Designing policy instruments for regional floodplain management in Austria: the role of effectiveness and legitimacy

ABSTRACT

This article explores the issue of regional floodplain management in Austria from a policy design perspective. Austria has experienced a series of major floods in recent years. In response to these flood events a range of policy instruments at the land–water nexus were developed. Three policy instruments were selected as case studies to represent this policy shift toward integrated flood risk management: (a) regulatory spatial planning, (b) water associations and (c) financial compensation schemes for flood storage. The main objective of our article is to build a better understanding of the interlinkage of effectiveness and legitimacy in the process of policy formulation. The analysis draws on a review of policy documents and expert interviews with core decision-makers. Our analysis shows that the main challenge in the selection process is not the issue of effectiveness, but rather the acceptance of the policy instrument by target groups. Stakeholder participation increases the legitimacy of the instrument design and minimizes conflicts in the following implementation, thereby increasing the effectiveness of the policy instrument. In contrast to the assumptions prevailing in the current policy design literature, our empirical analysis does not support the common preposition that participatory processes result in inferior forms of policy design.

KEYWORDS:

• Floodplain management
• policy instruments
• policy design
• effectiveness
• legitimacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Austrian Climate and Energy Fund: [Grant Number KR15AC8K12549].

Notes on contributors

Ralf Nordbeck

Ralf Nordbeck is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy at BOKU and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science. In his research, he focuses on the comparative analysis of environmental policies, intersectoral and multi-level coordination issues, and the politics of natural hazard management.

Lukas Löschner

Lukas Löschner has an academic background in Political Science and Landscape Planning and holds a Ph.D. in Spatial Planning. His main field of research is natural hazard risk management, which he explores in a combination of political science and planning approaches. He currently conducts research on the following topics: spatial adaptation to flooding, policy coordination in FRM, flood risk governance, and flood storage compensation.

Walter Seher

Walter Seher is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Spatial Planning, Environmental Planning and Land Rearrangement (IRUB). He holds a master degree in Civil Engineering and Water Management and a PhD from BOKU University. His key qualifications include spatial planning in natural hazard risk management and climate change adaptation, land policy and land rearrangement. He is General Secretary of the European Academy of Land Use and Development.