The evolution of policy interdependency and its impacts on the social-ecological system in Victoria, Australia since the 1860s

Policy interdependency, although crucial to address the increasingly intertwined environmental challenges, is difficult to explicitly define and measure, compromising our abilities to link governance capacity with its societal and ecological outcomes. We conceptualized policy interdependency as a network of public infrastructure providers (PIPs), resource users (RUs), and resources (Rs) connected by substantive and procedural policy instruments. By integrating content-based qualitative and network-based quantitative analyses, we unfolded the evolution of the water, land, and environmental policy network in Victoria, Australia since the 1860s. It was found that there were four stages of policy interdependency in Victoria: Stage I (1860s–1900s) focused on developing substantive policy instruments on land with limited interdependency; Stage II (1900s–1940s) was characterized by weak procedural policy interdependencies regulating interactions among various PIPs on water; Stage III (1940s–1970s) was marked by increasing substantive interdependencies among different levels of PIPs for land and water; and at Stage IV (1970s–2000s) the procedural interdependencies among PIPs was still weak for integrated management of water, land, and the environment. This development pathway has resulted in a centralized governance system that reinforced information sharing primarily among existing actors, but limited communications with new, peripheral actors. Strong substantive interdependencies were effective in mobilizing the relationships between actors and resources while the effects of procedural interdependencies were weak. The Victorian land, water, and environmental governance provide insightful lessons for other regions in managing multiple interconnected resources.