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This article examines under what conditions states engage in transnational public–private partnerships for the environment. While there is hardly a disagreement in the literature on the rise of transnational actors and new modes of collaborative governance, their interaction with and impact on state institutions remain debated and insufficiently illuminated by empirical research. Some scholars of globalization interpret transnational partnerships as evidence of state insufficiency and retreat, others emphasize the continued primacy of state power in manipulating old and new institutional arenas, still other scholars anticipate the "rearticulation" of the state to partake in new governance. This study is one of the first to examine theoretically and empirically, using a sample of some 230 partnerships, how domestic capacity, the constituencies of transnational actors, as well as international donors and institutions shape the variable rearticulation of the state to partake in partnerships. A comparative case study of Brazil and Russia provides further detail on the political dynamics that enable or constrain state-society collaborations for the environment.

The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro unleashed new energy in environmental governance, engaging actors beyond the state and across scales, from local to global, from communities to large transnational networks. In this paper we argue that this expanded pluralism has contributed to a remarkable array of governance experimentation and innovations for the environment. The impact and legacy of Rio thus goes far beyond the formal agreements that emerged in 1992. We explore why Rio had this effect by examining the context within which Rio took place and the dynamics that it served to catalyze. We close by discussing the need to generate processes that lead to coordinated innovations. Such a reorganization of the global governance space could start a new legacy of collective wondering and multiple pathways to a greener future.