Policy integration: Do laws or actors integrate issues relevant to flood risk management in Switzerland?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101945Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Ecological systems often span several issues. In this paper, we consider 11 issues related to flood risk management such as habitat loss, delimitation of watercourse corridors hydropower operation impacts, revitalization, flood protection concepts, or technical flood protection. These issues are typically addressed in different policy sectors but exhibit ecological, functional, or geographical interdependencies.

  • Integration between these issues is an important challenge for the successful governance of ecological systems. We analyze two bases for issue integration: a) political actors connecting issues and, b) the legal framework cross-referencing issues.

  • We propose a network method for systematic comparisons between issue integration based on actors and integration based on laws.

  • For the case of Swiss flood risk management, we find that actor- and law-based issue integration co-vary and might be self-reinforcing. We further find that issue integration mostly rests on laws, although cases exist where actors are the main basis of integration.

  • Even if legal framework fails to integrate issues, actors make up for this in some cases. Favorable conditions for this to occur are especially given if actors are a relatively homogenous group.

Abstract

Existing research emphasizes interdependencies between social and ecological systems in climate change adaptation. Ecological systems are often complex and span several issues that are not integrated in the social governance system. In order to increase the fit between social and ecological systems, understanding factors that promote the integration of interdependent issues is crucial. In this paper, we consider 11 issues related to flood risk management, e.g., technical flood protection and habitat loss, which are typically addressed in different policy sectors but exhibit ecological, functional, or geographical interdependencies. We analyze two bases for issue integration: a) political actors connecting issues and, b) the legal framework cross-referencing issues. We propose a network method for systematic comparisons between issue integration based on actors and integration based on laws. For the case of Swiss flood risk management, we find that actor- and law-based issue integration co-vary and might be self-reinforcing. We further find that issue integration mostly rests on laws, although cases exist where actors are the main basis of integration. Results promote our understanding of potential bases for the integration of policy issues, thereby contributing knowledge about adaptive governance capacities in social-ecological systems that buffer the effects of climate change.

Introduction

Climate-related extremes such as heat waves, droughts and floods are expected to increase in intensity and frequency as a consequence of climate change following the Fifth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2014). In order to buffer the effects of such climate-related extreme events, the IPCC and scholars across disciplines call for adaptive governance structures (IPCC 2014, Lavell et al. 2012, Dupuis and Biesbroek 2013, Neil Adger et al. 2005, Berrang-Ford et al. 2011). However, there remain many open questions about how adaptive governance can be achieved. One important aspect of adaptive governance is policy integration (Ansell and Gash 2008, Folke et al. 2005). Scholars emphasize the importance of cross-sectoral policy integration where policy issues are ecologically (Bodin and Tengö 2012), geographically or functionally inter-dependent (Ingold et al. 2018). Adapting to such existing interdependencies enables societies to a) make use of synergies such that policies reinforce their effects across sectors, or b) buffer negative effects of climate change in one sector through policy action in another sector. The academic literature concludes that integrated policy sectors enhance adaptive governance capacities (Trein et al. 2017, Rouillard et al. 2013, Mawson and Hall 2000, Biesbroek et al. 2010, Gallopín 2006).

We define integration as the joint action on policy issues whenever issues exhibit interdependencies. Integration occurs, for example, if a given sector takes policy issues, goals, or instruments of adjacent policy sectors into account in order to make use of co-benefits (Giessen 2011). The concept of cross-sectoral policy integration assumes that the failure and success of policies crucially depend on how well policies are integrated across adjacent sectors. In flood risk management, for example, cross-sectoral policy integration plays a crucial role in sectors as diverse as spatial planning, forest, water protection, construction, or climate change. Spatial planning that inhibits constructions in flood-prone areas also prevents future flooding damage along with the need to make further investments in expensive floodwalls.

The question of how cross-sectoral policy integration operates has generated substantial research. Two bodies of scholarship focus on different aspects of integration (Christensen and Lægreid 2007). The first emphasizes the importance of an integrated legal framework, whereby laws or other types of legal documents institutionalize the integration of issues across sectors. A second body of literature focuses on actors’ activities, whereby actors take into account interdependencies among issues. Building on these strands of literature, we explore two phenomena that might contribute to both types of cross-sectoral policy integration. More specifically, we explore what we term law-based issue integration (the legal framework cross-referencing issues) and actor-based issue integration (actors working on issues). Actual policy integration involves more than the connections between issues based on laws or actors, but the latter can be an important element for achieving the former.

A first contribution of our paper is the joint analysis of law-based and actor-based issue integration. The relationship between the two is potentially complex since both can mutually reinforce one another where high (or low) levels of law- and actor-based integration are simultaneously present. Likewise, both types of issue integration can potentially complement each other. If the legal framework does not integrate issues across sectors, actors can still do so by considering interdependent issues within their work portfolios, or vice versa. We analyze this relationship using an empirical analysis of flood risk management in Switzerland—a country that is likely to be strongly affected by climate change-induced floods in the future (FOEN 2014).

