This chapter offers responses to the question ‘why regulate?’ and ‘why do regulatory regimes emerge in a particular form?’ by examining ‘theories of regulation’. While chapter 1 introduced the readers to the economic justifications of regulation, this chapter delves into the different theories that explain why we need regulation and how public and private actors interact to shape the content of regulation. These theories refer to a set of propositions or hypotheses about why regulation emerges, which actors contribute to that emergence, and typical patterns of interaction between regulatory actors. It discusses theories from several disciplinary approaches, classifying these theories into four kinds: public interest, private interest theories, systems and institutionalist approaches and ‘hybrid’ theories.

The rise of multi-party processes in which people with quite different ties to a region, natural resource-related industry, or environmental issue work collaboratively to hammer out mutually acceptable agreements is arguably one of the biggest shifts in environmental management over the past twenty-five years. This chapter engages in some sensemaking around this diverse and evolving phenomenon in two ways. First, an approach to designing collaborative natural resource-related discourse with a particularly strong theoretical foundation (Collaborative Learning) is presented to illustrate how theory is manifest in practice. Second a recent best practices/common features list is examined through the perspectives of four social science theorists: Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann, and Muzafer Sherif. The practical recommendations that emerge from this list is largely consistent with the larger social and communicative dynamics articulated by these theorists.

The first chapter concentrates on the period around 1800, laying the groundwork by examining the concepts of sentimentality, the code of Romantic love, Bildung, interpretation, and the appeal of Greek antiquity as an analogue to the history and formation of the self. Beginning from Winckelmann’s erotic classicism it draws on the writings of Friedrich August Wolf, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich Schlegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Johann Georg Herder, together with insights from recent literary, historical, and sociological work on the discursive codification of emotions and of closeness in that period.