ABSTRACT
In order to identify, understand and evaluate the case of local governance for sustainability the theoretical framework argues for the need to deploy methods to understand the governance arrangements in practice, decision-making process(es), bargaining, power relations, inclusion and exclusion from these processes, ‘knowledge in practice’ and the resulting policy. The framework highlights the role of validity claiming found in (linguistic) discursive forms. Examples of how and where these might be articulated include speeches, articles and policy documents, or they
may be found in debates or meetings or within keywords/slogans and metaphors. The theoretical framework argues that the two streams of investigation (i.e. governance arrangements and KnowledgeScapes) require different, albeit complimentary, kinds of methods. It is our contention that the methods for identifying and understanding them may be derived through developing an understanding of institutional ‘Hardware’ and ‘Software’ (Dryzek 1996). The ‘Hardware’ being the mechanisms and structures that surround the policy issue and the ‘Software’ constituted through the informal practices that are often identified (or constructed) by the analyst using a combination of interviews and observation.
