That’s a fair question

The impact of interpretive research on water governance

Sonja van der ArendSheffield, March 30, 2011

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Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco

1. What impact has interpretive research had on water governance?

2. What impact would interpretive research have on water governance were it acted upon?

3. What do we need to do to make 2 more likely to happen?

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Text clip

Since the kids were little they’ve always known that I vanish from their lives periodically. And ehm, they never really had the idea of what it is that I do. What do I do? If I don’t know, why should they?We left Boston and headed up to the Left Bank Café at Blue Hill Bay. And eh, Brandon, just a above Marblehead, turned to me and he said: How did you get to be like that? That’s a fair question. I knew what he meant, but he didn’t have all the language to say exactly what he meant. What he meant to say was: Why is it that you are fundamentally alienated from the entire institutional structure of society? And I said: Well, I’ve never been asked that, you know. Now don’t listen to the radio and don’t talk to me for half an hour while I think about it.

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Well, I’ve never been asked that, you know

• What kind of impact on (water) governance do I want and how?

• What do I do?• How did I get to be like that?

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We didn’t have all the language to say what we meant

• MSc in Environmental hygiene • Sustainable development• Change society & solve environmental

problems!• Role of government: eco-state or small is

beautiful?• New modes of steering: network

management, self steering, autopoiesis, bottom up, environmental cooperatives, citizen participation, civil society

• Excitement and disappointment5

Fundamentally alienated?

• Governance discourse: idealist managerialism

• Agency of advocates, process managers and participants in developing their roles

• An ironic and critical approach: study rather than change governance

PhD: the politics of interactive policy making in environmental planning

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Reconnect with the entire institutional structure of society

Post doc research: democratic innovationsin the Water Framework Directive

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• Strong link with a single policy• Delft University of Technology• Work with practitioners• Official evaluation of the Dutch

implementation process• Learning histories• Interpretive Policy Analysis:

IRBM is a dream

If we don’t know, why should they?IPA and governance: double trouble• IPA as a new type of policy analysis• IPA as the origin of deliberative & participatory

governance• Now two streams: Habermasian and neo-Marxist

IPA• little critical understanding of governance• no clear program of change• little progress made in how-to-governance

• Governance: how to address other actors than governments? 8

Now don’t listen to the radio and don’t talk to me for half an hour while I think about it

• It really is a fair question• A third way between idealist managerialism and critical

intellectualism?• Combine 2 things:

• Understand power in & of governance as a political program

• Understand our research as part of the policy networks we study

• Political astuteness for small & incremental enhancements

• Beyond exposure: inform, support or teach citizens?9