
true even for those GANs (e.g., the International Centre for Trade and
Sustainable Development) that focus on rules of an intergovernmental
organization (WTO). ICTSD tries to inuence trade policy through multistakeholder dialogues, and to build sucient shared understanding drawn
from those experiments, so that a tipping point is reached and the formal
rules are changed.
Therefore, although GANs address a great range of issues, they share
commitment to multi-stakeholder learning and change processes. These
processes can prove highly complementary with the work of governments
and intergovernmental organizations. The Commission on Sustainable
Development recognized this with its promotion of Type 2 partnerships
envisioning that these cross-sectoral initiatives, of which a sub-set are
GANs, would provide critical support for implementing international conventions, as TAI/PP10 does. However, to realize this potential requires
much more exible engagement of stakeholders in dening and revising
conventions.
Similarly, GANs can develop critical innovations to a stage at which
governments can integrate them into their own policies, or individual stakeholders from a specic sector can take the responsibility for implementing
or diusing them. There are numerous examples of standards developed by
the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the FSC, the Greenhouse
Gas Protocol, the World Commission on Dams and others being adopted
by stakeholders in part or in whole. The Global Reporting Initiative was
faced with government absence not resistance, but there was no one
home in terms of the broad-based transparency of corporations. GRI
moved to ll the vacuum, and over time, expects the government to codify
its work. The promotion of GRI guidelines as an exemplary way for corporations to fulll their triple bottom line reporting requirements if they
are listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is an early example of this
possibility.
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12.4
CATEGORIZING GAN ACTIVITIES
There are dierent ways to categorize the various activities GANs are
engaged in. One study of an overlapping set of global cross-sectoral networks grouped them into three categories linked to dierent stages in the
public policy cycle: negotiating networks that develop global norms and
standards, coordinating networks that facilitate joint action strategies and
implementing networks that ensure application of agreements of intergovernmental organization (Witte, Benner and Streck, 2005). This work
requires development of two types of activities. One is developing the traditional expert and physical science knowledge associated with the issue.
But the other, which is less appreciated, concerns development of the necessary social relationships to address the issue. GANs develop the physical
science knowledge by developing social relationships to ensure that the
technical knowledge is socially embedded and that there is capacity and
the necessary commitment to act.
Another paper looking at multi-stakeholder partnerships from the
perspective of governance and accountability classied them into dierent
categories focusing on: the direct delivery of public services and infrastructure; eectively increasing large public resource transfers, particularly transborder; and the co-design, promotion and stewardship of new rules for
market and non-market actors. That study also noted that these distinctions
increasingly are converging and creating hybrids (Zadek, 2005).
We will follow a dierent classication. As agents for global problemsolving, GANs activities can be dierentiated as being one of ve dierent
types: (1) system organizing; (2) learning/knowledge generation; (3) shared
visioning; (4) reporting and measuring and (5) nancing.
The most often reported activity is global system organizing. This
means creating activities such as meetings, information networks and
shared tasks that bring diverse organizations into increasing contact and
joint action. This builds the ability of organizations participating in a
GAN to work together, as they become more familiar with one another
and develop their own relationships. This produces growing coordination
and synergies. This in turn leads to new norms, procedures and rules of
varying formality.
Of the 19 GANs surveyed, 17 do this type of systems organizing work. The
two exceptions BPD for Water and Sanitation and the Ethical Trading
Initiative focus on learning activities among a modest number of core
stakeholders. Learning means research (usually action research), sharing
knowledge and information, and capacity-building. It also means taking a
systems approach to test rules against policy objectives, going back to review
rules against outcomes and then rewriting them as appropriate. Overall,
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including BPD and ETI, 11 GANs identied learning and knowledge

generation as a key activity area.
Twelve GANs identied shared visioning as a major focus. This activity
is closely associated with system organizing, but it is a more categorically
directed activity and involves collective planning, dialogue and consensusbuilding initiatives, as described earlier for GANs change agent role.
For ten of the GANs, measuring and reporting is a core activity. For the
Marine and Forest Stewardship Councils, this means a formal system of
certication. For Social Accountability International and Fair Labor
Association, monitoring is important. For TAI/PP10, assessing a countrys
performance is a key tool for developing change.
Four of the GANs have an important nancing function. For the
Global Fund, GAVI and GAIN, this is their raison dtre; for the
Global Water Partnership, nancing runs parallel in importance with
other activities.
All GANs clearly engage in more than one of these activity areas, and
most also are involved in other forms of work. One particularly important
area that became clear during the research is that of building capacity of
participating organizations to address the mission of the GAN eectively.
Mature GANs possess technical physical science knowledge and (often
experience-based) knowledge about change strategies. At a local level,
people see their local organizations are taking action, and do not think of
the action as being driven by a foreign one. For the Fair Labor Association
in Cambodia, this meant building the capacity of employers, government
and NGOs to do labor inspections. As an organization comprising employers and NGOs who are striving to improve standards, the Fair Labor
Association has substantially greater credibility than either one of the
sectors could have on its own. The Fair Labor Association catalyzes the
process and then steps away.
12.5
REALIZING THE POTENTIAL
Given their relatively young and experimental nature, GANs have individually not reached their full potential. And as a group, they have hardly
started to interact, so their collective impact in managing the global
commons or providing global public goods has not yet been felt. However,
a few of the GANs appear to be moving into a more advanced developmental stage. Their experiences, conversations with executive ocers and
data from other projects suggest some outlines for GANs potential ten to
15 years from now. The following description is based on the assumption
that GANs do continue to develop and grow.
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Fifteen years from now, a much stronger sense of global citizenship will
likely be shared worldwide, as a complement to our particular ethnic,
national, gender, class, sectoral and professional identities. When people
look back at the rise of global citizenship, GANs will likely have played an
important role. They are stimulating actions that reect the linkages
between global, regional, national and local concerns, and thereby becoming critical globalizing and integrating agents of diverse viewpoints and
resources. We will shift from an international organizing framework to a
much more global, multi-stakeholder one.
One image of the future of a GAN is as a global membrane that will
attract organizations around the world that are working on a particular
issue. Reluctant participants will be caught up and nd themselves working
within systems structured by GANs. A forest company, for example, may
not participate directly in the Forest Stewardship Council, but it will nd
itself working with a market and regulatory framework that are heavily
inuenced by the FSC. Within this model, with regard to particular issues,
GANs will be robust global systems of governance; based on accountability, knowledge development and coordinated action, oering open and
easy access to others. They will be sensing and guiding mechanisms for
identifying emergent opportunities and challenges regarding their issues,
and for developing responses.
GANs-as-global-membranes will support resource transfers, production
of public goods and services, co-creation of rules to address global
inequities, wealth development, human security and sustainability. Creating
alignment within their issue system is a key task they will be negotiators
arbitrators and change agents skilled at smoothing the connections between
diverse interests of their particular issue system. They have the ability to do
this without requiring homogenization because they are agents that support
diversity within globalization with an emphasis on subsidiarity. GANs will
be known for providing a trust and reputation network that facilitates the
ow of knowledge and resources with low transaction costs.
Fifteen years from now we will undoubtedly have many more GANs in
specialized issue areas, both because globalization will generate great challenges, increase the demand for globally coherent and large-scale action, as
well as because the legitimacy and eectiveness of GANs and GAN-like
activities will have grown tremendously. The era in which nation-states were
seen as solely responsible for issues of peace and security, for example, will
likely be bypassed by strategies to bring together stakeholders to collaboratively address tensions, as can be seen with the recent founding of the
Global Partnership for Prevention of Armed Conict. Disaster relief
systems that are arising in response to increasing climate variation will be
increasingly integrated into systems with dense ties between all actors such
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as through the GAN ProVention, in contrast with the traditional response

systems of government and their contractual relationships with NGOs. In
the eld of international nance, new collaborative mechanisms will build
on historic activities such as the Equator Principles.
GANs will be weaving new global issue systems of accountability. As
diverse actors work collaboratively in a GAN, they will increase their interdependence and understanding of the global whole. Traditional hierarchical organizations operating locally and globally will nd participation in
GANs a highly compelling strategy for realizing their individual objectives.
However, although they will nd great rewards from participating from the
inside, they will also nd participation requires increased sharing of information, transparency and accommodation of diverse goals.
Todays GANs are still struggling to be global. The challenge has many
dimensions geographic, cultural, glocal, linguistic and contextual
dimensions of the problems they are addressing. When they are successful,
they may reect the realization of Friedmans hypothesis that the world is
at with uid connections between the various nodes (Friedman, 2005).
The connections will be particularly robust in four dierent ways. One is
interpersonal people will nd the networks rich sources of personal relationships in which traditional connections will be less driven by hierarchy
(which will continue to exist within organizations) than by shared interests.
A second level of connections will be local to local people working on an
issue in a community or organization on one part of the planet will easily
connect with people elsewhere in the network. There will be similarly robust
connections across regional and global scales. All will be facilitated by a
network logic that will ease ows of information, resource exchanges and
action between the levels of governance. As a group, GANs will have developed many inter-GAN contacts that build on ones of today (e.g., between
the GRI and Global Compact). The Youth Employment Summit and
IUCN will nd shared interests in developing youth employment initiatives
with an environmental sustainability orientation. The Marine Stewardship
Council and the Microcredit Summit Campaign will nd shared interests
in developing sustainable livelihoods for small shers. The one-on-one
exchanges will be facilitated by the fact that the GANs have a common
organizing logic and value set. These will help many GANs work together
more ambitiously at the regional and global levels. What at one time were
numerous unassociated networks will increasingly become collective global
governance forums in which the global social contract will be in ongoing
development and implementation. It will function not as a set of distinct
directives from the top down, but as a uid system addressing problems and
opportunities. Gradually, the myriad of certication processes and voluntary regulations will become a collaboratively developed system with a few
280
clear principles and easily accessed interpretations that reect environmental, social and economic concerns. With increased alignment among stakeholders within an issue system, GANs will be dealing with the challenge of
alignment between issue systems and distribution of resources.
As a group, 15 years from now, GANs could well be the critical mechanisms for addressing global governance gaps of participation, ethics, communications and implementation. Today, the Forest Stewardship Council
is the closest we have to the World Ministry of Forests; the Global Water
Partnership and World Water Councils have a similar role with water.
Collectively, the large-scale health GANs may be seen functioning with the
World Health Organization and governments as key stakeholders rather
than controllers. Stakeholders in an issue system will know how to participate directly in the appropriate GAN.
12.6 FOUR CHALLENGES FOR REALIZING

