The challenge of governance in regional waste planning

Over the last 15 years profound changes have taken place within the policy and institutional context of strategic planning for waste management in the United Kingdom. In addition to the significant influence of the sustainability discourse on policy innovation and the reconfiguration of institutional arrangements and policy networks, there have been growing political and public interest, and tensions, in the regionalisation of waste management, as represented by the establishment of the Regional Technical Advisory Bodies (RTABs) for waste. Drawing on concepts developed within urban-regime theory and debates on institutional capacity building, the authors argue that if RTABs are to be seen as a new form of governance for waste planning, the development of their capacity to meet the challenge of 'collective action' depends on the quality of their governance relations and, in particular, on the existence and amplification of four forms of capital: intellectual, social, material, and political. The first stage of the research which, by the time of writing (April 2004), included around sixty semistructured interviews with RTAB members throughout the English regions, has identified a number of potential barriers and enablers that affect the ability of RTABs to develop such a capacity. In conclusion, the authors provide an overall assessment of RTABs and draw a tentative picture of their possible future.