Governance, knowledge and policy networks in Strategic Environmental Assessment

First of all we will briefly remind readers of the key elements of the GFORS Conceptual Framework (which are discussed at greater length in Chapters 1 and 3). In this framework a governance arrangement refers to an action arena in which actors in a particular action situation interact in a certain way, i.e. they exercise certain patterns of interaction leading to specific outcomes. However, actors in an action arena do not interact freely. They have to take into account ‘(i) given attributes of the physical world, (ii) attributes of the community/communities surrounding them and (iii) rules-in-use structuring their interactions’ (Heinelt et al.: 22).