POTENTIAL
Of course, some of todays GANs will fail to address early developmental
stage challenges and close their doors. Others may be wrapped up when
they consider their mission accomplished. Those that want to realize their
potential will face four particular challenges: (1) measuring their impact on
global systems; (2) becoming more and more legitimate to all stakeholders,
particularly governments and intergovernmental organizations; (3) developing more generally accepted global action norms and (4) building more
robust cross-issue inter-GAN linkages.
Today GANs are basically prototyping, planning and building infrastructure for change. However, they increasingly realize they do not have
the tools to measure their global systemic impact and it is likely that they
are just now achieving the stage in which this impact can be signicant.
GANs are a very elaborate strategy that demands patience and resources,
and they still lack even a good system for measuring their impact, describing their value and guiding their priorities and direction. They must be able
to develop such a global system as well as their competencies in the other
arenas such as learning and resource mobilization, in order to have substantial impact on their issue and demonstrate positive trends.
At this stage, the challenge is to reach potential and not simply be an
interesting experiment. This means overcoming ostensible competitors the
most successful and GAN-like way of doing this is to incorporate them. The
GAN must include leaders in various stakeholder arenas, both globally and
locally. By this stage, they must have a sucient mass of participation that
they have overcome the possibility of being marginalized or ignored.
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Governments have an important role in GANs scaling-up success.

GANs should be able to point to success where their innovations in regulations or service delivery are integrated into the functioning of local,
provincial, national and international governmental organizations. When
governments and a GAN work together well, the impact can be substantial. For example, the Microcredit Summit Campaign credits legislation
that the US government passed as making a critical contribution to shifting its global funding focus to the poorest with a disciplined measurement
framework. However, today more common are stories in which governments perceive GANs as competitors. Undoubtedly, in some cases, some
government functions can be better managed by GAN aliates, but within
a GAN, governments retain their clear authority rooted in the ability to
pass and enforce laws.
A more subtle problem occurs when governmental organizations take
advantage of GANs without providing them with any resources. For
example, there are several examples of GANs developing certication and
assessment programs that governments tout as their own while refusing
to support the GANs in any way. The reverse problem occurs when a
government becomes involved with a GAN and wants to control it. The
value of a GAN is lost if it simply becomes another intergovernmental
organization.
The governmental challenge has particular cultural and national aspects.
GANs are notably most successful in countries in which principles and
capacities for transparency, participation and accountability are most
developed and multi-stakeholder processes valued. This means that some
operations in some arenas (e.g., Russia) are problematic, and other operations are even more so in countries (e.g., China and Arab nations) where
NGOs are very weak and government seeks to control society much more
broadly. GANs must nd ways around these problems if they are to have a
global impact.
Of course, substantial legitimacy comes with having impact. However,
because GANs use participatory processes, legitimacy also requires creating systems of accountability and eective governance mechanisms. As a
GAN expands, the number of participants it faces substantially increases
coordinating challenges. To retain agility and avoid simply adding to earlier
structures based on assumptions of fewer participants, GANs at this stage
should review their governance structure and even their issue denition.
The issue denition may involve renewal of mission, strategy or goals.
For example, the Microcredit Summit Campaign recently concluded that it
would reach its original goals in 2006. It retained its poverty mission and
microcredit strategy, but identied two new ten-year goals to provide
renewed focus. The Forest Stewardship Council is currently contemplating
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a shift in its governance structure because it wants to engage a broader

number of stakeholders than those originally envisioned a shift needed to
become the global system in forest sustainability.
Accountability and governance at this stage become even more important because new mechanisms for generating trust must be developed.
The relatively close relationships people enjoyed and that were the basis
for trust in a GAN before it became a truly global system will be increasingly dicult to maintain. Transparency International is experiencing this
now as it pays more attention to accreditation processes for its system of
national chapters.
Strengthening the legitimacy of GANs, the second challenge, requires
ensuring that people see themselves as active participants in GANs, rather
than simply consumers of its activities. Further development of stakeholder engagement mechanisms is required so GANs value chain truly
reaches to the local level. More formal stakeholder caucuses supported by
new communications technology would build further support processes
for GANs. The trend toward self-organizing national units for GANs suggests stakeholder groups need to take leadership for organizing these.
Most GANs have some form of stakeholder group denition, and these
distinctions will likely grow in number and activity. If the activity of
stakeholder groups diminishes, it is likely a signal that the GAN is losing
touch with its grassroots or not performing activities that are valued and
relevant for the stakeholders. In voluntary associations such as GANs,
stakeholders do not usually rebel, they just fade away and with them,
legitimacy.
Increased participation must occur, while avoiding cooptation by any
particular group and achieving balance between being a movement and
being an organization. For example, GRI must avoid being overtaken by
accounting organizations, the Marine Stewardship Council must not be
seen as a handmaiden for the shing industry and the Global Compact
must not be seen as an agent of business.
Third, GANs core operating logic is grounded in some distinctive norms
that contrast sharply with the dominant ones in most organizations, norms
that must be further developed. In contrast to the traditional governmentin-charge governance model, GANs stress multi-stakeholder collaboration. Business and civil society are peers, and each has its distinctive
competency and responsibility. Of course, government is responsible for
laws and formally establishing legal frameworks, but business is responsible for economic products and civil society is responsible for community
values and justice. This sort of mutual respect for functions leads to appreciation of interdependence as a key value, in juxtaposition to the tradition of
independence. This is the logic behind the statement that:
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The Global Fund (on HIV/AIDS) recognizes that only through a countrydriven, coordinated, and multi-sector approach involving all relevant partners
will additional resources have a signicant impact on the reduction of infections,
illness, and death from the three diseases. Thus, a variety of actors, each with
unique skills, background and experience, must be involved in the development
of proposals and decisions on the allocation and utilization of Global Fund
nancial resources. (Global Fund to Fight AIDS, 2005)
However, one suspects that the systemic change challenge this represents
the contrast with traditional ways of operating might be insuciently
appreciated.
The implications of this shift are described in Table 12.4. It emphasizes
the importance of GANs continuing to move in this stage toward a much
more decentralized network. Today, in general, GANs still operate with a
centralized global secretariat model, which is not surprising given that the
common mental model they have followed is secretariats of intergovernmental organizations. However, that sort of model will not work for the
diversity and mutual accountability that GANs embody. In decentralized
networks, decisions at the global versus local levels are not part of a hierarchy, but simply dierent places in a network. Responsibility for common
tasks is distributed to promote ownership throughout the system. There is
high degree of autonomy, with a shift from the coordinating model behind
the secretariat structure to a coherence creation model in the polycentric
structure.
Table 12.4
The emerging global action norms
What is Dying
What is Developing
Atomistic (reductionist) as the

approach
(Whole) systems thinking
Linear and mechanical mental

models
Circular and biological mental models
International structures
Glocal
Negotiations as deep change
Collaboration for systemic change
Hierarchy as dominant
Hierarchy embedded in networks
Power as brute force
Power as knowledge/education/information
Accountability as a product of
legislation
Accountability as the product of

interdependent relationships grounded in
transparent and participatory practices
Source: Waddell (2005b).
284
The goal is to have interventions that move an issue in a particular direction through strategically selected activities that cohere the system around
it. A GAN identies key challenges and opportunities to move an issue
forward, facilitates an initially modest group of stakeholders to address
them and connects the learning to the rest of the system in strategic and
sustainable ways.
However, this increased participation must be undertaken while maintaining a very modest scale of organization in any one location. The mental
model of large centralized intergovernmental organizations must be
avoided in favor of dispersed networks, or the GANs will lose their critical
agility and resilience.
The fourth and nal challenge of building and strengthening inter-GAN
linkages can be understood as developing GANs collective global governance potential. It arises from a common quality of GANs public purpose
vision for a world that is socially equitable and just, and environmentally
healthy. It also arises from the other shared qualities the global norms
discussed previously that make interaction easy among GANs.
In fact, GANs have already begun interacting and reinforcing one
anothers activities. For example, Transparency International has succeeded in realizing integration of corruption into the Global Compacts
principles, and the Global Reporting Initiative has an ocial collaboration
with the Compact. In an experimental meeting in March 2006 that brought
together eight GANs to consider collaboration in Guatemala, within two
days, each established opportunities with an average of three others,
they identied a sub-region of the country in which to develop more comprehensive and long-term collaboration, and they identied common
capacity-building interests (Waddell and Ritchie-Dunham, 2006).
Inter-GAN relationships appear to hold enormous potential for the
separate GANs to link robustly with one another to foster sustainable third
order deep change. Transparency is important in forestry, microcredit can
be an important tool in developing sustainable forestry approaches and
youth is a critical constituency for building a sustainable future for forestry.
These are the types of virtuous cycles that can be created through interGAN activities.
GANs are developing into increasingly complex webs of organizations
that extend both horizontal and vertical relationships (Reinicke and Deng,
2000). Collectively, they represent a collection of public issue networks that
could develop into a much more eective global governance framework
than anything envisioned by the traditional intergovernmental model.
Addressing these four challenges will make GANs a much more
central force in global governance. They will be placed in a historic context
as a successor to the national-level social contract negotiation between
285
labor-government-business that had a particularly potent life in the

