Network Governance and Policy Integration—the Case of Regional Coastal Zone Planning in Norway

Abstract

Integrated coastal zone management is characterized as a complex management situation, demanding integration across geographical borders, different policy sectors and levels of government. In Norway, the county municipalities are encouraged to take responsibility for achieving integration through regional coastal zone planning. Inspired by literature on network governance, the authors elaborate on how integration capacity might depend on an open and inclusive planning process and on the importance of conditions influencing the actors' perceived payoffs from participation. The result indicates that central actors benefiting from cooperation are more important in explaining the integration capacity, than the characteristics of the planning process itself. This illustrates the importance of the distribution of power and interdependencies among the actors in such processes.

Acknowledgements

The article presents results from the research project “Regional coastal zone planning, a tool for integrated coastal zone management?” sponsored by the Norwegian Research Council, programme on “Market and Society”. An early draft of the paper was presented at the workshop on Local Governments in a New Environment, at the seventh Nordic Environmental Social Science Research Conference, in Gothenburg, 15–17 June 2005. The authors would like to thank the participants at this workshop for useful comments.