Abstract Scholars from diverse fields of inquiry agree on the need to redesign institutions for governance of complex transboundary water systems to become more ‘adaptive’, and they assume that this will lead to a ‘desired end state.’ However, the exact features of the desired end state are often not clearly delineated, and the relationship between attributes of adaptive governance and the desired end state is difficult to empirically assess. We advocate for shifting the research focus instead to investigating the ‘proximity’ of a complex water system to desired ends, by assessing three aspects: the nature and significance of contextual constraints operating on a policy regime, the current status of policy outputs, and the outcomes achieved by the system to date. Taken together, these can provide us with a broader and deeper picture of what we want to achieve with adaptive governance and how close we are to achieving it. Methodologically, it then becomes easier to assess the impact of changes to governance institutions in subsequent research. We demonstrate these arguments through an illustrative comparison of two complex water governance systems in North America: Great Lakes Basin and Rio Grande-Bravo River Basin.

中文翻译：

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评估与复杂水系统中理想最终状态的接近程度：比较五大湖和里奥格兰德跨界流域

摘要 来自不同研究领域的学者一致认为需要重新设计管理复杂跨界水系统的机构，使其更具“适应性”，他们认为这将导致“理想的最终状态”。然而，理想的最终状态的确切特征往往没有被清楚地描绘出来，并且适应性治理的属性与理想的最终状态之间的关系很难凭经验进行评估。我们主张通过评估三个方面来将研究重点转移到调查复杂水系统与预期目标的“接近性”：政策制度上运行的背景限制的性质和重要性，政策输出的现状，以及该系统迄今为止取得的成果。综合起来，这些可以让我们更广泛、更深入地了解我们希望通过适应性治理实现什么以及我们离实现它还有多远。从方法论上讲，在随后的研究中评估变化对治理机构的影响就变得更容易了。我们通过对北美两个复杂的水治理系统的说明性比较来证明这些论点：五大湖流域和里奥格兰德-布拉沃河流域。