decades following World War II. However, given the absence of a global
government, the participants will act much more like peers rather than in
the traditional government-as-governance model. The GANs will be global
sub-systems, and their interlinkages will constitute the global system. This
type of direction can be seen behind PP10s and the Forest Stewardships
interest in embracing a much broader constituent group than was initially
envisioned.
12.7
CONCLUSION
Whether GANs will successfully develop their potential as leading structures in a new global governance architecture is still an open question. They
may become epiphenomenal to a reinvigorated set of intergovernmental
institutions, such as the United Nations and those of Bretton Woods.
GANs may prove incapable of engaging a sucient number of stakeholders in a sucient number of issue areas for them to become a critical global
organizing logic. GANs may simply become another set of global bureaucracies and talk shops. Individually, they may never develop the type of
impact-measuring systems that provide the needed types of feedback. They
may simply become accountable to elites, rather than to citizens globally.
Already we see danger signs that some GANs are chasing out the movement and deep change parts of their missions and activities because it is
easier to ow with the status quo, maintaining sustained antagonism
involves pain and their change competency is insucient.
However, the norms that are giving birth to GANs are also part of a
much broader set of global trends. The collaborative governance model
they represent is one that is increasingly active at the subnational level as
well, mainly because they are more eective than many traditional statedriven solutions (Zadek, 2005). Perhaps the strongest driver of GANs
development is that they hold the promise of being critical for sustainable
development and human security. GANs may not become the dominant
global player, but neither are they likely to be insignicant.
Realizing GANs potential represents a substantial challenge. However,
underestimating the capacity for dramatic change in global governance
would be a mistake. The transformation from empires to a nation-state
global system only occurred with the end of the British Empire after
World War II and the more recent break up of the Soviet one. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, four-fths of the worlds population
lived under monarchs or empires; as late as 1950, 70 percent of the world
lived under non-democratic rule. Today nation-states are considered
286
the norm and democratic regimes have become much more pervasive
(Khagram, 2006).
We know our current global action structures are not producing the outcomes we want. War is still too common, poverty too widespread, inequity
too great, environmental destruction too common, climate change too
threatening. Dissatisfaction with the status quo, visions for how we can
create a much better world and growing understandings and capacities to
realize human potential are, more than anything else, the enabling environment of GANs.
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13. Conclusion: partnerships for

sustainability reections on a
future research agenda
Frank Biermann, Arthur P.J. Mol and
Pieter Glasbergen
This volume gives evidence of the emergence of partnerships for sustainable development as an innovative and potentially inuential new type of
governance. There is now a rich practice of partnerships to deal with problems of transitions towards sustainability, ranging from the local to the
global level. This is mirrored in a growing body of literature that analyzes
and assesses these new societal arrangements.
The various contributions to this volume give numerous insights to
better understand the characteristics and implications of the new partnership paradigm, as introduced by Glasbergen in the rst chapter. Yet
inevitably, they also raise new questions. In this concluding chapter, we
reect upon the studies and the evidence collected in this volume, draw conclusions with respect to the existing practice and study of partnerships, and
lay out a number of research challenges that form core elements of an interdisciplinary research program for further study of this phenomenon. We
elaborate in particular on further research questions regarding the emergence and popularity of partnerships, their individual and overall performance, the interaction among partnerships and between partnerships and
governmental policies, the needs and opportunities for methodological
progress and nally, the politics in partnerships.
13.1 UNDERSTANDING THE EMERGENCE OF

PARTNERSHIPS
First of all, despite all research eorts in this volume but also beyond
that we do not yet fully understand the remarkable emergence of the phenomenon of multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder partnerships in the rst
place. If any overall conclusion emerges from the contributions to this
288
Conclusion: reections on a future agenda
289
volume, it is the observation of a rapid emergence of partnerships as a

new mode of environmental and sustainability governance around the
globe. The various chapters report numerous examples and still growing
numbers of partnerships at various levels, in dierent localities, on
various subjects, with dierent scopes and with a large variety of partners
involved. While there is a large variety in partnerships for sustainability, the
constant factor in all assessments is their tremendous growth in numbers,
especially since the mid-1990s. How can we explain this rather rapid development of a new form of governance?
Part of the explanation is the embedding of environmental partnerships
in broader socioeconomic changes. The partnership paradigm reects
wider changes in the role of states in environmental governance, in tendencies of globalization and growing interdependencies and in ideologies of
privatization, deregulation and decentralization. Economic instruments as
a strategy to deal with problems of administrative state regulation in
governing societies no longer work as well as in the past. Governments have
therefore been looking for, and experimenting with, additional strategies to
realize their objectives. In their search they met economic actors that have
turned into strong political players in the eld of sustainability, as well as
a more professionalized (inter)national NGO community capable of
inuencing public policies worldwide. There is a growing sense that these
major forces are interdependent in any solution to environmental problems,
which makes partnerships between them a logical answer. This is true at the
national level, but even more so at the transnational level, where the sense
of an institutional void is larger and collaborative arrangements are needed
to move ahead.
Another explanation for the emergence of the partnership paradigm
might lie in the very issue area that many partnerships are active in. Current
partnerships work predominantly in the elds of environment and sustainability. In searching for explanations for the skyrocketing of partnerships,
we could thus look at issue-specic variables. The complexity of sustainability problems, their transboundary nature, the necessity to involve large
groups of actors and segments of society in solving these unstructured
problems are some of the problem characteristics that may account for the
rapid rise of partnerships in the area of sustainability governance. The
general acceptance of the concept of sustainable development might play
an additional role: since sustainable development by denition includes
economic and environmental interests, both the environmental movement
and the private sector are engaged, and a relation is being forged, they have
become mutually dependent stakeholders with respect to the same issues.
Methodologically, this focus on the area of sustainable development
might bring a problematic bias. Most research on partnerships has been
290
done by scholars from the sustainability community, and most academic

debates on what partnerships are and how they function, as well as most of
the case studies assessing partnerships, draw heavily on partnerships for
sustainability. Only few partnership studies exist outside this eld. This
might have introduced a systematic bias in assessments and raises the question of whether one can expect similarly growing numbers of partnerships
in other areas, such as social, labor or health policies. And to what extent
can partnerships on these issues learn from or conversely, inspire
partnerships for sustainability? Can we expect similarities with respect to
issues of eectiveness, accountability and legitimacy, working modes and
arrangements, to name but a few variables? Or are the characteristics of
sustainability partnerships too specic to draw lessons for other areas? A
rich area of comparative research between issue areas lies ahead.
In understanding the problem of the emergence of partnerships, it is also
important to further systematize the rich universe of partnerships. Factors
that are likely to account for the emergence of one type of partnerships
might not have much traction in explaining the emergence of other types
of partnerships. The emergence of partnerships at the local and national
level will need to be explained by factors other than the emergence of global
multi-sectoral initiatives. Partnerships that include only private actors
might follow dierent rationales than partnerships that have been initiated
by governments or by intergovernmental organizations. The emergence of
partnerships that focus only on a limited issue will have dierent dynamics
and outlooks than the emergence of a partnership that covers a wide range
of problems. In sum, in order to better understand the emergence and
development of individual partnerships, and of the entire partnership phenomenon as such, further eorts in the conceptualization of dierent types
of partnerships for example, according to function, scale, scope or state
involvement seem crucial.
13.2 UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF

PARTNERSHIPS
Perhaps even more pressing than gaining a better understanding of where
partnerships come from, is the need to advance knowledge on the consequences of individual partnerships and of the entire system of partnerships. How do we value these new forms of governance, also in relation to
conventional governmental regulation? A variety of models and criteria to
assess and evaluate partnerships for sustainability has been developed. In
this volume, Gray, Austin and Jennifer Brinkerho focus on partnership
evaluations and on designing models or frameworks that assist in doing so.
291
These and other studies are closely related to more conventional policy
evaluation studies. Other contributions to the present volume apply, explicitly or implicitly, such evaluation frameworks or sets of criteria to appraise
partnerships, for example Gunningham in exploring Australian partnerships and Visseren-Hamakers and colleagues in assessing partnership on
transboundary commodity chains.
A major line in these partnership evaluations relates to their eectiveness
regarding environmental or sustainability goals. How eective are partnerships in reaching their goals, or contributing to more general goals of sustainability? The main emphasis in such investigations is on the factors that
determine the success of partnerships, such as leadership, type and number
of participants, clarity of objectives and a variety of contextual factors. If
broader conclusions can be drawn from the current evaluation studies, it
would seem (1) that partnerships are not a panacea for all kinds of governance problems related to sustainability; (2) that little systematic knowledge
has been collected on the key factors that determine eectiveness of partnerships and (3) that it is questionable whether general conclusions on the
eectiveness of partnerships for sustainability can be drawn at all, given the
diversity of arrangements in this eld.
In theory, we can assess the eectiveness of partnerships similar to the
eectiveness of public policies at the national level, or of intergovernmental agreements at the international level. In other words, one could look at
the output of partnerships, that is, what they actually do; at the outcome of
their activities, that is, changes in actor behavior that they eect and, nally,
at their impact, that is, changes in eventual target indicators, such as
improvements of environmental parameters. However, these standard tools
of policy analysis pose serious challenges if applied to multi-sectoral,
multi-stakeholder partnerships. First, partnerships are generally limited in
resources, scope and ambition, which makes measurements of their impact
on target indicators dicult, given the background noise of other factors.
Second, the specic character of partnerships complicates the attribution of changes in actor behavior to the inuence of individual partnerships, the more so since many partnerships are meant to help implementing
intergovernmental regimes or national policies. This creates the problem of
over-determined research designs in which outcomes can be related at the
same time to an intergovernmental agreement and to specic partnerships.
Such questions could be resolved by in-depth qualitative case studies as a
basis for comparative research programs. These, however, are again negatively aected by the rich diversity in the partnership universe, making
generalizations dicult. For example, while some partnerships are meant
to generate and disseminate information, others focus on capacity-building
or the implementation of a policy. In its current usage, the concept of
292
partnerships is vague and general, and has dierent meanings in dierent

