Shifting governance cooperatively - coordination by public discourses in the German water-food nexus

Abstract

In face of the interdependencies between policy areas in the management of common pool resources, studying nexus challenges is insightful for the exploration of new governance strategies. This includes the co-occurrence of and the interaction between different governance modes. We put forward the argument that a promising approach to explore these dynamics over time is the method of discourse network analysis. By conducting a discourse network analysis of German agricultural and water policy in a region with intensive livestock farming and large surpluses of manure that exert pressure on water and soil resources, we analyse the development of discourses within and across policy areas. We show that the analysis of public discourses contributes to the understanding of coordination between actors.

Keywords: Agricultural policy; Common pool resources; Discourse network analysis; Governance hybrids; Nitrate pollution; Water-food nexus.