Assessing governance performance

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The challenge of managing risks resulting from natural hazards has increased in the last few decades on a European as well as a global level. Closely related to challenges in risk management, it becomes increasingly obvious that these risks cannot be handled by either private sector of the government as single actors. Alliances of different partners to cope with the increasing impacts of risks in collaborative practices have become more and more important. These alliances (often consisting of public-private partnerships) are of main importance in managing risks resulting from natural hazards.

© Climate Service Center © Climate Service Center

Governance processes shape the frame of formal and informal cooperative actions between stakeholders within a partnership and are crucial for the success of risk management partnerships. The aim is to use the presented conceptual framework to identify successful and unsuccessful Multi-Sector Partnerships (MSP). We argue that in some cases MSPs allow the improvement of adequate risk management strategies.

In section 2, we will introduce the concept of governance, as the theoretical basis for our analytical framework. We focus on partnerships as a governance structure that may favour the management of particular stakes. Taking into account that our focus lies on risk related to natural hazards, subsection 2.3 provides a literature review on risk governance, supporting the analysis of important key elements of risk governance approaches applied in different sectors and research fields. We will present in section 3 the definition of Multi-Sector Partnership and its characterisation.

In subsection 3.2 the concept of institutions is used to analyse the institutional fit and interplay between different partners. In section 4 and using the capital approach, we present a framework for analysing partnerships and (good) governance based on the classification of governance factors and indicators. Finally, we present the two case studies: at the Jucar River Basin and the Wadden Sea Coast. Report 20: Assessing governance performance