contexts (Mol, this volume). Various concepts are in use that all refer, in
one way or the other, to the phenomenon of partnerships. Part of the future
research agenda, partially but by no means conclusively addressed by the
contributions in this volume, is thus the sorting out of concepts and the
development of better and more precise denitions and classications in
light of their theoretical underpinnings. For example, are global action
networks (Waddell, this volume) or private governance arrangements
(Pattberg, this volume) variations of partnerships? If so, what is then not a
partnership? Lack of conceptual clarity as well as extreme variety of empirical phenomena make structured and focused comparisons between functionally dierent partnerships dicult, if not impossible.
One obvious yet crucial distinction is between partnerships at the local
and national level, on the one hand, and those at the transnational, if not
global level. National partnerships, which are at the center, for example, in
the contributions of Gunningham and Derick Brinkerho (both this
volume), often partly replace or complement conventional state institutions in coping with sustainability issues. They generally function within
relatively clear institutional structures and established relations with state
agencies at national or local levels. For instance, Gray emphasizes the role
states play in catalyzing partnerships at the national level and in safeguarding wide representation and a fair process. Transnational partnerships, in contrast, emerge often in an institutional void, deal with issues and
agendas that have hardly been picked up by conventional governance
systems, and lack a sovereign body that can intervene. Thus, national and
transnational partnerships face dierent sets of questions, criteria and
problems. While there might be good reasons to refer to both as partnerships, in assessments, evaluations and designs of partnerships it seems
important to distinguish between these two meta-types of partnerships.
Taking this discussion together, the diversity of the partnership phenomenon requires further conceptual eorts in increasing our understanding on
the role and relevance of each individual partnership.
13.3 UNDERSTANDING THE RELEVANCE OF

PARTNERSHIPS
This holds, too, for the relevance of the entire partnership phenomenon,
that is of the aggregate of partnerships as a new mechanism of local,
national and global governance. Are partnerships a mere add-on to
national and international governmental policies, in the spirit of implementation partnerships that was seen by many as a key rationale behind
293
partnerships at the World Summit on Sustainable Development? Or do we

observe a fundamentally new and important phenomenon that is changing
the context in which national and international politics are being conducted? What is the overall relevance of the partnership phenomenon?
Will it remain here to stay, because its development is strongly related to
wider developments of globalization, growing complexities and shrinking
national sovereignty? Will it further develop into a main type of governance, be it in the form of global action networks (Waddell, this volume), or
any other form that resembles several of the specic characteristics of partnerships? Or will it after two or three decades prove to have just been a
footnote in history, not really deserving a place among the major governance structures that have been developed over time? While the concept of
partnerships may be fashionable and disappear after some time, most
authors in this volume stress that the specic characteristics of partnership
forms of governance are less volatile. In two decades the concept of partnerships might sound outdated and have disappeared from the textbooks
and vocabulary of governmental authorities, yet many argue that the
governance modes that are included in the partnership literature could
prove to be more inert.
How can we assess these two dierent scenarios and appraisals, of partnerships as a transformation or rather as a footnote of world history? If we
would take nancial ows as an indicator of the relevance of partnerships,
the current relevance would be marginal. At the 2002 World Summit on
Sustainable Development, US$250 million had been committed to all partnerships agreed around that time. This amount has increased since then,
but it is unclear to what extent these funds are new and additional or
rather a reclassication of existing streams of ocial development assistance and other sources of public funding (Biermann et al., this volume).
In any case, the total funding available for the hundreds of sustainability
partnerships is likely to be small if compared with the nancial volume of
public nancial mechanisms, from the World Bank to bilateral assistance
programs.
But if we focus on the degree to which partnerships aect the course
of political aairs, a dierent assessment emerges. For instance, some
partnerships develop new mechanisms that venture into rule-making and
standard-setting in areas that are little or not regulated by governments.
The most prominent examples are probably the Forest Stewardship
Council and the Marine Stewardship Council, which arguably have evolved
into inuential private governance arrangements in their respective issue
areas (Pattberg, this volume). Other partnership arrangements are powerful ideational innovators that dene or redene existing discourses on
how problems are framed and what solutions are available and acceptable.
294
The World Commission on Dams is a prominent example. And to give

another example: in various commodity chains, we see the blossoming of
certication and labeling schemes, each related to distinct networks or partnerships. If assessed against their ability to change the course of political
aairs, partnerships are relevant today, as they embrace new forms of
governance that are inserted into political practices.
These various forms of governance arrangements put questions of
meta-governance on the table. How are dierent competing governance
arrangements concluded within the partnership mode, but also between
partnerships and conventional state-based forms of governance? What
forms of meta-governance are currently in place, and are we in need of more
rened systems of meta-governance? For instance, in the example of commodity chains, is the market or consumer demand a desirable and legitimate
meta-governance arrangement that in the end will distinguish the main partnerships or governance arrangements?
Taken together, conicting bodies of evidence exist when it comes to
ascertaining the overall relevance of the new phenomenon of multi-sector
and multi-stakeholder partnerships. More research, both conceptually and
empirically, is needed.
13.4 UNDERSTANDING PARTNERSHIP

INTERLINKAGES
Partnerships operate in a context that is populated and shaped by international and national agreements, policies and programs, as well as by other
partnerships. This raises the question of partnership interaction, much
similar to the question of regime interlinkages that has produced a number
of major comparative studies in international relations research in recent
years. At a more theoretical level, the problem of interplay, as analyzed in
the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change research
program, is also part and parcel of the partnership research agenda.
This relates, rst, to the interaction between dierent partnerships. Many
partnerships operate in the same issue area, such as protection of forests.
Others work on similar issues but in dierent regions. To make it even more
complex, the same NGO or business may be active in dierent partnerships
that are active on more or less the same sustainability issue. In some cases,
one could even speak of partnership competition between dierent initiatives for funding sources, or for legitimacy and recognition of their specic
interpretation of sustainability, for example in the competition between
eco-labels. There is hardly any research yet that conceptualizes and empirically analyzes this new type of institutional interaction, asking questions
295
on what sustainability aspects partnerships focus on, what their strategies

are and what the impacts are of competing activities and arrangements on
transformations of governance structures in specic markets.
Equally important is to better understand the relationship between multisectoral partnerships and traditional forms of policy-making, notably
intergovernmental and national agreements, policies and programs. While
partnerships may be seen as an answer to failures or shortcomings of conventional forms of governance in a complex globalized world, they still
function within a world polity in which states are key building blocks. Even
though the monopolistic position of public actors in national and international governance has deteriorated, states do remain essential, and several
authors have stressed that partnerships cannot fully replace states. And yet,
at the same time, states nd a hard time coping with partnerships. Among
governments and state authorities, one can witness confusion, hesitation
and hostility with respect to the rapid emergence and functioning of partnerships. States have generally little idea of how to relate to partnerships,
especially when partnerships move beyond national borders.
Even though partnerships might benet from the relative powerlessness
of governments in some areas, their success remains dependent on governmental actors. First, the success of many partnerships is closely connected
to specic government policies and measures. For example, overcapacity in
shery and illegal shery can hardly be dealt with by private initiatives
alone. The same holds for sustainable forestry, which depends on strict land
use planning and a strong policy against illegal logging. However, up to
now, governments often fail in developing these necessary back-up policies;
too often they are part of the problem that partnerships address. Second,
governments are crucial in their meta-governance role. Yet here also they
often remain absent. Because governments take a pragmatic approach to
partnerships some governments even use partnerships to protect their
own economic interests they have not been given a logical place in public
governance yet. The result is much duplication of eorts, disjointed actions
and incoherent partnership programs (Glasbergen, this volume).
In other words, the relation between partnerships and wider architectures of intergovernmental institutions, including the question addressed
by Mol in this volume on how to bring the state back in, remains unclear
and an important subject of the partnership research agenda.
13.5
IMPROVING THE ANALYTICAL TOOLBOX
The diversity of the partnership phenomenon poses serious methodological

challenges for social science analysis. Yet on the other hand, we believe that
296
this methodological challenge could make also partnership research a

