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Vertical and Horizontal Interplay in Governance of Energy for Sustainable Development: Challenges along the Global Policy Path and the Mekong River
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which manifests the degree of complex interplay that policy makers and scientists have to grapple with.
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The primary reason for giving attention to such integration is the failure of governance to effectively address the increasing array of issues which are globalised, complex and “cross-scale in both space and time” (Folke et al., 1998). It can be easily argued that lack of governance integration plays a significant role in these cases. Underlying processes at work which give raise to such issues have been described as, for example, globalisation, distanciation (Giddens, 1990)) and fragmegration (Rosenau, 2000). The latter concept developed by Rosenau may be the most illustrative. He uses fragmegration to denote the parallel — but linked — processes of globalization and localization:
“it is now clear that we live in a non-linear world in which causes and effects are so inextricably intertwined as to underlie central tendencies consisting of feedback loops, contradictory patterns, anomalous developments, and punctuated equilibria” (Rosenau, 2000: 176).
In more straightforward language this situation can be expressed such that governance often merely addresses the so called proximate causes of a problem and not the underlying causes which can often be found in the policies of other sectors or at other levels. This in turn is linked to the increasing patchwork of power where national governments’ authority has been delegated both “’upwards to international institutions and transnational corporations, ‘sideways’ to global financial markets and global social movements, and ‘downwards’ to sub-national bodies of all shapes and sizes” (Payne, 2000:203). Issues and problems which relate to human-environment interactions provide hallmark examples of the complex interrelations just described, merging ecosystem and society diversity into a coupled system. It is also beyond doubt that society is failing to address vertical and horizontal linkages in cause and effect, policy and implementation of a range of issues relating to natural resources and sustainable development. The consequences of this failure range from local negative impacts on livelihoods from economic globalisation to lack of provision of global public goods. The growing academic and policy interest for these issues is thus more than timely. This paper employs energy for sustainable development at the global level and at the regional and national level in the Mekong region as the empirical window to explore this issue.
What (is) integration?
The overarching objective of this paper is to explore with the help of theory what constitutes vertically and horizontally integrated and effective governance systems and test an approach to analyse governance systems for sustainable development by looking at functional and political institutional interplay. This objective builds on the assumption that such integrated governance systems would be desirable, and that there is some goal or criteria against which their effectiveness can be judged. Such an assumption is not straightforward to make for the global scale and has to be looked at in more detail. Looking first at effectiveness, there is one relatively generic criteria for an effective governance system — a broader term used for a regime or an institution — and that is that it should address the issue it is aimed to solve (Young and Demko, 1996).
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For global or multilevel governance,
4
We refer here to a broader concept of science and scientists, including natural and social scientists, following the
usage of the words Wissenschaft in German.
5
Factors which are often linked to a governance system’s effectiveness include: the nature of the problem, degrees of
conflict between the primary participants, the matching of the scale of the problem with the scale of the solution, the nature of the processes through which regimes are formed (which players, scope of issues, feeling of ownership and
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| | Authors: Luukkanen, Jyrki. and Karlsson, Sylvia. |
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2
which manifests the degree of complex interplay that policy makers and scientists have to grapple
with.
4
The primary reason for giving attention to such integration is the failure of governance to
effectively address the increasing array of issues which are globalised, complex and “cross-scale
in both space and time” (Folke et al., 1998). It can be easily argued that lack of governance
integration plays a significant role in these cases. Underlying processes at work which give raise
to such issues have been described as, for example, globalisation, distanciation (Giddens, 1990))
and fragmegration (Rosenau, 2000). The latter concept developed by Rosenau may be the most
illustrative. He uses fragmegration to denote the parallel — but linked — processes of
globalization and localization:
“it is now clear that we live in a non-linear world in which causes and effects are so inextricably intertwined as
to underlie central tendencies consisting of feedback loops, contradictory patterns, anomalous developments,
and punctuated equilibria” (Rosenau, 2000: 176).
In more straightforward language this situation can be expressed such that governance often
merely addresses the so called proximate causes of a problem and not the underlying causes
which can often be found in the policies of other sectors or at other levels. This in turn is linked to
the increasing patchwork of power where national governments’ authority has been delegated
both “’upwards to international institutions and transnational corporations, ‘sideways’ to global
financial markets and global social movements, and ‘downwards’ to sub-national bodies of all
shapes and sizes” (Payne, 2000:203).
Issues and problems which relate to human-environment interactions provide hallmark examples
of the complex interrelations just described, merging ecosystem and society diversity into a
coupled system. It is also beyond doubt that society is failing to address vertical and horizontal
linkages in cause and effect, policy and implementation of a range of issues relating to natural
resources and sustainable development. The consequences of this failure range from local
negative impacts on livelihoods from economic globalisation to lack of provision of global public
goods. The growing academic and policy interest for these issues is thus more than timely. This
paper employs energy for sustainable development at the global level and at the regional and
national level in the Mekong region as the empirical window to explore this issue.
What (is) integration?
The overarching objective of this paper is to explore with the help of theory what constitutes
vertically and horizontally integrated and effective governance systems and test an approach to
analyse governance systems for sustainable development by looking at functional and political
institutional interplay. This objective builds on the assumption that such integrated governance
systems would be desirable, and that there is some goal or criteria against which their
effectiveness can be judged. Such an assumption is not straightforward to make for the global
scale and has to be looked at in more detail.
Looking first at effectiveness, there is one relatively generic criteria for an effective governance
system — a broader term used for a regime or an institution — and that is that it should address
the issue it is aimed to solve (Young and Demko, 1996).
5
For global or multilevel governance,
4
We refer here to a broader concept of science and scientists, including natural and social scientists, following the
usage of the words Wissenschaft in German.
5
Factors which are often linked to a governance system’s effectiveness include: the nature of the problem, degrees of
conflict between the primary participants, the matching of the scale of the problem with the scale of the solution, the
nature of the processes through which regimes are formed (which players, scope of issues, feeling of ownership and
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