DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE AND POLITICAL RATIONALITIES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE WATER FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE IN THE NETHERLANDS
| Author | JELLE HENDRIK BEHAGEL,BAS ARTS |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12059 |
| Published date | 01 June 2014 |
| Date | 01 June 2014 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12059
DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE AND POLITICAL
RATIONALITIES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION
OF THE WATER FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE
IN THE NETHERLANDS
JELLE HENDRIK BEHAGEL AND BAS ARTS
Multi-level governance, network governance, and, more recently, experimentalist governance are
important analytical frameworks through which to understand democratic governance in the EU.
However, these analytical frameworks carry normative assumptions that build on functionalist roots
and undervalue political dynamics. This can result in a lack of understanding of the challenges that
democratic governance faces in practice. This article proposes the analysis of democratic governance
from the perspective of multiple political rationalities to correct such assumptions. It analyses the
implementation of the Water Framework Directive in the Netherlands as a paradigmatic case study
by showing how governmental, instrumental, and deliberative rationalities are at work in each of
the governance elements that it introduces. The article concludes by discussing the implications of
a perspective of multiple political rationalities for the understanding and promotion of democratic
governance in practice.
INTRODUCTION
The term ‘governance’ has been propagated as a new form of steering since the 1990s by
national governments (Bevir et al. 2003), transnational organizations such as the World
Bank or the United Nations (UN) (Doornbos 2001), and the European Union (EU) (Kohler-
Koch and Rittberger 2006). Authors such as Rhodes (1997) and Pierre and Peters (2000)
have contributed to making governance a central theme in the policy literature and
political studies. Although governance is defined in different ways, depending on the
author’s field and subject of study, some key elements are more or less undisputed: (1)
governance takes place in networks and at multiple levels; (2) governance is no longer the
sole domain of states, but also of non-state actors such as business parties and NGOs; and
(3) the changing role of the state in governance – from command-and-control to ‘steering
at a distance’ – includes a new mode of accountability (Behagel 2012).
The key elements by which governance is defined not only reflect a shift in how steering
takes place but are also part of normative discourses on ‘good governance’. In the context
of the EU, the most influential of these normative discourses is represented by the White
Paper on Governance (EC 2001), which invokes the principles of openness, participation,
accountability, effectiveness, and coherence for establishing more democratic governance.
In order to realize these principles, multi-level partnerships involving regional and local
authorities, the inclusion of non-state actors, and greater flexibility in steering by setting
less rigid standards are all explicitly mentioned.
In close connection to the normative discourse of good governance that the EU employs,
EU governance scholars have sought to describe and order the ways in which key ele-
ments of governance can realize democratic principles. Influential strains of scholarship
are multi-level governance (MLG) (Hooghe and Marks 2003), network governance (Torf-
ing 2005), and experimentalist governance (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008). These strains of
Jelle Hendrik Behagel is in the Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Bas Arts is in the Forest and
Nature Conservation Policy Group, Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Public Administration Vol. 92, No. 2, 2014 (291–306)
©2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
292 JELLE HENDRIK BEHAGEL AND BAS ARTS
scholarship present analytical perspectives on EU governance to describe how one or
more of the key elements of governance work to establish democratic governance. These
perspectives are not merely analytical; each perspective also carries specific normative
assumptions, grounded in specific epistemologies (or worldviews), about the relation
between one or more elements of governance and democratic quality.
In this article, we question the normative assumptions of analytical governance perspec-
tives by critically investigating the idea that the key elements of governance – multiple
actors and levels, state and non-state actors, and new modes of accountability – can be
directly and functionally related to the democratic quality of governance. To do so, we
argue that the performance of governance depends on specific contexts (Van Assche et al.
2012) in which political rationalities play an important role. By showing how these political
rationalities are performed in each key governance element, this article aims to demon-
strate that the elements of governance are neither democratic nor undemocratic in their
own right. This leads us to reconsider the challenges that democratic governance faces.
The article is organized as follows. First, we discuss the normative assumptions of
MLG, network governance, and experimentalist governance. Next, we trace these norma-
tive assumptions to their functionalist roots. We continue by introducing an alternative
analytical framework of multiple political rationalities for the study of democratic gover-
nance and describing three types of rationality in governance. We then argue for the EU
Water Framework Directive (WFD) (EC 2000) as a paradigmatic case study for democratic
governance and discuss the methodology, after which we present an analysis of the
implementation of this directive in the Netherlands in terms of political rationalities and
discuss our findings. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for our
understanding of the challenges that democratic governance faces.
THE NORMATIVE ASSUMPTIONS OF ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKS
Analytical frameworks of governance not only analyse decision-making practices. These
frameworks are also of a prescriptive character. According to Bevir (2010, p. 2), ‘the
argument is obvious: if policy actors form policies using formal or folk theories from social
science, then social science partly constitutes those policies’. The analytical categories a
framework employs also guide the normative assumptions it holds. Whether governance
is conceived of primarily as an institutional framework, an actor network, or a regulatory
architecture therefore affects the democratic challenges perceived.
MLG builds on neo-institutional analysis to describe the historical development of
functions and jurisdictions of different tiers of government in terms of path dependency
(Hooghe and Marks 2001). It operates from the assumption that effective steering is best
attained at higher levels of government, whereas democratic legitimacy is most likely to
be attained at lower levels where there are increased opportunities for relevant actors
to participate (Moss and Newig 2010). Consequently, MLG scholars tend to discuss
effectiveness and democracy in terms of a trade-off or dilemma between participation
and system effectiveness (Dahl 1994). The trade-off is decided by the MLG idea that
dispersion of competencies across tiers of government is normatively superior to a central
state monopoly (Hooghe and Marks 2001, p. 4).
Network governance scholars do not focus that much on formal competencies but
instead point to governance networks as ‘hybrid organizational forms that play a major
role shaping and delivering public policy to citizens and communities, including quasi-
governmental agencies, public–private partnerships, and multiorganizational boards’
Public Administration Vol. 92, No. 2, 2014 (291–306)
©2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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