hotbed of methodological innovation and inspiration for the larger community of theorists and analysts in the social sciences.
First, the partnership phenomenon has attracted scholars from a large
variety of disciplines. Dierent discourses have evolved in dierent scholarly communities in recent years, as evidenced in this volume, and it is only
recently that these dierent streams started to come together in the form of
a more coherent research community, if not research program. Academics
from public administration, business administration and management,
political science, sociology and economics all made contributions to this
emerging eld of partnership studies. Looking at this volume, it appears
that organization theory best handles questions related to collaborative
arrangements (Part 1), public administration theory and policy theories are
valuable in addressing questions related to partnerships as governance
mechanisms (Part 2), and political science and sociology are key in dealing
with questions related to partnerships and the liberal-democratic governance structure (Part 3).
On the one hand, conceptual confusion, as noted above, is one perhaps
unsurprising consequence of this multidisciplinary, and thus terminologically multilingual, community of scholars and practitioners. Yet on the
other hand, we believe that this situation oers a chance that cannot be
underestimated. Given the complex character of partnerships, this new
phenomenon might well evolve into an empirical object of analysis that
brings together the various social science disciplines and helps them to
translate, and possibly integrate, their various approaches, methods and
languages. The partnership phenomenon could thus become a methodological or conceptual tool for more multidisciplinary research among the
social sciences, with a strong potential for some degree of disciplinary convergence. While we should not exaggerate this potential as other crossdisciplinary concepts in the eld of sustainability have shown, such as the
concept of risk it does open up the various disciplines to each other and
helps the development of common ground and of a common language.
A second problem that could be turned into methodological progress is
grounded in the sheer number of partnerships. Probably more than 400
transnational partnerships are active in the eld of sustainability governance alone, and some basic data on many of them is available at websites
maintained by the United Nations. This number is signicantly higher than
the standard numbers given for multilateral environmental agreements,
which have led to a series of database projects in recent years. In other
words, the partnership phenomenon is a promising example of a mechanism of transnational governance that is well suited for experimentation
and exploration of large-n comparative study programs. These large-n
297
study programs will be able to shed light on important factors that single
cases studies, or limited small-n comparative case study programs, cannot
suciently assess. For example, correlations between various types of
actors, partnership designs, partnership functions and partnership
performance for all 400 existing UN partnerships can allow for the generation, and at some later stage, testing, of hypotheses regarding the role
and relevance of transnational partnerships for sustainable development
(cf. Biermann et al., this volume). Naturally, some caution is in order.
Large-n investigations are limited in their explanatory power and require
precise denitions of partnerships for their particular project. They also
face diculties in coping with the diversity of contexts in which partnerships operate. Yet large-n study programs also help to put existing qualitative research into context, and assist in generating hypotheses and insights
that are not possible based on case study research alone. In any case,
because of the large number of empirical cases, the partnership phenomenon opens up new avenues for the conceptual and methodological development and analysis of databases of governance mechanisms that were
previously not available.
13.6
THE POLITICS IN PARTNERSHIPS
Finally, the partnership phenomenon aects core questions of politics and

political theory. The emergence of partnerships is often seen as a reaction
to decits in accountability and legitimacy of traditional public policy, from
national governmental policies to intergovernmental agreements. Yet the
extent to which partnerships in fact close the participation gap in global
governance is debatable. Some studies come to a rather cautious conclusion
(Biermann et al., this volume). In any case, partnerships raise serious questions of their own accountability and legitimacy. In conventional governmental policies, legitimacy, accountability and democracy have been
institutionalized, even though a need remains for continuing investigations
in the shortcomings of state-based institutions in providing the required
levels of legitimacy, accountability and democracy. However, with respect to
partnerships, issues of legitimacy, accountability and democracy are much
less institutionalized in xed procedures, rules and regulations. In this
volume, for example, Meadowcroft analyzes from a political science perspective the kind of research and evaluative questions that can be put
forward when partnership modes of governance take over from conventional state governance. More empirically, the contributions of Austin and
Jennifer Brinkerho, among others, use legitimacy and accountability in
their frames for evaluating partnerships. Derick Brinkerho illustrates how
298
in developing country settings these questions are very much related to the
good governance agenda, which is so strongly emphasized now in international cooperation eorts.
Partnerships are not merely mechanisms to advance the common good.
They are also as much institutional arrangements that distribute values and
resources. In other words, they are both sources of power to the extent that
they are eective, and arenas for power-based conicts on the distribution
of values and resources. These core questions of the analysis of politics have
thus far been marginalized in research on partnerships: who is to win and
who loses in constructing and implementing partnerships for sustainability?
How is power distributed in partnerships, and on what kind of resources is
it based? How are the benets of partnerships distributed among various
groups in society, or various regions and places, both among the partners
and beyond? While Mol and Meadowcroft (this volume) address these
issues on a more theoretical level, Visseren-Hamakers and colleagues (this
volume) provide a more empirical illustration of the relevance of such
assessments in explaining partnership outcomes. The concept of partnership might suggest equality in power and distribution of gains and losses,
yet the contributions to this book make clear that in that sense the concept
is highly ideological. As with all governance arrangements, power and politics are as much dimensions of partnerships as cooperation and consensus.
This calls for a wider research agenda on the politics of, and in, partnerships.
13.7
TO CONCLUDE
In sum, while this volume has brought together important new insights
about a new and fascinating phenomenon of national and global sustainability governance, it also became evident that we are rather at the start
than at the end of the journey. While there is a more general understanding on why partnerships have emerged so massively in sustainability
governance, there is yet no coherent and convincing theory on why specic
partnerships emerge at a specic point in time. Nor is it fully understood
how eective individual partnerships are, and how variation in eectiveness
of individual partnerships can be measured and explained. At a more
general level, the debate on the overall relevance of the partnership phenomenon is still not closed. Are partnerships a marginal phenomenon
around the turn of the millennium, triggered by political motives or resulting from political deadlock and embarrassment at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002? Or do we observe a
more general transformation of the way in which politics are conducted,
with a diminishing role for the state and intergovernmental regimes and
299
organizations and a more pronounced role for partnerships between public

and private actors; or just between private actors, as a new, Type 2, mode
of global and national governance?
An interesting research agenda is in front of us. Careful theoretical and
empirical research will shed more light on these questions, which are important from two perspectives: of solving the pressing environmental governance problems of our time, and of theory advancement in the social
sciences. With respect to the latter, the partnership phenomenon ubiquitous, divers and colorful as it is has the potential to evolve into a breeding ground for the exploration and development of new approaches,
methods and theories in the larger eld of social analysis.
Index
abilities, of partnership actors 31, 33,
11011
accountability
and corruption 106
and democracy 197, 200201, 206,
208
global action networks (GANs) 279,
282
and governance 749, 99, 100, 239
Madagascar case study 1034, 108
and partnerships 10910, 2978
state role 23031
targets 78
action focal points 51, 52, 53
actors 67, 31, 33, 10911, 140, 1756,
2523
Africa 130, 1389, 180, 1856, 225, 249
Agenda 21 3, 18, 250
Agrawal, A. 93, 111
agriculture 589, 11516, 11725, 243,
2535
see also vegetable growing
agro-food partnerships 12, 13
see also coee sector
air pollution 243
Amnesty International 43
analysis of interconnected decision
areas (AIDA) 37
anchoveta case study 140, 146, 15567
Andonova, Liliana 243, 252
Annan, Ko 218
Anti-corruption Council 109
appreciation, as leadership task 345
aquaculture
anchoveta case study 15562
developments in 1446
partnership analysis 1627
registered agreements 243
shrimp case study 14655
sustainability of 1447
Aquaculture Certication Council
(ACC) 149
Arab countries 266

Arts, Bas 22, 140
Asia 249
Asian Development Bank 148
Asia-Pacic Partnership on Clean
Development and Climate 255
Association for the Management of
Protected Areas (ANGAP) 107,
11011
Audubon Society 545
Austin, James 21, 69, 290, 297
Australia 11516, 11730, 251
Australian Conservation Foundation
(ACF) 11719, 121, 125, 126, 128
Austria 185
Aveda Corporation 180, 181
awareness raising 10
Bckstrand, K. 225
backward criticism 2256, 227
Bangladesh 221
Barrados, M. 76
Bartsch, S. 252
Bass, Stephen 174, 188
BATNAs (better alternatives to a
negotiated agreement) 43
Bauman, Z. 218
Beck, Ulrich 208, 216, 221, 229, 233
behavioural forces 50, 52, 53
Belgium 185
Ben & Jerrys 181
Bendell, J. 140, 221, 229
Benin 1389
Bhutan 1389
BIANCO (Anti-corruption
Independent Oce) 106, 109
Biermann, Frank 22
biodiversity 243
bipartite partnerships 133
Blowers, Andy 226
Body Shop, The 181
Bolivia 186
301
302
Index
boundaries, crossing 2689

Brazil 30, 556
Bringing the State Back In (Evans,
Rueschmeyer and Skocpol) 214,
215
Brinkerho, Derick 21, 867, 292,
297
Brinkerho, Jennifer 21, 290, 297
British Petroleum (BP) 30
Building Partnerships for Development
in Water and Sanitation (BPD)
264, 267, 276
bureaucracy 9
Buse, K. 251, 253
business
and accountability 201
and civil society 1645, 173
collaboration motivation action
(CMA) framework 5051, 52
democracy in 197
and global action networks (GANs)
270, 282
goals, achieved through partnership
175
and governance 3, 6, 98, 1078, 176
and governments 197, 219, 221, 232
motivation 50, 52, 54, 56, 589, 60
neighborhood environmental
improvement plans (NEIPS)
1235
and NGOs (non-governmental
organizations) 11719, 126, 173,
175, 221
as non-state actors 175
and partnerships 17790, 246, 252,
2535
and representation 199
shrimp case study 149, 153
business-opportunity-driven
motivation 50, 52, 54, 56, 589, 60
bycatch 147, 158
Canada 251
capabilities 64
see also capacity, of partnerships
capabilities-driven motivation 51, 53,
567
capacity, of partnerships 31, 33, 64,
11011, 2456
capitalism 226
CARE International 623

