Mid Sweden University

This paper describes the so-called 'Governance-Check', a new approach for assessing governance structures and making them more sustainable, and also applies it on the example of Austrian environmental institutions and organisations. Three parts are analysed mainly by means of the concept '3-D Sustainability' (Mauerhofer, 2008a): (1) the constitutional distribution of competences among public authorities on a spatial scale, (2) the distribution of different competences to a single public authority based on sub-constitutional legislation, and (3) the relationship between different public authorities in a federal state based on sub-constitutional legislation. For all the three parts, public authorities are assessed regarding the public powers given to them to govern environmental, social and economic capital and capacity as capital authorities and/or capacity authorities. The results present for all three parts innovative and practical pathways towards a more sustainable type of governance, with the aim of overcoming the incoherencies, conflicts of interests and inadequate levels of cooperation which could be identified. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.