Intermediary Organisations in Collaborative Environmental Governance: evidence of the EU-funded LIFE Sub-Programme for the Environment (LIFE-ENV)

In the framework of the collaborative environmental governance and specifically of network concepts, this study makes an exploratory analysis of the EU-funded LIFE sub-programme for the Environment (LIFE-ENV) and its priority area En- vironment and Resource Efficiency focused on the role of networks and in par- ticular of intermediary organizations by using Social Network Analysis (SNA). More specifically, by investigating the evolving pattern of key statistics (den- sity, clustering coefficient, betweenness and degree centrality) related to bipar- tite (organisations and projects) and dynamic (eleven years) networks, we identi- fied 3003 organisations and 1006 projects and studied how they operate by form- ing new relations and reorganising existing connections. Results evidence that the LIFE-ENV attests a structural coherence and a stable structure over time and it is characterised by four different structures of network components, namely iso- lated coordinating beneficiary, isolated components, small components and gi- ant components. Moreover, the LIFE-ENV is not a cohesive network, due to low values of both density and clustering coefficient. Based on betweenness centrality and degree centrality measures, the LIFE-ENV sub-programme has facilitated the emergence of 4855 intermediary organisations, which equals 29.5% of the total number of coordinating and associate beneficiaries involved in the programme in the eleven years considered. Transnational cooper- ation in the LIFE-ENV sub-programme is characterised by a different intensity of relations: some countries (i.e. Italy, Spain and Belgium) implement transnational cooperation with multiple European countries in both the North and South of Eu- rope, while others tend to cluster with countries in the same geographical area, and lastly East European countries have limited participation in transnational cooper- ation. Our analysis supports the hypothesis of a declining collective action in the LIFE-ENV sub-programme.