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Although the urgency for climate proofing waterway assets grows, to date, little is known about the organizational learning process of infrastructure operators to address this urgency. Climate proofing infrastructure increasingly requires infrastructure operators to rethink the original aims of their networks (such as bringing prosperity by enabling transportation), which relates to the notion of double-loop learning. The goal of this article is to identify institutional barriers and bridges that condition learning processes of infrastructure operators in climate proofing waterway infrastructures. This article is based on a case study of the Dutch national inland waterway network. Our findings suggest that climate proofing infrastructure requires an integrative and inclusive approach, in which the focus on waterway assets is loosened and infrastructure operators become more oriented towards wider, larger regional developments. However, the barriers and bridges encountered in the case study suggest that the Dutch waterway operator Rijkswaterstaat mainly focuses on refining and optimizing the current waterway network, i.e., single-loop learning. The questioning of underlying values, i.e., double-loop learning, is more complicated and has to be actively organized.

Transport and land use planning are in a state of flux. Projects face increased technical, social, financial, political and legal complexities while the conventional project planning approach is struggling to deal with these complexities. As a result, many projects fail to be completed in time and on budget. To deal with this issue, alternative planning approaches are developed in planning theory and literature. On the one hand, a more communicative project planning approach has been developed. On the other, a more programme-oriented planning approach has been suggested. While the former trend has inspired many empirical studies, the latter trend has received less research attention. Therefore, in this article, we focus on the trend towards a more programme-oriented planning approach. The objective of this article is to gain insight into how programmes impact project performance in light of project complexities. To this end, we conducted a case study research into how two different programmes – the Urgent Approach Programme and the National Collaboration Programme on Air Quality – impact the delivery of the national highway project A4 between Burgerveen-Leiden in the Netherlands. We used desk research and conducted 20 semi-structured interviews on project and programme level with various stakeholders. Our analysis reveals that programmes do not really influence technical and social complexities. These are predominantly affected by the introduction of a communicative project planning approach. Through restructuring project-specific political discussions and providing solutions to legal issues by explicitly connecting multiple projects to each other, programmes can be an effective means to deal with political and legal complexities.

AbstractWith the aim to successfully implement infrastructure, implementation arrangements increasingly assign responsibilities for network management to private actors. In the literature, two types of network management strategies are distinguished: process design and institutional design. To date, research has focused on either of these strategies. Moreover, while private actors aim to use the institutional capital built in the network before the private actor was introduced, the role of institutional capital in network management is often overlooked. Taking these research gaps together, we aim to explore the relationship between the two network management strategies and the intermediating role of institutional capital. We compare three cases of infrastructure implementation from the Netherlands. We find that institutional design strategies, through setting the network rules in the implementation arrangement, can ignite a virtuous or a vicious circle, respectively, hindering or enhancing opportunities for network management through process design.

AbstractForums play a crucial role in how polycentric governance systems adapt by allowing actors to deliberate on how to respond to exogenous change. However, the exact role of forums remains unclear, as prior studies on polycentric governance often examine different types of actors and network structures separately. To address this issue, we combine insights from actor and network level analyses to compare how actors in three Dutch metropolitan areas use forum shifting, shopping, and linking as strategies to create and adjust forums in response to a change in national spatial policy. We find that actors create and adjust forums through a combination of strategies. Combining strategies not only helps to create and adjust forums but also legitimizes their existence. Which strategies are combined depends on the interaction between actors that are both resource rich and highly active, and how these actors are positioned in a particular polycentric governance network.

AbstractActors' toolset to affect institutional change bydoinginstitutional design is limited because criteria for effective institutional design are often too general and abstract. This paper aims to identify institutional design strategies and explore how they influence institutional change. The theoretical framework builds on Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development framework to map institutional change, and it identifies six institutional design strategies: framing, puzzling, powering, network composition, network outcomes, and network interaction. A comparative case study on Dutch infrastructure renewal opportunities – one case's institutional design interventions attained collective renewal, the other did not – maps institutional change in decision‐making rounds through institutional directions. Key findings include that institutional change of position, boundary, choice, and information rules first is conducive to collective action. Moreover, mimicry of especially choice rules is pivotal. Furthermore, institutional design strategies have a configurational nature: microlevel strategies have mesolevel consequences, and some configurations instigate change, whereas others cause dynamic inertia.

The future of urban-regional transport crucially depends on the ability of transport governance systems to adapt. Polycentric theory claims that the presence of polycentric attributes and conditions enables governance systems to learn and adapt. However, an analysis of the Dutch Brabant Accessibility Agenda shows that their presence says little about the adaptive capacity of transport governance systems because learning and adaptation are influenced by dependencies. To optimize the adaptive capacity of transport governance systems, it is therefore vital to acknowledge both the diverse ways in how they learn and adapt, and the dependencies that shape these processes.

While institutional analyses often assess whether collective action occurs, scant literature exists on key characteristics of institutional rules and how they affect collective action. Building on the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, this paper aims to identify rule directions and demonstrate how rule directions influence collective action. A rule direction is the particular direction that is provided to the decision-making process by the aggregated rules-in-use of a rule type. We compare two Dutch infrastructure projects, where collective decision-making either was or was not achieved. Our study demonstrates that rule directions provide a systematic and context-sensitive explanation for how institutions influence collective action. Collective action requires active agency regarding rule directions – i.e. (re)directing the diversity of positions, soft-closing the exit of boundaries, sharing and assimilating information, establishing process symmetry in aggregation, and managing reciprocity regarding scope – which can transform the institutional predisposition of sectoral action towards collective action.

