IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/ieaple/v14y2014i3p225-244.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hybrid governance mechanisms as political instruments: the case of sustainability partnerships

Author

Listed:
  • Ayşem Mert

Abstract

Hybrid governance mechanisms have become one of the most preferred models of governance. Their influence and use have increased slowly but consistently since the end of the Cold War. This article investigates their political dimension, by way of studying United Nations’ partnerships for sustainable development, registered with the commission on sustainable development (CSD). Around 350 sustainability partnerships that promise to solve environmental problems and achieve the MDGs are registered with the CSD. Since their endorsement at the 2002 Johannesburg Summit, various studies assessed their value for environmental governance often finding them ineffective or counter-productive. This article exposes a new set of influences that partnerships have on the practice and discourses of global environmental governance, by following the politics of their emergence, that of partnership building and registration, and their actualization: During their negotiation, various contestations emerged and influenced the resulting partnerships regime; this is studied through in-depth interviews. Secondly, this regime leaves many geographical and participatory lacunas with political effects, which are studied through a large-N database. Finally, the unintended consequences of partnership projects on their issue areas and the discursive changes they cause in environmental governance reveal an otherwise concealed political dimension: The introduction of controversial technologies into the UN platforms. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Ayşem Mert, 2014. "Hybrid governance mechanisms as political instruments: the case of sustainability partnerships," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 225-244, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:ieaple:v:14:y:2014:i:3:p:225-244
    DOI: 10.1007/s10784-013-9221-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10784-013-9221-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10784-013-9221-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mert, Aysem, 2009. "Partnerships for sustainable development as discursive practice: Shifts in discourses of environment and democracy," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 109-122, March.
    2. Peter M. Haas, 2004. "Addressing the Global Governance Deficit," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 4(4), pages 1-15, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Oscar Widerberg & Cornelia Fast & Montserrat Koloffon Rosas & Philipp Pattberg, 2023. "Multi-stakeholder partnerships for the SDGs: is the “next generation” fit for purpose?," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 165-171, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Justo-Hanani, Ronit & Dayan, Tamar, 2014. "The role of the state in regulatory policy for nanomaterials risk: Analyzing the expansion of state-centric rulemaking in EU and US chemicals policies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 169-178.
    2. Oliver Westerwinter, 2021. "Transnational public-private governance initiatives in world politics: Introducing a new dataset," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 137-174, January.
    3. Nasiritousi, Naghmeh & Hjerpe, Mattias & Buhr, Katarina, 2014. "Pluralising climate change solutions? Views held and voiced by participants at the international climate change negotiations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 177-184.
    4. Aggarwal, Ashish, 2020. "Improving forest governance or messing it up? Analyzing impact of forest carbon projects on existing governance mechanisms with evidence from India," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    5. Yang, Shanlin & Bai, Yu & Wang, Sufeng & Feng, Nanping, 2013. "Evaluating the transformation of China’s industrial development mode during 2000–2009," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 585-594.
    6. Elena Sondermann & Cornelia Ulbert, 2021. "Transformation through ‘Meaningful’ Partnership? SDG 17 as Metagovernance Norm and Its Global Health Implementation," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(1), pages 152-163.
    7. Lederer, Markus, 2011. "From CDM to REDD+ -- What do we know for setting up effective and legitimate carbon governance?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(11), pages 1900-1907, September.
    8. Sander Chan & Wanja Amling, 2019. "Does orchestration in the Global Climate Action Agenda effectively prioritize and mobilize transnational climate adaptation action?," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 429-446, October.
    9. Sanderink, Lisa & Nasiritousi, Naghmeh, 2020. "How institutional interactions can strengthen effectiveness: The case of multi-stakeholder partnerships for renewable energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    10. Rakhyun Kim & Brendan Mackey, 2014. "International environmental law as a complex adaptive system," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 5-24, March.
    11. Yunita, Sekar A.W. & Soraya, Emma & Maryudi, Ahmad, 2018. "“We are just cheerleaders”: Youth's views on their participation in international forest-related decision-making fora," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 52-58.
    12. Lasse Folke Henriksen & Stefano Ponte, 2018. "Public orchestration, social networks, and transnational environmental governance: Lessons from the aviation industry," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(1), pages 23-45, March.
    13. Barkemeyer, Ralf & Preuss, Lutz & Lee, Lindsay, 2015. "On the effectiveness of private transnational governance regimes—Evaluating corporate sustainability reporting according to the Global Reporting Initiative," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 312-325.
    14. David Horan, 2021. "The SDGs as an Integrative Framework to Assess Coherence of Transnational Multistakeholder Partnerships for SIDS," Working Papers 202110, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    15. Frank Biermann, 2013. "Curtain down and Nothing Settled: Global Sustainability Governance after the ‘Rio+20’ Earth Summit," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 31(6), pages 1099-1114, December.
    16. Emmanuelle Cheyns, 2014. "Making “minority voices” heard in transnational roundtables: the role of local NGOs in reintroducing justice and attachments," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(3), pages 439-453, September.
    17. David Horan, 2022. "Towards a Portfolio Approach: Partnerships for Sustainable Transformations," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 13(1), pages 160-170, February.
    18. Bitzer, Verena, 2012. "Partnering for Change in Chains: the Capacity of Partnerships to Promote Sustainable Change in Global Agrifood Chains," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 15(B), pages 1-25, December.
    19. Anya M. Galli & Dana R. Fisher, 2016. "Hybrid Arrangements as a Form of Ecological Modernization: The Case of the US Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grants," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-19, January.
    20. van Heeswijk, Laura & Turnhout, Esther, 2013. "The discursive structure of FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade): The negotiation and interpretation of legality in the EU and Indonesia," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 6-13.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:ieaple:v:14:y:2014:i:3:p:225-244. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.