Caribbean 1389
case studies
anchoveta 140, 15567
coee 545, 59, 66
cotton 11922, 125, 126, 127, 128,
131
dams 824
farming 589
forestry 5960, 18490
governance 734, 79
Madagascar 10112
1235, 126, 128
objectives 7
promotional campaigns 623
rainforest 556, 6061, 63
salinity 11719
shrimp 140, 14655
transnational environmental
partnerships 176, 17883, 1889
vegetable growing 1223, 125, 126,
127, 128, 131, 134
waste management 534
categories of partnerships 21922
centralization 102
CERES (Coalition for
Environmentally Responsible
Economies) 176, 17883, 1889
certication schemes 216
Chan, Man-san 22
Chandra, K. 81
change, types of 270, 271, 272
Cheema, G.S. 76
chemicals 243
children 2535
Chile 247
Chimalapas Coalition 36
China 221, 266
citizen participation
as constraint 109
and democracy 1967, 200, 204
and governance 99, 100
Madagascar case study 1068
trends in 947
see also civil society
citizenship 278
civil society
and business 1645, 173
Index
282
international 2067
marine biodiversity case studies
1513, 15860, 1623
role of 1645
and state 208, 229
transactional model 142
see also citizen participation;
NGOs (non-governmental
organizations)
classication of partnerships
21922
Climate Action Network (CAN) 30
climate change 243
COBA (Communaut de Base) 101,
103, 104
coee sector 12, 545, 59, 174
cognitive inuence, of transnational
environmental partnerships 183,
184, 1867, 1889, 19091
collaboration 59, 324, 5061, 70,
196, 250
see also partnerships
(CMA) framework 5057
collaborative governance model see
global action networks (GANs)
co-management 97, 107
command and control regulation 946,
134
commitment 164
Common Code for the Coee
Community (4C) 174
communication 64
community groups 97, 102, 1235
companies see business
competition 1214, 7984
complexity 128
compliance-driven motivation 423,
50, 52, 56, 60
CONAIE (Confederation of
Indigenous Nationalities of
Ecuador) 42
Conca, K. 229
conceptual criticisms 2234
conict 3941, 7984, 108, 226
303
consensus 250
Conservation Breeding Specialist
Group (CBSG) 35, 37
Conservation International (CI) 545,
59, 63, 66
constraints, on actors 10910
consumer pressure 126, 163
Consumers Association of Penang
(CAP) 151
context, situational 163, 205
control-oriented policies 946, 101,
134
convening, as leadership task 357
cooperation 16, 142, 1623, 175,
1956, 284
cooperative environmental governance
196
cooperative management regimes
195
coordinating networks 276
corporatist governance 198, 202
corruption 99, 100, 1056, 108, 109
Corruption Perception Index 99
cosmopolitan democracy 206, 207
cosmopolitan state 233
Costa Rica 1389
costs 1878
cotton, case study 11922, 125, 126,
127, 128, 131
Cotton Australia 121
coverage enlargement 11
credibility 181
crisis, as partnership impetus 1278,
129
criticisms, of partnerships 22331
cross-sector partnerships 22022, 223,
2689
see also global action networks
(GANs)
cross-sectoral social partnerships
(CSSPs) 224
cultural model 222
dams, case study 824
Davies, A.R. 217, 225, 226
decentralization 102, 108, 109, 283
deconcentration 102, 109
Dedeurwaerdere, T. 256
deliberative democracy 2036, 2078,
20910
304
Index
democracy
and accountability 1034, 197,
200201
criticisms of 1968, 2267
deliberative 2036, 2078, 20910
and eectiveness 21012
and governance 99, 102, 202, 23031
increasing 80, 2089, 21012
and participation 1967, 200, 204,
206, 208
and partnerships 2068, 20910,
2978
and power 197, 200, 206, 209
and representation 196, 199200
and state role 23031
Democracy and Freedom Audits 99
Denmark 185
desertication 242, 243
developed countries 45, 13840, 145,
1656, 25052
see also Northern countries
developing countries
command and control regulation 946
sheries 145
leadership role 45, 25052
promotion of sustainable
development 96
relationship with developed
countries 13840, 1656
state role 227
user participation 94, 967
see also Southern countries
development projects, partnerships in
13840
devolution of authority 198, 2012
DGEF (Malagasy Directorate of
Water and Forests) 102, 104, 109,
110, 111
direct environmental impact 2478
direction setting phase 33, 3743
disaster relief 2789
discourse
concept of 143
deliberative democracy 2036,
2078, 20910
inuence of transnational
184, 187, 1889, 19091
in partnerships 163
discursive democracy 206, 2078

diversity 2689
Doane, Deborah 178
donor-recipient relationships 1389,
1656
drought 242, 243
Dryzek, John 207, 208
Dubiel-Gauchet hypothesis 80
Earth Island Institute 174
earth system governance 222
Eckersley, Robyn 204, 208
ecological modernization 222
economic factors 1315, 161, 164,
1878, 197, 244
ecosystem approach 156, 163
eectiveness 7, 714, 84, 21011, 278,
289, 29092
Ehrenfeld, J. 180
El Nio 1556
El Triunfo Biosphere Preserve 54
Ellinger, A.D. 70
Ellinger, A.E. 70
energy 242, 243
Environment, Water and Forests,
Ministry of (MinEnvEF),
Madagascar 101, 103, 106, 110
environment and natural resources
(ENR) policies 93, 94100,
10112, 1856
Environment Protection Agency 123
environmental community, insights
into 186
environmental impact 148, 2478
environmental impact analysis (EIA)
148
environmental management 734, 216
environmental partnerships see
partnerships
Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) 734
equality 200, 203, 21718
Equator Principles 279
Eseje Community (Peru) 6061, 63
Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) 264,
2667, 273, 276
Eurep Gap certication system 150,
155, 164
European Union (EU) 130, 1389, 152,
216, 244, 249
Index
Evans, P.B. 214, 215, 231, 232
external shocks 1278, 129
Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative 275
Exxon Valdez 180, 190
facilitation 4041
Fair Labor Association (FLA) 264, 277
farming 589, 11516, 11725, 243,
2535
see also vegetable growing
Federal Advisory Committee Act 36
nance
and democracy 197
global action networks (GANs) 277
2457, 293
rst order change 270, 271
sheries 19, 1447, 1557, 158
ows, as organizing principles 228
focus, of partnerships 205
Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) 148, 149, 157, 185
Forest Alliance 12
Forest Sector Observatory (OSF) 102,
104, 106, 109
Forest Service (Madagascar) 10110
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
case study 18490
collaborative advantage 8
future potential 278, 280, 2812
governance 293
ideational environment 183
innovations adopted by governments
275
linkages 285
NGO-market partnerships 37, 140
and regulation 182
results 272
role of 10, 1767, 263, 264, 277
and systemic change 270
as a transnational environmental
partnership 1734
forestry
case studies 5960, 1018, 160,
18490
economic power 13
legitimacy 12
private sector associations 108
305
registered agreements 243

sustainability 19
formal agreements, and trust 9
forward criticism 2245
framing 323, 181, 183, 184, 1867
France 185, 251
Freedom House 99
free-riders 120, 128, 132
Friedman, T.L. 279
Friends of the Earth 151, 154
funding 51, 53, 56, 1245, 244
future research 656, 191, 224, 233,
28899
Garcia-Johnson, R. 230
GCF (Gestion Contractualise des
Forts) 101, 105, 107
GELOSE (Gestion Locale Scurise),
Madagascar 101, 105
General Motors (GM) 181
Georgia-Pacic 5960
Germany 185, 216, 251
Gerre, G. 230
Gibson, C.C. 111
Glasbergen, Pieter 22, 30, 49, 74, 138,
218, 288
Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA)
149
activities 2767
challenges 28085
characteristics 26574
current networks 2635
denition 261
future potential 27780, 2856
historic development 2612
as partnerships 292, 293
work of 2745
Global Alliance for Improved
Nutrition (GAIN) 264, 277
Global Alliance for Vaccines and
Immunization (GAVI) 264, 277
global citizenship 278
global civil society 229, 23031
Global Compact 264, 267, 273, 282,
284
global convergence 250
global covenants 229
global demand 161
Global Environment Facility 10
306
Index
global environmental governance 217

global environmental politics 176
global environmental regimes 37
Global Exchange 55, 66
Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global
Fund) 264, 266, 270, 277, 283
global government 261
global issue networks 229, 262
global multi-stakeholder networks see
Global Partnership for Prevention of
Armed Conict 278
Global Partnership to Eliminate River
Blindness 266
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
CERES as 189
coverage enlargement 11
innovations adopted by governments
275
interaction 284
legitimacy 282
results 273
role of 10, 264, 267
partnership 174
Global Sustainability Partnership
2412
global system organizing 276
Global Water Partnership 263, 264,
267, 269, 273, 277, 280
globalization 222, 261
goals 27072
governance
and accountability 749, 99, 100,
239
and business 3, 6, 98, 1078, 176
case studies 734, 79, 1018
competing interests 7984
components 68
conict 7984
contradictions 255
denition 97, 262
and democracy 91100, 198, 202,
21112, 240
eectiveness 714, 2245
framework 6971, 98, 2734
global 29, 1756, 222, 2623,
27980, 2846
good governance 6971, 97100

governance without government 19,
262
and governments 1520, 97100,
198, 202, 21112, 240
implementation decit 240, 2449
improving 10812
interdependencies 84
and legitimacy 749, 239
liberal-democratic governance
structure 1520
measurement 99
new models of 2278
participation decit 240, 24955
23942
and private sector 98, 1078, 198,
202, 229, 292
as process 16, 19
as project 15, 19
regulation decit 240, 2424
trade-os 845
governance without government 19,
262
governing environmental ows 222
government as networks 262
governments
and business 197, 219, 221, 232
constraints upon 6, 10910
and democracy 202, 206, 211
eectiveness 289
failures of 2424
270, 275, 281, 282
and governance 1520, 97100, 198,
202, 21112, 240
implementation phase 44
and industry associations 1223
and NGOs (non-governmental
organizations) 221, 232
185, 2245, 2535, 295
policies 3, 12, 946
role of 45, 989, 1313, 1513,
2523
see also state
Gray, Barbara 21, 31, 33, 49, 54, 64,
69, 290, 292
Index
Gray, T. 225
green markets 126
Greenhouse Gas Protocol 275
Guatemala 284
Gunningham, Neil 22, 291, 292
Hagedoorn, J. 44
Hale, T.N. 243, 246, 247
Hancock, T. 226
Heiploeg 14950
Held, David 207, 229
HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor
Countries) Initiative 107
Hirschman, A.O. 8081
Huber, Joseph 216
identity 81
image 43, 534, 55, 1267
see also reputation
IMF (International Monetary Fund)
206, 219, 227
impact 111, 223, 2478, 2723, 28082,
291
implementation decit in governance
240, 2449, 255
implementation phase 33, 434
implementing networks 276
In the Company of Partners (Murphy
and Bendell) 221
incentives 1312
inclusiveness 217
India 42
indigenous peoples 2535
Indonesia 140, 14755, 164, 251, 252
industrialized countries 25052
see also developed countries
industry 2535
industry associations 11923
inuence 18390
information, dissemination of
case studies 1023, 189
and good governance 99, 100
governments role 211
partnership role 10, 134, 181
Institutional Dimensions of Global
Environmental Change 294
institutional entrepreneurship 434
institutional forces 33
institutionalization of responsibility 16
institutionalization phase 33
307
institutions 108, 14041

