Connecting levels and disciplines: Connective capacity of institutions and actors explored

This chapter explores features of connective capacity, drawing together contemporary urban water governance research from Australia. It describes how institutions enable and bound connective capacity across different government levels and disciplines of the urban water sector, whilst actors set the magnitude and potential impact of connective capacity through interaction and leadership processes. The context offers the unique opportunity to search for and explore the connective capacity that is enabling Adelaide to adapt its urban water governance arrangements to new environmental conditions; in the dynamics of the institutional setting and the agency of its actors. The chapter provides an empirical exploration of the connective capacity resulting from institutional-actor dynamics underlying Adelaide's water management responses to drought and evolving governance arrangements. The rule configurations and their dynamics described above led to an urban water institutional setting with forms of connective capacity that included: Addressing the water scarcity crisis in Adelaide provided a pressing goal for all actors to work towards solving.