Grassroots Global Governance : Local Watershed Management Experiments and the Evolution of Sustainable Development read online ebook FB2
9780190625733 English 0190625732 The recent Paris climate change accord has set out an ambitious agenda for its 195 signatories. The question of how they will each meet their goals is daunting, but will be especially so for states with developing economies. Approaches to understanding the process through which global ideasare implemented at a local level often focus on national policymaking, but it has long been noted by institutionalists that efforts to apply global ideas through new national laws or state agencies frequently prove insufficient. This is particularly the case in less-developed states where suchefforts are often left to hollow institutions that lack the capacity to produce change on the ground. However, in Grassroots Global Governance, Craig Kauffman shows how grassroots actors normally left out of studies of global governance adapt international ideas to fit local realities and in turn reshape global environmental governance. The book presents a model to show how ideas move from theglobal to the local, are adapted at the local level, and are then scaled back to the global, and it explains why and how the process endures or breaks down at different points. For example, it shows that inter-governmental organizations, powerful states, and international NGOs often governindirectly by activating networks of grassroots actors. They wield influence not by directly pressuring local actors to accept particular ideas, but by stimulating and supporting local experimentation. Grassroots actors ultimately guide these processes due to their unique ability to adapt globalideas to local contexts and provide the pressure needed to push the process forward. Kauffman also suggests that the impact of any particular policy has more to do with the framing strategy used than with power dynamics, as previous scholars have suggested. Kauffman illustrates his argument bylooking at watershed management in Ecuador, where local governments have successfully experimented with ways to address global problems like climate change despite a lack of national institution building., When international agreements fail to solve global problems like climate change, transnational networks attempt to address them by implementing "global ideas" -- policies and best practices negotiated at the global level-locally around the world. Grassroots Global Governance not only explains why some efforts succeed and others fail, but also why the process of implementing global ideas locally causes these ideas to evolve. Drawing on nodal governance theory, the book shows how transnational actors' success in putting global ideas into practice depends on the framing and network capacity-building strategies they use to activate networks of grassroots actors influential in local social and policy arenas. Grassroots actors neither accept nor reject global ideas as presented by outsiders. Instead, they negotiate whether and how to adapt them to fit local conditions. This contestation produces experimentation, and results in unique institutional applications of global ideas infused with local norms and practices. Grassroots actors ultimately guide this process due to their unique ability to provide the pressure needed to push the process forward. Experiments that endure are perceived as "successful," empowering those actors involved to activate transnational networks to scale up and diffuse innovative local governance models globally. These models carry local norms and practices to the international level where they challenge existing global approaches and stimulate new global governance institutions. By guiding the way global ideas evolve through local experimentation, grassroots actors reshape international actors' thinking, discourse, organizing, and the strategies they pursue globally. This makes them grassroots global governors. To demonstrate this, the book compares transnational efforts to implement local Integrated Watershed Management programs across Ecuador and shows how local experiments altered the global debate regarding sustainable development and stimulated a new global movement dedicated to changing the way sustainable development is practiced. In doing so, the book reveals the grassroots level as not merely the object of global governance, but rather a terrain where global governance is constructed.
9780190625733 English 0190625732 The recent Paris climate change accord has set out an ambitious agenda for its 195 signatories. The question of how they will each meet their goals is daunting, but will be especially so for states with developing economies. Approaches to understanding the process through which global ideasare implemented at a local level often focus on national policymaking, but it has long been noted by institutionalists that efforts to apply global ideas through new national laws or state agencies frequently prove insufficient. This is particularly the case in less-developed states where suchefforts are often left to hollow institutions that lack the capacity to produce change on the ground. However, in Grassroots Global Governance, Craig Kauffman shows how grassroots actors normally left out of studies of global governance adapt international ideas to fit local realities and in turn reshape global environmental governance. The book presents a model to show how ideas move from theglobal to the local, are adapted at the local level, and are then scaled back to the global, and it explains why and how the process endures or breaks down at different points. For example, it shows that inter-governmental organizations, powerful states, and international NGOs often governindirectly by activating networks of grassroots actors. They wield influence not by directly pressuring local actors to accept particular ideas, but by stimulating and supporting local experimentation. Grassroots actors ultimately guide these processes due to their unique ability to adapt globalideas to local contexts and provide the pressure needed to push the process forward. Kauffman also suggests that the impact of any particular policy has more to do with the framing strategy used than with power dynamics, as previous scholars have suggested. Kauffman illustrates his argument bylooking at watershed management in Ecuador, where local governments have successfully experimented with ways to address global problems like climate change despite a lack of national institution building., When international agreements fail to solve global problems like climate change, transnational networks attempt to address them by implementing "global ideas" -- policies and best practices negotiated at the global level-locally around the world. Grassroots Global Governance not only explains why some efforts succeed and others fail, but also why the process of implementing global ideas locally causes these ideas to evolve. Drawing on nodal governance theory, the book shows how transnational actors' success in putting global ideas into practice depends on the framing and network capacity-building strategies they use to activate networks of grassroots actors influential in local social and policy arenas. Grassroots actors neither accept nor reject global ideas as presented by outsiders. Instead, they negotiate whether and how to adapt them to fit local conditions. This contestation produces experimentation, and results in unique institutional applications of global ideas infused with local norms and practices. Grassroots actors ultimately guide this process due to their unique ability to provide the pressure needed to push the process forward. Experiments that endure are perceived as "successful," empowering those actors involved to activate transnational networks to scale up and diffuse innovative local governance models globally. These models carry local norms and practices to the international level where they challenge existing global approaches and stimulate new global governance institutions. By guiding the way global ideas evolve through local experimentation, grassroots actors reshape international actors' thinking, discourse, organizing, and the strategies they pursue globally. This makes them grassroots global governors. To demonstrate this, the book compares transnational efforts to implement local Integrated Watershed Management programs across Ecuador and shows how local experiments altered the global debate regarding sustainable development and stimulated a new global movement dedicated to changing the way sustainable development is practiced. In doing so, the book reveals the grassroots level as not merely the object of global governance, but rather a terrain where global governance is constructed.