A Starting Point: Understanding Governance, Good Governance and Water Governance - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 17

of political steering; moving from placing state governments and political authorities
at the centre of action to control socio-political processes to meet socio-economic
goals (Mayntz 2006 ). While government refers to the autonomous authority of
the state regime, governance relates to the network of private and public actors
and structures, which interact to solve societal issues (Grote and Gbikpi 2002 ) .
Non-governmental actors are no longer seen as passive 'citizens' but as active
'stakeholders' (Grote and Gbikpi 2002 ), through their participation in public-private
networks and interactions.
Governance thus allows us to conceptualise the complex arrangement of rela-
tionships and rules needed to manage and distribute resources in today's world,
where traditional federal and top down structures of command and control may no
longer suffice. However, since forms of governance still take place within the
jurisdiction of nation states, scholars have acknowledged that higher jurisdictions,
i.e. constitutionally superior states, are likely to not only steer networks but also
unilaterally change the rules of the game (Rhodes 2007 ). Therefore, the role of
government in the setting and application of legislation and regulation remains
key. Academics have endeavoured to bring clarity to the conceptualisation of gov-
ernance through the classification of different forms of governance, through the
dimensions of politics, polity or policy (Treib et al. 2007 ) . Politics represents the
process of how (collective) actors translate different preferences into policy
choices and different interests into unified action. Policy denotes the political
steering and decisions made for and implemented in a society. Polity is the frame-
work of formal and informal rules of the game (i.e. institutions) that direct the
behaviour of actors within a society (Keman 2006 ; Héritier 2002 ) . The institution-
alist approach is linked to the polity mode, conceiving governance as a system of
rules that shape actors' actions (Ostrom 2005 ) .
Institutions and governance are interlinked and often synonymous concepts from
a definitional perspective. For example, in the field of new institutionalism, North
( 1990 ) has described institutions as the rules that govern the behaviour of actors.
In the same field, institutions are seen as including the governance structure and
organisation, demoting the institutional arrangement (Saleth and Dinar 2004 in
Herrfahrdt-Pähle 2010b ) . Ostrom ( 2007 ) de fi nes institutions as laws, regulations,
policies and property rights that define ownership, disposition and use rights to a
natural resource, as well as the policies for protection and exploitation of a resource.
Institutions can therefore be rules, or sets of rules (i.e. arrangements), that structure
social interaction by shaping or constraining actor behaviour (Helmke and Levitsky
2004 ; North 1990 ). In a narrower sense, however, institutions are often synonymous
with formal bodies and organisations (e.g., national ministries, sub-national agen-
cies, multi-stakeholder management institutions, and planning departments; and the
policies, plans, and other actions carried out by those organizations).
Institutions are also categorised as having formal or informal forms, differentiating
the 'nature of processes of development, codification, communication and enforce-
ment' (Pahl-Wostl 2009 , p 356). Formal institutions tend to have their rules enforced
by a state actor and are openly codified and officially accepted (e.g. legally binding
documentation: regulation, constitutions, resource ministries, formal basin management