ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes the importance of the nature of the relationship between society and institutions in the context of the Great Lakes governance regime. Since 1909, the International Joint Commission (IJC) has been in place to support bi-national management of trans-boundary waters between Canada and the Great Lakes. The chapter looks at the current governance context of the Great Lakes regime from a slightly different perspective which includes water related policy institutions as well as non-water specific related influences and the resulting conflicts and synergies that result: this is referred to as the inter-regime. It focuses on the various carriers of connective capacity and its focal points in terms of the government and societal spheres as they relate to the existing institutions. It shows a perspective on water governance inter-regime analysis as it is applied here to characterize the Canada-US transboundary water governance inter-regime.