In our second contribution we explore a way to quantitatively assess both types of issue integration. The significance of most existing studies on policy integration lies in their qualitative case contributions, but systematic comparisons are rare (notable exceptions include Ekstrom et al. 2009, Young 2002). By contrast, we assess law- and actor-based integration by means of combining two datasets. The first dataset serves to quantify law-based integration between issues. Here, we coded the occurrence of a set of flood relevant issues in legislative texts (laws and ordinances) across a wide range of policy sectors. The second dataset captures actor-based integration. We gathered data on actors in a nation-wide survey in order to assess the activity profiles of a broad set of organizational actors central to Swiss flood governance. Combining both datasets, we represent the integration of issues as networks (Bodin and Crona, 2009, Ekstrom et al. 2009, Bodin and Nohrstedt 2016), whereby the degree to which issues can be connected varies, either by joint laws or joint actors.

Our third contribution is that we complement the literature on social-ecological fit, which argues that integration in the environmental system should be reflected in the integration of the social system (e.g., Bodin 2017, Bodin and Crona, 2009, Young et al. 2006, Gallopín 2006). Our paper contributes to the fit literature by analyzing the social bases, including laws and actors, for issue-integration.

Section snippets

Theory

Policies are often organized into separate sectors, such as trade, foreign affairs, or environmental protection. A policy sector is defined as including all policies and actors “concerned with formulating, advocating, and selecting courses of action to solve that domain’s problem” (Knoke 1994, p. 279). Policy sectors are typically specialized on one or a few policy issues. We define policy issues as societal problems addressed by means of political solutions. Issues are often interdependent

Climate change and flood protection in Switzerland

This article examines climate adaptation policies (Dupuis and Biesbroek 2013, Neil Adger et al. 2005, Berrang-Ford et al. 2011) by focusing on flood risk management in Switzerland—a country in which climate change-induced floods are projected to cause a high level of concern in the future (FOEN 2014). Additionally, Switzerland has a long history of floods and flood risk management to draw upon (FOWG 2003). Flood policies developed from technical, construction-focused approaches and have since

Methods

The analyses can be replicated using data and scripts hosted in the online open repository: https://doi.org/10.25678/0000zz. We measure law-based issue integration by means of the co-occurrence of issues in the same law (see top part of Fig. 1). In order to do so, we multiplied the raw rectangular occurrence matrix of issues across articles with its transpose to generate a co-occurrence matrix. We then normalized this matrix by calculating Ochiai similarities between issues, which enabled us to

Results and discussion

Results in Fig. 2, Fig. 3 graphically illustrate that both law- and actor-based issue integration play a role in Swiss flood risk management. Further, the results of our statistical modeling (reported in the Appendix B) let us conclude that the association between our measures for both bases of integration is unlikely to be random, nor can it be completely explained by other factors endogenous to the data-generating process or based on actor attributes. These results are evidenced by a large

Conclusions

In this paper we distinguish between two bases for cross-sectoral policy integration: law- and actor-based issue integration, with issue integration referring to the integration of interdependent issues either through laws or actors. This specific focus on issue integration adds to the study of cross-sectoral policy integration, which conceptualizes integration as a phenomenon within the social system whereby laws can be integrated or actors can collaborate. By contrast, this paper explores

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation [grant number 149410].

Acknowledgements

A special note of thank you goes to Andrea Ghisletta who greatly contributed to gathering data for this article. Moreover, we would like to thank Rosalie Lipfert for her proof-reading work; Örjan Bodin, Mark Lubell, Karin Ingold, Eva Lieberherr and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive inputs.

References (102)

  • G.C. Gallopín

    Linkages between vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity

    Global Environmental Change

    (2006)
  • J.-D. Gerber et al.

    Institutional Resource Regimes: Towards sustainability through the combination of property-rights theory and policy analysis

    Ecological Economics

    (2009)
  • P. Grabosky

    Counterproductive Regulation

    International Journal of the Sociology of Law

    (1995)
  • M. Howlett et al.

    The Two Orders of Governance Failure: Design Mismatches and Policy Capacity Issues in Modern Governance

    Policy and Society

    (2014)
  • M. Howlett et al.

    Design Principles for Policy Mixes: Cohesion and Coherence in ‘New Governance Arrangements’

    Policy and Society

    (2007)
  • K. Ingold et al.

    Drivers of collaboration to mitigate climate change: An illustration of Swiss climate policy over 15 years

    Global Environmental Change

    (2014)
  • K. Ingold et al.

    Misfit between physical affectedness and regulatory embeddedness: The case of drinking water supply along the Rhine River

    Global Environmental Change

    (2018)
  • W. Neil Adger et al.

    Successful adaptation to climate change across scales

    Global Environmental Change

    (2005)
  • J.J. Rouillard et al.

    Policy integration for adaptive water governance: Learning from Scotland’s experience

    Environmental Science & Policy

    (2013)
  • E.A. Treml et al.

    Analyzing the (mis)fit between the institutional and ecological networks of the Indo-West Pacific

    Global Environmental Change

    (2015)
  • I.J. Visseren-Hamakers

    Integrative environmental governance: enhancing governance in the era of synergies

    Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability

    (2015)
  • O.R. Young et al.

