Water governance under pressure: neoliberal structures and collaborative freshwater management in Lincolnshire, United Kingdom

Abstract

Water resources across the globe face growing challenges from the combined pressures of flooding, drought, climate change, and increasing human demands. Addressing these challenges requires integrated and adaptive governance capable of responding to rapid environmental change in freshwater systems. This study investigates how systemic governance processes shape local management challenges within water governance in an agriculturally dominated region within a high-income country (Lincolnshire, United Kingdom), specifically focussing on the relationship between public and private organisations in a neoliberal economy characterised by the separation of regulatory and operational responsibilities. A two-stage survey of professional stakeholders generated 30 responses across both rounds (11 in the first round and 19 in the second). For the network analysis, individual responses were aggregated to the organisational level, so that each organisation is represented as a single node, giving a 30-organisation network. Stakeholder network analysis, using the PageRank algorithm, was applied to this network to identify key actors, examine inter-organisational relationships, and explore barriers and opportunities for integrating flood and water resource management. Findings reveal three priorities for improvement: enhancing inter-organisational collaboration, strengthening soft governance mechanisms — including training, data-sharing, and joint policy advocacy — and promoting holistic governance that links flood risk, water demand, and climate adaptation objectives. Non-departmental organisations emerged as the most influential actor in water and flood governance, named by 65.8% of respondents, while organisational collaboration was the most strongly supported priority for governance improvement, rated high priority by 94.7% of respondents. The study concludes that effective coordination — supported by both institutional reform and soft governance frameworks — is critical for translating shared environmental priorities into action, and that stakeholder perceive efficiency-driven neoliberal reforms as having contributed to fragmented governance responsibilities and to constraining the collaborative capacity needed to address that fragmentation.