Opening the black box of implementation feedback: An analysis of reloading strategies in EU water governance

Abstract

Throughout the legal and practical implementation of the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD), subnational implementing agents experience how this policy works in practice. The feedback, or reloading, of these experiences is an important contribution to create resilient EU water governance and to further elaborate the flexible requirements of this framework directive. However, a gap exists concerning our knowledge on the strategies that implementing actors use to mobilize experiential knowledge. Our objective is therefore to understand the reloading of implementation experiences in the WFD's policy process, by studying the conditions that affect strategic mobilization behavior of implementing agents. We build upon existing studies to explore which mobilization strategies are used in WFD reloading cases, and assess which conditions contribute to the identified strategic agency choices. The main finding of this study is that the mobilizing agents often use a smart combination of framing, coalition-building, venue shopping and timing strategies for reloading implementation experiences as policy-relevant knowledge. The choice of such combinations is affected by agency and institutional structure-related conditions, that is, a mobilizing agent's interests, resources and capacities plus the existing EU water governance network contribute to strategic mobilization behavior. Our study is a first exploration of the topic. We therefore conclude this paper with some suggestions for further research.