Integrated, collaborative governance arrangements are viewed as answering the limitations of the liberal, democratic state in the face of ‘wicked’ policy dilemmas such as environmental degradation. The nature of institutional resistance to governance experiments, however, has received limited attention. This paper explores a case of such resistance by the New South Wales political system: the decision to disband the Hawkesbury–Nepean Catchment Management Trust. This discontinuation of the administrative coordination and community engagement aimed at restoring the health of Sydney's major river system is herein characterised as a deliberative truncation. Discussion of what would constitute constructive ecological institutional and policy settings was cut short by intolerant notions of efficacy sustained by political/administrative routines. Analysis of this truncation is progressed through a nexus between three mutually informative theories of modernity dealing with the policy challenges facing liberal democratic societies today.
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