Toward projectified environmental governance?

Abstract

Projects are often praised for their efficiency, responsiveness to local context, and capacity to spur innovation, especially in comparison to more permanent organizations. Projects-cross-cutting organizational forms chartered to advance well-defined objectives during a specified period of time-have been a staple organizational form in the private sector, but only recently have scholars started to evaluate their relevance to governance within developed economies. In this paper we explore projectification-i.e., expanded reliance on temporally-bounded organizations-as a conceptual frame to advance understanding of environmental governance and as an empirical vehicle to incorporate temporal scales into a literature that has largely been focused on questions of spatial scale and levels of social organization. Through a case study of the United States Department of Agriculture's recently created Regional Conservation Partnership Program, we critically assess the concept of projectification. Based on interviews with key policy analysts and administrators and a review of policy documents, we critically evaluate prospects for project forms to empower local actors, produce new knowledge, and disrupt the policy field.

Administrative Agencies and the Collaborative Game: An Analysis of the Influence of Government Agencies in Collaborative Policy Implementation

“…The most notable of transformative policies that are implemented in collaboration with public and private agents and that have mushroomed during the last decade in the welfare states is the regional policy in the EU, or the Cohesion Policy (Brulin & Svensson ). Similar policies, such as the United States Department of Agriculture's Regional Conservation Partnership Program, are found around the Western world (Munck af Rosenschöld & Wolf ). The geographical and budgetary extent of the Cohesion Policy makes it the largest of the public policies that are implemented in partnership with the private and third sectors with the aim of transforming society to the better.…”

Moving from incremental to transformational change in climate adaptation policy? An institutionalist perspective

“…One way around budget cuts and austerity measures has been to outsource governmental functions and deepen the involvement of private and voluntary sectors in public service delivery and innovation development, often organized in projects (Godenhjelm et al 2015). In environmental policy and planning, the utilization of project organizations has been put forward as a potential strategy to create innovations with limited budgets and clear end dates as well as involve actors across sectors (Sjöblom & Godenhjelm 2009;Bauer & Steurer 2014;Munck af Rosenschöld & Wolf 2017; see also Chapter 5). While research shows that the capacity of projects to create new knowledge and diffuse it to other organizations varies across countries and regions, a clear focus on the organization and practices of short-term adaptation projects would be beneficial for understanding how transformational institutional change processes within climate adaptation policy can be initiated and nurtured.…”

The Importance of Engaging Local People in Landscape Management – Experiences from an EU Project

“…Scale mismatches in social-ecological systems are difficult to resolve, and the solutions often require institutional changes at more than one hierarchical level (Cumming et al 2006). Large-scale phenomena often are unattainable for projects (Lundin & Söderholm 1995;Munck af Rosenschöld & Wolf 2017). Yet, projects tend to be considered as more efficient and flexible when compared to more permanent organizations in environmental governance (Munck af Rosenschöld & Wolf 2017).…”