Legal pluralism in aquatic regimes: a challenge for governance

• Legal pluralism is a prime feature of most aquatic systems, particularly in developing countries.
• It is the result of the partial imposition of new systems of regulation over existing ones.
• The relations between legal systems are characterized by indifference, competition, accommodation or mutual support.
• Each relational type has its own governance solution.

A key challenge of governance architecture is dealing with legal pluralism, defined as multiple systems of rules that apply to the same situation (or jurisdiction). However, while there is considerable literature that diagnoses the existence of pluralism, there is very little that explores how pluralist norms and rules arise and can be dealt with. Against this background, this review paper is innovative in that it analyses (a) the rise of legal pluralism in the fresh water regime and in the marine system, (b) presents a state of the art assessment of the theory of legal pluralism and (c) designs a theoretical framework for analyzing and addressing it. This paper presents the theoretical framework that will be used in the other papers of this special issue.