Permagov D3.2 Report on the Development of Diagnostic Tool : An overview of PERMAGOV’s tool co-development process

Samenvatting

This deliverable describes PERMAGOV’s process of co-developing a simple diagnostic tool for identifying institutional barriers in practice. The tool builds on the systematic literature review, reported in Deliverable 3.1 (See here for a summary of Deliverable 3.1)). To turn the literature review into a usable diagnostic tool we co-developed an approach with end-users, experts and stakeholders to simplify how institutional barriers are described and to make it easier to identify and analyse them in our case studies. Building on in previous research (Oberlack 2017) the systematic review identified 11 institutional attributes which may give rise to institutional barriers: actor eligibility; actor roles and responsibilities; actor control; actor accountability; actor connectivity; conflict mechanisms; development and use of knowledge; scale of institutions; rigidity of institutions; formality of institutions; and institutionalized incentives. These attributes are best understood as components of the governance system where barriers may occur. Tracing barriers back to specific institutional attributes is key to our diagnostic approach. For example, institutional inertia might arise due to the rigidity of an institution, making it difficult to adapt to new issues or situations, or it might arise due to actors exerting control over an institution to preserve the status quo. Building on these 11 institutional attributes we developed simple descriptions of the types of barriers that might arise in each component. The simplified descriptions were tested and refined through end-user consultations, where they also provided real-world examples to exemplify these barriers, and a stakeholder workshop. A final diagnostic table was co-produced, which will be used in each case to identify and diagnose institutional barriers.