This article proposes a new theoretical explanation to the question of environmental governance failures, combining micro and macro explanations in the long run. We put forward the concept of Transversal Transaction Costs (TTCs) as a critical source of governance failures. TTCs are transaction costs induced by interlinkages between public policies and property rights, an area under-investigated by the natural resources governance literature. We emphasise that TTCs are consequential in limiting the ability of environmental governance to coordinate natural resource uses. Drawing on institutional complementary and cluster literature, we argue that TTCs increased significantly over the years shaping governance evolution at the macro level in the long run. We show that institutional resource regimes tend to get locked into an Institutional Complexity Trap (ICT), which prevents improvement in coordination capacity and explains the persistence of environmental governance failures. Four cases substantiate our conceptual proposition of transversal transaction costs. In addition, the process-tracing of six water governance cases in Europe from 1750 to 2004 provides empirical support to the macro dynamics of institutional complexity trap.

中文翻译：

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环境治理动态：宏观失败的一些微观基础

本文对环境治理失灵问题提出了新的理论解释，从长远角度结合微观和宏观解释。我们提出横向交易成本 (TTC) 的概念作为治理失败的关键来源。TTC 是由公共政策和产权之间的相互联系引起的交易成本，这是自然资源治理文献研究不足的领域。我们强调，TTC 会限制环境治理协调自然资源使用的能力。借鉴制度互补和集群文献，我们认为，从长远来看，TTC 在宏观层面形成治理演变的多年来显着增加。我们表明，制度资源制度往往被锁定在制度复杂性陷阱（ICT）中，这阻碍了协调能力的提高，并解释了环境治理失败的持续存在。四个案例证实了我们关于横向交易成本的概念命题。此外，对 1750 年至 2004 年欧洲六个水治理案例的过程追踪为制度复杂性陷阱的宏观动态提供了实证支持。