integrative solutions 142, 1623
integrative stage, of collaboration 57,
59, 60
interaction 38, 70, 284, 2945
interactive governance 196
inter-rm cooperation 175
inter-governmental organizations
(IGOs) 252, 2535, 261, 267, 274
internal brokering 413
International Centre for Trade and
Sustainable Development
(ICTSD) 264, 267, 270, 273, 275
International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC) 261
International Development Bank
(IDB) 42
international environmental
governance see global
environmental governance
International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies
(IFRC) 261
International Fishmeal and Fish Oil
Organisation (IFFO) 1589
International Food Policy Research
Institute 247
International Institute for
Environment and Development
(IIED) 188
International Labour Organization
(ILO) 261
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
107
international partnerships 13840,
2068, 24852, 2667
(GANs); partnerships
International Principles for
Responsible Shrimp Farming 149,
150
international regimes 262
international relations (state) 1756
international sectoral relationships
141, 1423, 1535, 16062,
1657
International Tropical Timber
Agreement 182
inter-organizational networks 2678
interpersonal relations 279
308
Index
intersectoral partnerships 140, 141,

1423, 1513, 15960, 1625, 221
intervention 231
investment 17883
Ireland 82
issue management alliances 221
Italy 251
Jniske, Martin 216
Jano, S. 35
Japan 251
Johannesburg Partnerships see UN
World Summit on Sustainable
Development (Johannesburg
2002)
joint environmental policy-making
195
Junior League of Mexico 534
Keller, S.B. 70
Khagram, Sanjeev 22
Kidd, S. 79
Klijn, E.-H. 2245
knowledge see learning
Kyoto Protocol 255
labelling schemes 216
Laerty, William 195
land 243
law
command and control regulation
956
as constraint 109
developed by private rule-making
174
Madagascar case study 1012, 108
marine biodiversity case studies 148,
149, 157
see also regulation; rules
leadership 31, 3444, 45, 25052, 253
learning
and democracy 205
2767
and partnerships 64, 134, 189
social 183, 184, 1867
least developed regions 2489
see also developing countries
legal framework see law
legitimacy
global action networks (GANs) 278,
281, 282
process of 11, 1215
state role 23031
of sustainable development 29
targets 778
Leroy, P. 20
Levy, M.A. 252
liberal internationalism 2067
structure 1520
Limits to Competition (Petrella) 218
Linder, S.H. 218, 220
linkages 41, 284, 2945
literature concerning partnerships
21622, 22333, 241
local connections 279
local governments 2535
local participation 97, 102, 1235
Lom Conventions 1389
Long, G. 35
Lubell, M. 72
MacGregor, T. 226
Madagascar 10112
Malaysia 140, 14755, 164
manageable society 16, 2021
management
active 205
reform 220
skills 31, 33, 11011
management orientation 51, 52, 53
mangrove forests 146
March, J.G. 72, 81
marginalized groups 2535
marine biodiversity
anchoveta case study 15562
developments in 1446
partnership analysis 1627, 243
shrimp case study 14655
Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)
future potential 279
goals 270
governance 273, 274, 293
Index
legitimacy 282
measuring activities 277
and regulation 182
role of 10, 12, 161, 265, 275
partnership 174
material inuence 183, 184, 1878, 189
Mauzerall, D.L. 243, 246, 247
Meadowcroft, James 22, 230, 297, 298
measurement role 111, 277
mediation 4041
Mert, Aysem 22
meso level interaction 205
methodological analysis 2957
Mexican Foundation for Rural
Development (FMDR) 589
Mexico 36, 535, 589, 186
Microcredit Summit Campaign 263,
265, 273, 274, 279, 281
Millennium Challenge Corporation
(MCC) 99
Millennium Development Goals 245,
247, 248, 249, 255
mining 174, 242
Mining, Minerals and Sustainable
Development (MMSD) 174
minority groups 2535
Miraftab, F. 223, 227
Miranda, M. 138
mission-driven motivation 52, 53, 56
Moe, T. 84
Mol, Arthur 22, 295, 298
Monsanto 589
Moore, C.M. 35
moral regeneration 220
motivation 5057, 589, 60
mountains 243
multilateral environmental agreements
2423, 255
multi-stakeholder partnerships 1235,
133, 23940, 24255, 275
(GANs); partnerships
Murphy, D. 140, 221, 229
Narmada Dam project 42
Nash, J. 180
National Action Plan on Salinity and
Water (NAP) 129
National Coal Policy Project 34
309
national governments see governments

National Heritage Trust (NHT) 129
National Vegetable Levy 123
nation-state 263, 278
see also governments; state
Natura 556
natural resource management 12830,
132, 242, 243
natural resources policies 93, 94100,
10112, 1856
Naturland 150
negotiating networks 276
1235, 126, 128
Nelissen, N. 20
Netherlands
anchoveta case study 140, 15862
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
case study 185
partnership roles 251
sustainable development agreements
(SDAs) 1389
Network of Aquaculture Centres in
Asia-Pacic (NACA) 149
networks 196, 228, 262, 2678, 276
(GANs)
new environmental governance 128,
130
new regional-based approach to
natural resource management
12830, 132
New Zealand 130
Newell, Peter 175
NGO-market partnerships 37
NGOs (non-governmental
organizations)
and business 11719, 126, 173, 175,
221
(CMA) framework 517
democracy in 197
disadvantages 6
267, 269, 273, 274
and industry associations 11922
310
Index
marine biodiversity case studies

14950, 1514, 15960
motivation of 248
networks of 30
and partnerships 3, 5, 37, 119, 163,
17790, 2525
and representation 199
role of 36, 42, 289
situational context 163
and state 221, 232
see also civil society; global action
networks (GANs)
non-prot organizations see NGOs
(non-governmental organizations)
norms, global action 2824
North, D.C. 72
Northern countries 13840, 1656,
209, 239, 25052, 266, 268
see also developed countries
Northrup, T. 80
Nutreco 1589, 16061, 163
objectives, clarity of 634
oceans 243
OECD (Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development)
133, 134, 246, 247, 248, 249
Olsen, J.B. 72, 81
Oppenheim, J. 226
organizations 173, 2678
Osborn, R.N. 44
Ottaway, Marina 223
outcomes 111, 223, 2478, 2723,
28082, 291
output-oriented perspective 163
Oxfam Novib 151, 154
Pacic 1389
Palmer, P. 35
Papadopoulos, Y. 82
Parker, B. 221, 224
participation
as constraint 109
decit 240, 24955
and democracy 1967, 200, 204, 206,
208
obstacles to 124
by resource users 94, 967
partners 32
Partnership for Principle 10 (PP10)
265, 269, 273, 275, 277, 285
partnership logic 215
partnerships
academic study, inuence of 231
background 4, 314, 215, 21619,
28890
beneciaries 256
as collaborative arrangements 59
competition between 1214
criticisms of 22331
denition 2, 215
democracy in 21012
and economic power 1315
eectiveness 713, 133, 29092
future research 656, 191, 224, 233
as governance mechanisms 915
international 13840, 2068
structure 1520
linkages 2945
methodological analysis 2957
motivation of 5057
vs. networks 2678
vs. organizations 2678
paradigm 35, 1415
performance 634, 1258, 1413
politics in 2978
relationship evolution 5761
relevance of 2924
role of 10, 11, 689, 967, 154
size of 37, 39, 128
systemic implications of 198, 2012
transactional model 14043
trust in 89
types 5, 3031, 117, 173, 1946
value generation 613, 64, 1612
see also multi-stakeholder
partnerships
Pattberg, Philipp 22
performance 634, 70, 76, 1258,
1413
Peru 6061, 63, 140, 15562, 164
philanthropic stage, of collaboration
57, 589, 62
Picciotto, R. 72
pluralistic approach 1, 3
policy 93, 94100, 10112, 1856
policy analysts role 2021
Index
political accountability 76
political economy 2267
political modernization 216
politico-constitutional interaction 203
politics 98, 99, 108, 112, 135, 176,
2978
Poncelet, E.C. 217, 222, 226
Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
(PRSP) 1067
power
and compliance 423
concept of 143
and democracy 197, 200, 206, 209
exploitation of 127, 160, 1634,
1656
and governance 108
government balancing role 132
in North-South relations 139, 239
redistribution through partnership
21718, 220, 226
private rule-making partnerships 174
private sector
associations 108
governance 98, 1078, 198, 202, 229,
292
and partnerships 3, 5, 174
private-private partnerships 221, 229
problem denition 31, 338, 220
problems, of partnerships 22331
problem-setting phase 347
process design 389
process-oriented perspective 159, 163
product development 10
prot 126
promotional campaigns, case study
623
ProVention 279
psychodynamic inuence on
partnerships 33
public goods 267
public interest 203
public policy networks 221
public sector 1520, 98
see also governments; NGOs (nongovernmental organizations)
public-private partnerships (PPP) 217,
21920, 221
rainforest 36, 556, 6061, 63
Rainforest Expeditions 6061, 63
311
Ratsiraka, Didier 103

