CALFED Bay-Delta Program (CALFED) emerged in 1995 as a network organization whose comprehensive initiative was to manage water resources in California’s SacramentoSan Joaquin Delta. Water shortages had caused conflict among the disjointed state and federal water management agencies that shared regulatory authority over the Delta. CALFED started as an innovative effort to build a tighter network among these agencies that would allow them to more effectively address what was a complex, multi-jurisdictional environmental management problem. As a secretariat, staffed with personnel on loan from member agencies, CALFED coordinated collaboration among member organizations. For several years, CALFED was able to coordinate planning and policy-making among members. Ten years later, the network had all but collapsed into a morass of turf wars, political manoeuvrings, and internal communications problems, driven largely by organizational self-interest. Legislation in 2008 essentially abolished CALFED. While CALFED is an extreme example, the elements of its story are common. Organizational networks are often formed to address “wicked” environmental problems— large-scale, complex, and multi-jurisdictional—that are beyond the capacity of a single organization to address. Multiple goals related to member self-interests compete with external goals related to the production of public goods (e.g., a sustainably managed resource). As a result, the networks fail to achieve their intended goals—or at a minimum perform differently than expected. This special issue explores the relationship between functionality (expected outcomes) and dysfunctionality (unexpected outcomes) in organizational networks, combining perspectives from environmental governance, and organizational and network sociology.

Abstract This article examines two civil society networks—CNOP and GDRN5—involved in natural resource policy advocacy and policy formulation in Mali, after the initiation of democratic reform in 1991. Focusing on their influence on Mali's forest code, pastoral charter, and agricultural law, the article shows how the networks learned to engage the policy process, particularly policy formulation and adoption. The cases illustrate how representativeness and resources shaped their strategies in policy advocacy. They also illustrate how resource dependencies can open networks to ideological and governance pressures from donors.

Much recent work on decentralized natural resource management has focused on the institutional arrangements that shape the balance of powers between central and local governments. It has given comparatively less attention to relationships between local government and community-level institutions. In Mali, decentralization has superimposed modern legal institutions on community institutions. The ambiguous relationships between them can undermine both the authority of nascent local governments and the performance of customary institutions. Legal pluralism—the coexistence and interaction of multiple normative orders with different sources of legitimacy and authority—helps explain the dynamic nature of local institutions under decentralization. This article examines the experiences of three Malian communities with decentralized natural resource management: one maintains autonomy from government, another engaged its local government, and a third negotiated a multi-stakeholder agreement—a local convention. They demonstrate that crafting workable relationships between communities and local government requires a pragmatic approach to negotiating and institutionalizing political space for innovation in self-governance.