Abstract Despite numerous efforts to promote and implement more integrated approaches, coordination problems persist and impede sustainable water governance and management. This paper introduces a framework for guiding a transdisciplinary diagnostic approach (i.e. a context-sensitive assessment of multi-level water governance, which is combined with a change management process) to address such coordination problems. The approach aims at addressing some of the challenges identified in scientific scholarship and water governance practice by combining context-specific participatory assessments of individual cases with comparative case analysis guided by a generic conceptual framework. The focus is on implementation processes at regional and local scale and their embedding in a multi-level water governance system and a specific environmental and societal context. A coherent approach and formalized representation across individual cases is essential to develop cumulative knowledge and to improve the diagnostic strength of the approach. Based on a broad literature review and exploratory study of multiple, diverse cases conceptual framework identifies a variety of factors that are expected to be important for understanding the performance of environmental governance and management systems. The paper makes explicit the hypotheses on relationships between core variables that resulted from framework development. The framework, including the collection of hypotheses, offers a structured approach for analysing a phenomenon as complex and multi-facetted as coordination. It allows identification of multiple pathways that may lead an improvement or a decline in performance, respectively. The framework can find more widespread application in supporting comparative case study analyses with a focus on improving the understanding of policy implementation also beyond the field of water governance and management.

中文翻译：

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提高水治理能力以应对复杂的管理挑战：分析框架

摘要 尽管为促进和实施更综合的方法做出了许多努力，但协调问题仍然存在并阻碍了可持续的水治理和管理。本文介绍了一个指导跨学科诊断方法（即多层次水治理的上下文敏感评估，与变更管理过程相结合）的框架，以解决此类协调问题。该方法旨在通过将个别案例的特定背景参与评估与通用概念框架指导的比较案例分析相结合，解决科学学术和水治理实践中确定的一些挑战。重点是区域和地方层面的实施过程，以及它们在多层次水治理系统和特定环境和社会背景下的嵌入。跨个别案例的连贯方法和正式表示对于积累知识和提高方法的诊断强度至关重要。基于广泛的文献回顾和对多个不同案例的探索性研究，概念框架确定了各种预计对理解环境治理和管理系统的绩效很重要的因素。本文对框架开发产生的核心变量之间的关系做出了明确的假设。该框架，包括假设的集合，提供了一种结构化的方法来分析像协调一样复杂和多方面的现象。它允许识别可能分别导致性能改进或下降的多种途径。该框架可以在支持比较案例研究分析方面得到更广泛的应用，重点是在水治理和管理领域之外提高对政策实施的理解。