Assessing the resilience of a river management regime: Informal learning in a shadow network in the Tisza River Basin

Global sources of change offer unprecedented challenges to conventional river management strategies, which no longer appear capable of credibly addressing a trap: the failure of conventional river defense engineering to manage rising trends of disordering extreme events, including frequency and intensity of floods, droughts, and water stagnation in the Hungarian reaches of the Tisza River Basin. Extreme events punctuate trends of stagnation or decline in the ecosystems, economies, and societies of this river basin that extend back decades, and perhaps, centuries. These trends may be the long-term results of defensive strategies of the historical river management regime that reflect a paradigm dating back to the Industrial Revolution: "Protect the Landscape from the River." Since then all policies have defaulted to the imperatives of this paradigm such that it became the convention underlying the current river management regime. As an exponent of this convention the current river management regimes' methods, concepts, infrastructure, and paradigms that reinforce one another in setting the basin's development trajectory, have proven resilient to change from wars, political, and social upheaval for centuries. Failure to address the trap makes the current river management regimes resilience appear detrimental to the regions future development prospects and prompts demand for transformation to a more adaptive river management regime. Starting before transition to democracy, a shadow network has generated multiple dialogues in Hungary, informally exploring the roots of this trap as part of a search for ideas and methods to revitalize the region. We report on how international scientists joined one dialogue, applying system dynamics modeling tools to explore barriers and bridges to transformation of the current river management regime and develop the capacity for participatory science to expand the range of perspectives that inform, monitor, and revise learning, policy, and the practice of river management

Transformers: How individuals transformed Dutch and Hungarian water management

Transitions attract attention, as rare periods of major change that can offer hope (or fear) for sustainability. Research has attempted to uncover the dynamics of transitions of socio-ecological systems. Recently scholars started to look at governance and strategies employed by policy entrepreneurs (individuals or organisations) during transitions, characterised by major policy change. So far the emphasis has been on reinforcing a transition and on transition supporters. The influence of opponents on the direction of a transition and opponents’ strategies remain largely unexplored. This paper looks specifically at the role of individuals and the strategies that they -consciously or unconsciously- use in bringing about or opposing policy change. Five strategies are explored: to develop new ideas, to build coalitions to sell ideas, to use windows of opportunity, to play multiple venues and to orchestrate networks. We discuss the importance of each strategy and what individuals are behind it, using empirical evidence of contested transitions in Dutch and Hungarian water management. Our analysis shows the importance of recognition of a new policy idea at an abstract level by responsible civil servants and advocacy of the concept by a credible regional coalition. The recognition of a new idea, political attention following a number of major (near) floods and a new government coalition after national elections, provided a window of opportunity for changing water management. Opponents used similar strategies as the supporters of the transition. Opposition is inherent to policy transitions and engaging with opponents is an important strategy for those aiming to manage chang

Supporters and opponents of a transition in Dutch and Hungarian water management

Transitions attract attention, as rare periods of major change that can offer hope (or fear) for sustainability. Research has attempted to uncover the dynamics of transitions of socio-ecological systems. Recently scholars started to look at governance and strategies employed by policy entrepreneurs (individuals or organisations) during transitions, characterised by major policy change. So far the emphasis has been on reinforcing a transition and on transition supporters. The influence of opponents on the direction of a transition and opponents’ strategies remain largely unexplored. This paper looks specifically at the role of individuals and the strategies that they –consciously or unconsciously- use in bringing about or opposing policy change. Five strategies are explored: to develop new ideas, to build coalitions to sell ideas, to use windows of opportunity, to play multiple venues and to orchestrate networks. We discuss the importance of each strategy and what individuals are behind it, using empirical evidence of contested transitions in Dutch and Hungarian water management. Our analysis shows the importance of recognition of a new policy idea at an abstract level by responsible civil servants and advocacy of the concept by a credible regional coalition. The recognition of a new idea, political attention following a number of major (near) floods and a new government coalition after national elections, provided a window of opportunity for changing water management. Opponents used similar strategies as the supporters of the transition. Opposition is inherent to policy transitions and engaging with opponents is an important strategy for those aiming to manage change

Stalled regime transition in the upper Tisza River Basin: The dynamics of linked action situations

In river basins transformation from traditions of reactive flood defense to more adaptive management regimes is difficult. How regime components reinforce each other to set its development path may induce inertia and path dependency. Transformation may require profound shifts in the institutions, technologies, and personnel as well as the ecological, economic and social processes they influence in setting the basin's trajectory. Regime change has become an issue in Hungary following repeated failures of conventional management policies to handle a series of floods on the Tisza river starting in 1997. Increasing public participation pushed water policy debate toward more experimentation with alternatives, but implementation appears stalled. In this paper we review hypotheses about what factors are bridges or barriers to transformation and then use the Management Transition Framework to examine how the interactions linking action situations, operational outcomes, knowledge and institutions influenced the river management policy debate in Hungary from 1997 to 2009. Specifically we examined which factors characteristic of conventional Control vs. progressive Adaptive management regimes influenced these interactions in ways that contributed to or hindered transformation. We found that governance and social learning issues predominated, with lesser roles played by factors related to integration of sectors and different levels in the science and policy of river management