    The globalization of socio-ecological systems: An agenda for scientific research

    Global Environmental Change

    (2006)
  • M. Angst et al.

    Connectors and coordinators in natural resource governance: insights from Swiss water supply

    Ecology and Society

    (2018)
  • C. Ansell et al.

    Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice

    Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

    (2008)
  • D. Aubin et al.

    The Evolution of European Water Policy

    Towards Integrated Resource Management at EU Level

    (2004)
  • F. Biermann et al.

    Environmental policy integration and the architecture of global environmental governance

    International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics

    (2009)
  • Ö. Bodin

    Collaborative environmental governance: Achieving collective action in social-ecological systems

    Science

    (2017)
  • Ö. Bodin et al.

    Theorizing benefits and constraints in collaborative environmental governance: a transdisciplinary social-ecological network approach for empirical investigations

    Ecology and Society

    (2016)
  • N. Bolleyer

    The Influence of Political Parties on Policy Coordination

    Governance

    (2011)
  • H. Briassoulis

    Analysis of Policy Integration: Conceptual and Methodological Considerations

  • J.J.L. Candel et al.

    Toward a processual understanding of policy integration

    Policy Sciences

    (2016)
  • T. Christensen et al.

    The Whole-of-Government Approach to Public Sector Reform

    Public Administration Review

    (2007)
  • D. Christopoulos et al.

    Exceptional or just well connected? Political entrepreneurs and brokers in policy making

    European Political Science Review

    (2015)
  • T. Clark

    New Labour’s Big Idea: Joined-up Government

    Social Policy and Society

    (2002)
  • W.H. Dutton et al.

    Ecologies of Games Shaping Large Technical Systems: Cases from Telecommunications to the Internet

  • K. Eckerberg et al.

    Environmental Policy Integration in Practice: Shaping Institutions for Learning

    (2013)
  • N. Fiona et al.

    Environmental mainstreaming: the organisational challenges of policy integration

    Public Administration and Development

    (2012)
  • M. Fischer et al.

    Drivers of Collaboration in Political Decision Making: A Cross-Sector Perspective

    The Journal of Politics

    (2016)
  • Foen

    Swiss Environmental Law. A brief guide

    (2013)
  • FOEN

    Anpassung an den Klimawandel in der Schweiz. Aktionsplan 2014–2019

    (2014)
  • C. Folke et al.

    Adaptive governance of socio-ecological systems

    Annual Review of Environment and Resources

    (2005)
  • Fowg

    Hochwasserschutz an Fliessgewässern. Wegleitung des BWG

    (2001)
  • Fowg

    Hochwasserschutz. Mehr Raum für die Fliessgewässer. Aquaterra

    (2002)
  • Fowg

    Die Geschichte des Hochwasserschutzes in der Schweiz Serie Wasser

    (2003)
  • L. Giessen

    Horizontal Policy Integration

  • R.V. Gould et al.

    Structures of Mediation: A Formal Approach to Brokerage in Transaction Networks

    Sociological Methodology

    (1989)
  • N. Gunningham et al.

    Smart Regulation: Designing Environmental Policy

    (1998)
  • N. Gunningham et al.

    Regulatory Pluralism: Designing Policy Mixes for Environmental Protection

    Law and Policy

    (1991)
  • N. Gunningham et al.

    Toward Optimal Environmental Policy: The Case of Biodiversity Conservation

    Ecology Law Quarterly

    (1997)
  • P.B. Guy

    Managing Horizontal Government: The Politics of Co‐Ordination

    Public Administration

    (1998)
  • Cited by (41)

    • Brokerage activity, exclusivity and role diversity: A three-dimensional approach to brokerage in networks

      2022, Social Networks
      Citation Excerpt :

      The patterns in which these actors interact, through for example collaboration, have been suggested fundamental for society’s capacity to govern such issues (Ingold et al., 2010; Becker, 2021a). This applies especially in relation to connecting and coordinating activities, which have been framed in terms of policy coherence (Benson and Lorenzoni, 2017), integration (Cumiskey et al., 2019; Metz et al., 2020), and overcoming fragmentation (Gilissen et al., 2016; Becker, 2021b). One particularly important process for a group of interacting actors, i.e. a social network, to accomplish coordination is thus brokerage (Ingold, 2011; Jasny and Lubell, 2015; Turner et al., 2020; Seo, 2019), which can be defined as the process by which an actor serves as an intermediary between two otherwise unconnected actors (Stovel and Shaw, 2012, p. 141).

    • Policy integration and climate change adaptation

      2021, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
      Citation Excerpt :

      Instead, bureaucrats were found to prefer adaptive arrangements, involvement, and deliberative processes when designing and implementing policy integration [59]. Informal networks that are based on trust relationships were also found to be important [37]. Timing: Time rules and temporal discretions are arguably important in deciding when integration takes place and at what speed, but not much research has been conducted in this area.

    • Building blocks of polycentric governance

      2023, Policy Studies Journal
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text