Introduction: Form and Function in Governance for Sustainable Development

Abstract

If the idea of 'form following function' is to be fruitfully applied to the task of adapting governance to sustainable development, it must build on a premise of rational democratic governance.One must believe that the task of achieving sustainable development is a rational one: a process that can, to a reasonable science literature, and a relatively much shorter history in discourses on 'partnership' and 'stakeholder cooperation'. GovernanceLinguistically, 'governance' has traditionally connoted 'the act or process of governing', with the latter primarily associated with governmental steering by regulation and sanctions.Modern theories and discourses on public administration and policy implementation have, however, expanded the connotation to include many other forms of steering.6 The evolution originally focused on economic policy instruments, but has in recent years increasingly focused on other instruments designed to alter and channel the behaviour of individual and collective actors.As a reflection of this latter trend, governance has currently come to indicate the totality of 'mechanisms' and 'instruments' available for influencing social change in preordained directions.It is interesting to note in this context that the social sciences (as well as the OECD and UN/EU policy 'apparatuses') still operate largely with technical analogies.This is perhaps not surprising, however, given that most of the issues discussed could reasonably be viewed as an updated version of 'social engineering for sustainable development'.Be that as it may, what appears to characterize the 'linguistic shift' in the use of governance over the past several decades is a general trend away from regulation as an effective means of achieving change.The entire debate within implementation analysis as to 'top-down' vs 'bottom-up' approaches mirrors a dual political trend in the West.On the one hand there has been a marked shift on the part of governments towards so-called 'softer' steering instruments; while on the other there has been a growing emphasis on decentralization and the mobilization of 'civil society'.These trends have resulted in a significantly expanded list of potential steering mechanisms.By way of illustration, the OECD originally operated with a list of three types of policy instruments ('mechanisms to induce desired change'): 'regulatory', 'financial ' and 'informational' (2001a).With the introduction of the idea of 'policy mixes', however, this list was expanded to cover six types of instruments; and, with a similar aim, ProSus has developed a list of six alternative 'steering mechanisms' (Table 1.1).Finally, we can mention that the recently reported project on 'Innovation in Environmental Governance' (see below), distinguishes instruments as 'old' and 'new': with the former very generally associated with 'regulation', and the latter encompassing 'marketbased instruments', 'voluntary agreements' and 'informational devices' (primarily eco-labels) (Jordan et al. 2003).The purpose of these lists is simply to illustrate the very broad nature of the steering concept that underlies the notion of governance being developed.Any

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