Grassroots Global Governance

Local Watershed Management Experiments and the Evolution of Sustainable Development

Craig M. Kauffman

Provides a new theoretical framework for understanding global governance structures that commonly form around local-cumulative problems like deforestation, poverty, disease, and climate change
Contends that the political struggles and learning processes that occur among grassroots and global actors fuel a dynamic and interactive process of normative and institutional development at both the local and international levels
Contributes to the development of nodal governance theory, a relatively new theory that looks not only at how ideas and resources transfer across network structures, but also the agency involved in converting these into action

Grassroots Global Governance

Local Watershed Management Experiments and the Evolution of Sustainable Development

Craig M. Kauffman

Description

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.

Grassroots Global Governance

Local Watershed Management Experiments and the Evolution of Sustainable Development

Craig M. Kauffman

List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
1. The Nexus between Global and Local Governance
2. Grassroots Global Governance: Theory & Process
3. Ecuadorian Watershed Management Reform in Context
4. Phase 1: National Network Activation
5. Local Legacies of National Network Activation
6. Phase 2: Why Local IWM Campaigns Endure
7. Local Experimentation in Tungurahua
8. Phase 3: Global Impacts of Local Experiments
Conclusion: Rethinking Global Governance
Methodological Appendix
Notes
References
Index

Grassroots Global Governance

Local Watershed Management Experiments and the Evolution of Sustainable Development

Craig M. Kauffman

Author Information

Craig M. Kauffman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon.

Grassroots Global Governance

Local Watershed Management Experiments and the Evolution of Sustainable Development

Craig M. Kauffman

Reviews and Awards

"Grassroots Global Governance will be of great interest to political scientists and other social scientists of environmental and natural resource policies and programs, who will find in grassroots global governance a provocative thesis, several new insights, and important methodological contributions. The book's novel framework and analysis opens numerous opportunities for the students of comparative and international environmental politics interested in theorizing how elements of national and subnational politics influence the ways in which specific actors engage with global ideas, policies, and programs." --Prakash Kashwan, Perspectives on Politics

"Challenging conventional views of global governance as something imposed from above, this superb book shows how global governance, itself, is a two-way street constructed on grassroots terrain. Using the indigenous notion of buen vivir in Ecuador, Kauffman shows how local people trying to solve local problems can influence global understandings in deep ways. Painstakingly researched and beautifully written, this is a must-read for anyone interested in global governance today." --Martha Finnemore, University Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University

"In this important book, Kauffman brings global governance down to earth, showing how 'the global' shapes and is shaped by the 'network activation' at multiple levels. Either global governance is constructed locally or it remains impossibly abstract. Using fascinating case studies from Ecuadorian watershed management, he demonstrates the many translations of languages and practices that go into building this process at the grassroots." --Margaret E. Keck, Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University