ABSTRACT
Trust is generally considered to play a key enabling role in water governance. Despite this notion, there have been no systematic assessments examining the way in which the literature on water governance engages with 'trust'. Our article fills this gap by providing an overview of the way in which this literature has engaged with trust as a conceptual lens, analytical device and empirical phenomenon. Through an explorative systematic literature review of N = 200, mainly peer-reviewed journal articles, our findings reveal that the knowledge base on the role of trust in water governance is fragmented, poorly conceptualized, and contextually dispersed. We also observe that the role of trust is often understudied, especially in the context of the global south and with regard to ethnic minorities and indigenous people as the subjects of trust. We recommend that future research should build on solid empirical evidence, diversify its foci, go beyond an instrumental approach to trust and rely on clear and transparent conceptualizations that acknowledge the context-specific and dynamic nature of trust relationships. The results of this review should serve to better systemize future research and to further the understanding on the role(s) of trust in varying contexts and related to different water governance issues.
ABSTRACT
This editorial sets the scene for a special issue on climate governance entrepreneurship at the local and regional levels. To make climate governance work, much policy activity is needed at the local and regional levels. Entrepreneurs are actors who aim to affect change by using their agency. They target policy decisions at the local and regional levels, which might subsequently turn to other governance levels to expand their influence. The scientific discussion about governance entrepreneurs is characterized by a lack of conceptual clarity, by methodological challenges, and by several research gaps. Regarding the latter, at present, it is especially unclear when and why entrepreneurs become active, which factors they take into account when they select their strategies, and what explains the effects of entrepreneurial activity on the emergence of innovations in climate governance. All contributions to this special issue engage with one or several of these conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges, thus advancing the state of art in the field. Highlights from the special issue include the development of a simple conceptual frame that connects actors, contexts, strategies, and outcomes in a systematic way. Some promising methodological avenues are described, since the special issue contains not only some qualitative case studies but also some studies that take a long-term perspective by following policy development for decades, and a study that proposes a census approach. Empirically, the contributions in this special issue shed light on a range of factors explaining levels of entrepreneurial activity, and they carefully trace impacts over time. We conclude by sketching an agenda for further work in this realm.