A Starting Point: Understanding Governance, Good Governance and Water Governance - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 20

As the notion of authority has scattered from the central state - to networks to
market based - attention has turned increasingly to the multi-level and distributed
forms of governance, initially through studies comparing federal and centralised
systems (see Ammom et al. 1996 in Pahl-Wostl 2009 ) then more prominently through
the study of the complex multi-level interactions in the European Union (EU) by Gary
Marks (Hooghe and Marks 2003 ). Likewise, polycentric governance systems have
long been discussed in the social sciences, but have recently been increasingly focussed
on in relation to complex adaptive systems (Pahl-Wostl 2009 ), which shall be discussed
in more detail later. Polycentric governance is determined to be 'a system of many
centres of decision making which are formally independent of each other' (Ostrom
et al. 1961 ; Huitema et al. 2009 ) and thus, like multi-level governance (MLG) 'implies
the decision making authority is distributed in a nested hierarchy and does not reside at
one single level', be that a central government, regional governments or municipalities,
or indeed individuals or markets (Pahl-Wostl 2009 , p 357).
Normative assumptions have been made about the linkages between different
forms, modes and types of governance and their legitimacy, as well as their ability
to adapt to a changing environment (Pahl-Wostl 2007 ). However, the discourse is
seen to be gradually moving from ascribing one panacea as superior to another,
rather to looking at issues of fit, interaction and compatibility (Meinzen-Dick 2007 ;
Young 2002 ; Freeman and Kolstad 2007 ). In reality, however, neat conceptual
constructs tend to be replaced by hybrid forms and thus many academics and organ-
isations alike tend to encapsulate all three modes within their definitions of gover-
nance (Pahl-Wostl 2009 ; UNDP 1997 ). Distributed governance is one concept that
has arisen to more effectively encompass the combination of formal and informal
institutions (Kooiman 2000 ), representing a more dynamic relationship between
different societal forces. It arises out of the recognition that neither the state nor the
market can resolve social and environmental problems alone. This interpretation of
governance is less 'Statist', more society orientated, and is primarily concerned
with the manner in which governance systems provide a balance of power between
different formal and informal state/society interactions, as well as the role of civil
society and policy networks.

2.2 Good Governance

In the 1980s the concept of good governance was taken up from a more normative
perspective, with the development of criteria of normatively 'good governance'
(Pierre 2000 ; WB 2002 ). These criteria sought to guide the repair of the failures
of the decreasingly legitimate top down governance structures, by focussing on
alternative modes of actor constellations helping to resolve common issues from
different perspectives. By the 1990s it was becoming used from a more analytical
perspective in the social sciences as a mean of assessing public policy arrange-
ments in empirical research (Kooiman 1993 ). The concept of good governance
has become popular over recent decades, in response to the notion that 'more