报告题目：Evolutionary theory for urban environmental governance

报告人：Kristof Van Assche

时间：2013年6月24日上午9:00

地点：实验室二楼会议室

报告人简介：

Kristof Van Assche is currently Visiting Associate Professor Strategic Communication at Wageningen University, and Research Fellow at ZEF/ Center for Development Research,Bonn University. Previously, he was Associate Professor at Minnesota State Universities- St Cloud. Visiting positions at McGill University, Krakov Agricultural University, Wageningen University’s planning program. Extensive research, teaching and consultancy experience in research in Europe, Asia and North America.

Kristof is interested in evolution and innovation in governance, with focus areas in environmental policy, spatial planning and development. Recurring issues are the role of  scientific expertise and local knowledge in collective decision- making, concepts and forms of steering and self- organization, links between policies, plans and design and the question of implementation, and the actual roles of policies, plans and designs in communities.

He often uses comparative approaches and relies on various theoretical frames to analyze empirical data -systems theories, institutional and development economics, post- structuralism among them. He published widely, in the form of books, book chapters and journal publications, amongst others in Land Use Policy, Administration & Society, Public Administration, Journal of Rural Studies, Journal of Environmental Planning & Management, GeoForum, Planning Theory.

报告摘要：

We present an evolutionary perspective on urban environmental governance, which can elucidate and link many aspects of environmental policy, planning and design that remain otherwise understudied or studied in isolation.

Starting from the idea of co- evolution of actors and institutions, of roles and rules, we develop a theory of evolutionary governance (EGT), revolving around the idea of unique governance paths, marked by unique sets of dependencies: path dependencies -legacies from the past-, interdependencies -sets of linkages between actors and institutions- and goal dependencies -decisions and images on the future that exert influence in the present. We illustrate our perspective with examples from different parts of the world and next show how it can clarify many issues in urban environmental governance. EGT requires a deep understanding of both technical and socio-economic issues in a community, and a willingness to cross disciplines.

First of all EGT can create a new understanding of the science-policy nexus, or, maybe more precisely, of the way expertise from different disciplines is produced within certain systems of governance, the way this expertise is combined or not combined and the effects this expertise can have on policy, laws, designs, and on their implementation and enforcement.  

Secondly, EGT can help to understand the role of specific laws, policies, plans and designs in a certain governance context. Institutions that do not fit the governance path, we argue, will stand little chance at implementation, or, if they are implemented, they will have very different effects from what was intended. It is argued that the understanding of planning has to be stretched up to make planning more effective and efficient in a given governance path: planning in one case will require more design, while in other cases, generic visions, or rule- based planning, or translation into law can be more helpful and appropriate. EGT can thus help to make the whole chain of collective decision- making more transparent, and to discern where the options for steering are, and which instruments and forms of expertise might be useful there.