Governments are searching for institutional designs that enable coordination of sea-uses in a more systematic and integrated manner. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is presented as such an approach for improved coordination. However, existing literature is increasingly doubting the ability of MSP to accomplish this, particularly regarding offshore wind farms (OWF). Therefore, this paper evaluates how six key principles of MSP perform in coordinating OWF vis-a-vis other spatial claims in the Dutch North Sea. Where existing literature focuses on the conformance of material outcomes to stated objectives, this paper evaluates performance; i.e. how the six principles are understood in successive manifestations of MSP and subsequently used in decision-making regarding OWF. Based on the conditions of knowledge, legitimacy and feasibility, four modes of performance are identified. Knowledge of the principles of MSP can be found throughout successive manifestations of MSP. However, the understanding of these principles in the Dutch case is narrowed in order to create a robust system that ensures a quick and cost-effective roll-out of offshore wind energy to meet (inter)national renewable energy targets. The focus lies on furthering the feasibility of OWF development, resulting in a dominant mode of performance that is termed 'legitimacy misfit'; MSP is used as a tool to implement external sustainability discourses and renewable energy targets, rather than forming a systematic and integrated marine governance approach that balances various interests at sea. Furthermore, it is necessary to develop a more critical approach to the operationalization of the principles of MSP that is sensitive to possible interdependencies and conflicts.

This paper develops an analytical approach to explore institutional barriers to spatial integration between renewable energy (RE) and other land use functions and provides insight into opportunities for institutional harmonization between involved policy domains. Spatial integration of RE with other land use functions provides opportunities to use limited amounts of space more efficiently, allowing for a more fluent roll-out of renewable technologies. However, such integration requires the involvement of various policy domains that are each guided by specific institutional frameworks, which are often tailored to specific sectoral needs. Therefore, spatial integration of RE and other land use functions requires institutional harmonization between involved policy domains. However, there is limited guidance in literature on how such harmonization does or could occur. Moreover, while literature on RE recognizes the merits of institutional approaches, it focuses on institutions as the formal rules of the game, often disregarding the agency component (the 'play of the game'). The analytical approach developed in this paper combines the Institutional Analysis and Development framework with insights from Discursive Institutionalism. The approach enables structured assessment of relationships within and between established institutions (the 'rules of the game') and actors' ideas, interpretations and deliberations regarding these institutions (the 'play of the game'), providing insight in processes of institutional harmonization. This analytical approach is applied to the case of spatial integration of photovoltaics with national transport infrastructure networks in the Netherlands. The findings from the case show that (1) insight in interrelations between institutional barriers is crucial for addressing institutional harmonization; (2) institutional harmonization within policy domains is a precondition for harmonization between policy domains; and (3) the agency component (play of the game) is key to successful ...

Learning is essential in allowing policies and programmes to become adaptive to uncertain and changing circumstances. In this article, we use the case of the Dutch National Collaboration Programme on Air Quality (in Dutch: Nationaal Samenwerkingsprogramma Luchtkwaliteit (NSL)) to argue that the organisation of learning processes influences the extent to which policies and programmes can adapt. Learning is a diverse process that focuses both on improving knowledge of the effects of possible policy strategies and on bargaining and negotiation in which we interpret and make sense of such knowledge. Learning strategies can be organised by either focussing on exploring new ways to understand and approach problems or on exploiting existing knowledge, measures and capabilities by optimising and refining them. To be adaptive, it is important to balance both strategies, as otherwise two main risks might undermine the programmes' adaptive capacity. First, there is the risk that the implementation of adaptive programmes is constrained by premature consensus, constraining the capacity to learn regarding the suitability of, and agreement on, existing problem definitions and programme goals during programme implementation. Second, there is also the risk of premature programming, constraining the capacity to learn regarding the suitability of the actions and approaches adopted. What makes the NSL such an interesting case study is that while the programme was designed to be adaptive on the basis of an on-going learning process, in practice, it largely failed to do so. On the basis of 67 interviews with stakeholders in the NSL and two focus group discussions, we show that the NSL failed to anticipate both risks. Processes of learning have become marginalised and focused predominantly on exploitation at the expense of exploration. As such, the NSL convincingly shows how a lack of organising learning is constraining the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances and also contributes to its possible failure.

Since modern waterway networks are increasingly confronted with ageing assets, waterway renewal will increase in importance for western countries. Renewal can be regarded an impetus for realising integrated waterway networks that internalise externalities, which entails broad stakeholder involvement. This can be coordinated through different inter-organisational structures. Applying a transaction-cost perspective, we contribute to the assessment of effective governance arrangements for renewing waterway networks in such an integrated fashion. Our aim is to examine efficient inter-organisational structures for waterway renewal, as perceived by actors involved in a case study of the Dutch waterways. Our findings show that waterway renewal incorporates additional functionalities in terms of capacity (expansion or reduction), but not so much in terms of quality (combining transportation aims with spatial objectives such as ecology or regional development). Inter organisational structures that address geographical interrelatedness and, hence, broader stakeholder involvement were associated with uncertain and time-consuming transactions, because of extensive negotiations regarding the alignment of conflicting interests and the crossing of geographical and administrative boundaries. Also, a change in interdependency from hierarchical towards contractual relationships was required, putting dominant actors (the national government) in an unfamiliar position in which they loosen their grip on infrastructure investments. Perceptions on transactions centre on sectoral aims and individual assets, whereas the actual transaction may be different if a perspective is taken that includes the greater waterway system, the wider spatial surroundings and a longer-term horizon. We conclude that short-term, transportation objectives overrule longer-term, integrative objectives, which withholds strategic considerations required for aligning waterway interests.