Ravalomanana, Marc 103, 106
reciprocity 139
Red Crescent 261
Red Cross 261
reective intervening 39
regional management 12930, 131
regulation
command and control regulation
946, 134
governance decit 240, 2424, 255
marine biodiversity case studies 148,
149, 157
negotiation of 132
1889, 19091
prospect of 1223
self-regulation 120
threat of 127
see also law; rules
Reinicke, W.H. 262
relationships 5761, 73
relevance, of partnerships 2924
religious groups 42, 45, 106
replication, as scaling-up 11
reporting 76, 277
representation 367, 196, 199200, 206,
208
reputation
global action networks (GANs) 278
investor scrutiny 17982
as NGO target 175
and non-compliance 43
research, future 656, 191, 224, 233,
28899
research organizations 252, 2535
resources 623, 99, 100, 1045, 2467
responsibilities 17
restructuring public service 220
results 111, 223, 2478, 2723, 28082,
291
retail pressure 122, 127, 185, 186
Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development 249
see also UN Conference on
Environment and Development
(UNCED)
Rio Summit 250
312
Rischard, J.-F. 262
risk
management 126, 132, 220
risk-driven motivation 50, 52, 56,
60
society 216
Roberts, I. 223
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
(RSPO) 14
Rueschemeyer, D. 214, 215, 231, 232
Ruggie, J.G. 262
Rugmark Foundation 174
rules 143, 174, 1956
see also law; regulation
Rustow, D. 80
salinity, case study 11719
sanitation 243
Sasser, E. 230
scale 37, 39, 128, 272
scaling-up 1112, 14
scientic communities, as non-state
actors 175
scope, of partnership 1112
search conference 35
seas 243
second order change 270, 271
Seidman, G. 230
self-governance 210
self-management 97
self-reection 39
self-regulation 120, 123, 216
Selsky, J.W. 221, 224
Seventh Generation 181
shared visioning 277
Shaw, D. 79
shrimp case study 140, 14655, 1627
single-sector partnerships 20910
situational context 163, 205
size 37, 39, 128, 272
Skelcher, C. 756, 85
skills 31, 33, 11011
Skocpol, T. 214, 215, 231, 232
Skretting 158
Social Accountability International
(SAI) 265, 273, 277
social action 274
social alliances 221
social capital 81
social contracts 229
Index
Social Enterprise Knowledge Network
50
Social Investment Forum (SIF) 176,
178
social learning 183, 184, 1867
social partnership 221
social theory 228
socially responsible investment 17883
Sociedad Nacional de Pesquera (SNP)
1589
societal level interaction 204
societal pressure 163
soft eects 1334
South Africa 180, 1856, 251, 252
South America 249
Southcorp Limited 11719, 125, 126,
127, 128
Southern countries 13840, 1656, 209,
239, 25052, 266, 268
see also developing countries
sovereignty 206
speed of change 1212
spotted owl controversy 36
Staatsversagen (Jnicke) 218
stakeholders 142, 1623
Starbucks Coee Company 545, 59,
623, 66
StarTrack 734
state
Bringing the State Back In (Evans,
Rueschmeyer and Skocpol)
214
cosmopolitan state 233
and democracy 204, 205, 208, 211
eectiveness 289
failure of 216
and governance 98, 10812, 22733
legitimacy 23031
217, 295
state-centric approach 1
transnational role 1756, 208
see also governments
steering mechanisms 10
Stewart, A. 225
strategic options development and
analysis (SODA) 38
strategic partnerships 221
strategy maps 35
Index
structural inuence, of transnational
184, 1878, 189, 19091
substitution logic 215
success, determinants of 634, 1258
Sullivan Principles 180
Susskind, L.E. 43
sustainability 121, 142, 1447, 156,
1623, 1667
Sustainability North West 79
sustainable development 1, 29, 79,
28990
sustainable development agreements
(SDAs) 1389
Sweden 185, 251
Switzerland 81, 185
Synergos Institute 36
System of Protected Areas of
Madagascar (SAPM) 107
systemic change 26970, 28085
systems organizing 276
targets 778, 83, 1345
technology assistance 10
Teisman, G.R. 2245
TetraPak 534
The Access Initiative (TAI) 265, 2678,
269, 2723, 275, 277
The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
5960
third order change 270, 271, 272
Tover and Guillen et al. 156
toxic chemicals 242
trade unions 2535
transaction costs 72, 73, 84
transactional model of partnerships
14043
transactional stage, of collaboration
57, 60
TransFair USA 55, 59
transnational corporations 179
transnational democracy 2068
transnational environmental
partnerships 17591, 2068, 217
(GANs)
transnational states 208, 233
transparency
and accountability 767, 106
and governance 99, 100, 21718
313
improving eectiveness of
partnerships 10910
and trade-os 85
Transparency International (TI) 99,
263, 265, 267, 274, 282, 284
transport 243
Tropical Forestry Action Plans 182
trust 89, 32, 4041, 64, 161, 278
UN (United Nations) 206, 218, 239,
243, 2457, 252, 2535
UN Commission on Sustainable
Development (CSD) 241, 245,
247, 248, 25051, 253, 275
UN Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED) 3, 215,
217, 249
UN Development Programme
(UNDP) 148
UN Economic Commission for Europe
(UNECE) 185
UN Environmental Programme
(UNEP) 149
UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) 148, 149, 157,
185
UN Fund for International
Partnerships 10
UN Global Compact 248, 254
UN World Summit on Sustainable
Development (Johannesburg
2002)
accreditation rules 1819
governance contradictions 255
partnership promotion 4, 30, 215,
217, 239, 293, 298
partnership rationale 2445
resources of partnerships 2467
role of partnerships 11
Unilever 270
United Kingdom (UK) 79, 185, 209,
217, 219, 225, 251
United States (US)
global warming 45
Microcredit Summit Campaign 281
new governance 130
314
Index
partnerships 216, 217, 219, 244, 251

process design 39
representation 367
unsustainability 121, 1667
urban development 220
US Agency for International
Development (USAID) 55, 110,
227
US Fish and Wildlife Service 40
US Forest Service 40
user participation
as constraint 109
decit 240, 24955
and democracy 1967, 200, 204, 206,
208
trends in 94, 967
Utz Kapeh Foundation 12
Valdez Principles 176, 180, 181
value generation 613, 64, 1612
values-driven motivation 50, 52, 54, 56
van Seters, P. 224
Varshney, A. 81
vegetable growing 1223, 125, 126, 127,
128, 131, 134
vested interests 167
visioning 345, 54, 277
Visseren-Hamakers, Ingrid J. 22, 291,
298
voluntary partnerships 8, 124, 134,
216, 239, 255
Waddell, Steve 22, 262
Wlti et al. (2004) 745, 812
waste management 534, 243

water 242, 243
Weisbord, M. 35
women 2535
workers 2535
World Bank
and democracy 227
Madagascar case study 104, 106,
107
measurement of governance 99
Narmada Dam project 42
and national sovereignty 206
public-private partnerships 219,
220
World Commission on Dams (WCD)
824, 182, 189, 269, 275, 294
World Conservation Union (IUCN)
151, 154, 1589, 262, 279
World Health Organization (WHO)
280
World Resources Institute 30
World Trade Center memorial 39
World Trade Organization (WTO) 206,
275
World Water Council (WWC) 265, 267,
274, 280
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
103, 121, 126, 149, 151, 153, 154
Young, Oran 43, 262, 274
youth 2535
Youth Employment Summit Campaign
(YES) 263, 265, 273, 274, 279
Zafy, Albert 103

Partnership Governance and Sustainable Dev

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Partnership Governance and Sustainable Dev

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Partnerships, Governance and Sustainable

Arthur P.J. Mol

Pieter Glasbergen, Frank Biermann, Arthur P.J. Mol 2007

ISBN 978 1 84720 405 9

1. Setting the scene: the partnership paradigm in the making

PART 1 PARTNERSHIPS AS COLLABORATIVE

PART 2 PARTNERSHIPS AS GOVERNANCE

7. Partnership as governance mechanism in development

PART 3 PARTNERSHIPS AND THE LIBERAL-DEMOCRATIC

THE FUTURE OF PARTNERSHIPS

11. Multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development:

The collaboration continuum

Collaboration motivation action framework: companies

Partnership contributions to governance eectiveness

research is part of the PARTNERS research project on the emergence,

1. Setting the scene: the partnership

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

Meadowcroft, 1996; Meadowcroft, 1998; Glasbergen and Driessen, 2002).

Setting the scene

1.1 THE PARTNERSHIP PARADIGM

Government policy turned away from strict regulation toward more

Some of the new institutional arrangements only serve the interests of

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

standards, codes of conduct and/or certied product and process labels.

Setting the scene

Meanwhile, a pluriform partnership practice has taken root in these

1.2 PARTNERSHIPS AS COLLABORATIVE

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

Partnerships are specic congurations of parties from dierent sectors

Setting the scene

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

mechanism for gaining this advantage. Trust encapsulates the emotional

Setting the scene

1.3 PARTNERSHIPS AS GOVERNANCE

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

Setting the scene

They, and other partnerships, such as the Johannesburg partnerships, are

The rst is by replication. This occurs when a particular partnership

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

into their governance. We see this pattern in both of the Stewardship

Setting the scene

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

The implications for the reform agenda of sustainable development are

Setting the scene

without a stronger generic government policy these ambitious partnerships

1.4 PARTNERSHIPS AND THE LIBERALDEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

As a process, governance for sustainable development introduces a new

It has been welcomed as an expression of a new form of democratic

Setting the scene

Conversely, it has been argued that both private and publicprivate

These contradictory views reect the prevailing uncertainty about the

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

Democratic principles are only jeopardized when partnership initiatives

Setting the scene

not enough indications that partnerships fundamentally change the world

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

is in theory even harder to maintain. The problem is that government

FOCUS OF THE BOOK

Setting the scene

governance mechanisms and what inhibits them; what the opportunities

Part 1 deals with the actor perspective from dierent analytical

Partnerships, governance and sustainable development

Neil Gunningham examines agricultural environmental partnerships in