Balancing Costs and Benefits of Collaboration in an Ecology of Games

The growth of collaborative approaches to governance has resulted in increasingly complex policy and management landscapes, where actors are presented with ever‐increasing numbers of decision‐making venues they can participate in and actors they can collaborate with. Given that actors face constraints on their capacity to manage actor and venue relationships in such polycentric governance systems, we assume the marginal benefit of yet another relationship should begin to diminish at some level of engagement. Furthermore, we hypothesize that such capacity limitations are not static, but decrease as actors learn, develop skills, and formulate strategies for how to navigate complex polycentric systems more effectively. Drawing on the Ecology of Games framework, this article investigates two Swedish collaborative governance initiatives where a multitude of actors came together to address a range of different, but interrelated, policy issues and management tasks. The empirical findings suggest that actors’ capacities to successfully navigate polycentric governance arrangements increase as they gain experience and develop their networking skills. Our findings imply there is a need to balance increased complexity in polycentric systems with increased capacity, otherwise the overall effect of an ever‐increasing number of venues and actors could be collaborative fatigue and decreased abilities to address diverse governance challenges.     

Polycentric Transformation in Kenyan Water Governance: A Dynamic Analysis of Institutional and Social‐Ecological Change

Beginning in 2002, Kenyan water governance transitioned from a monocentric, top‐down system to one exhibiting traits of polycentricity. In this paper, we investigate the changes made to water policy following the 2002 reform, outcomes produced in a collection of community‐ and catchment‐level user groups in the Mount Kenya region, and the conformance of these changes and outcomes with principles of polycentricity. A new framework is used to capture the complex institutional arrangements and interactions existing before and after the polycentric transformation. Unlike many previous polycentricity studies, the present research focuses primarily on the outcomes of the polycentric shift and determines if these correspond to predictions from polycentricity theory. We utilize survey data collected in 2013 from water managers, as well as archival research to interrogate congruence with principles of polycentricity. This study contributes to the broader discussion on polycentricity in two fundamental ways: (i) It documents the functioning of a water management system following a top‐down imposed polycentric reform, and (ii) It empirically inspects whether these polycentric reforms have produced benefits predicted by polycentricity theorists, such as experimentation by local water users, increased collective action, and improved coordination between levels of management.     

Impact of Polycentric Urban Systems on Intra-regional Disparities: A Micro-regional Approach

From the normative perspective of EU regional policy, polycentric spatial development has been seen as an effective tool to overcome regional disparities since the adoption of the European Spatial Development Perspective. However, the impact of a polycentric spatial structure on equal spatial development is ambiguous and still waits for its clarification. This paper examines the relationship by focusing on the local scale, where medium-sized towns play a crucial role as local centres in everyday human lives. Using functional regions of the Czech Republic, this paper defines polycentric urban systems at the micro-regional scale. Subsequently, the level of mono/polycentricity is compared with intra-regional disparities. Based on the results of the analysis, it can be argued that the connection of polycentricity with balanced spatial development is strongly determined by selected indicators. However, the findings do not provide evidence about the strictly positive impact of polycentricity on intra-regional disparities. In a light of these results, the conclusion is rather sceptical about the unique role of polycentricity in spatial development and due to the lack of similar studies, further research is recommended.     

EUROPEAN BRIEFING: Polycentricity in European spatial planning: from an analytical tool to a normative agenda

The notion of polycentricity is gaining widespread currency in both academic and professional debates. It has opened its way in the spatial policy documents of the European Union and member states alike, and has become one of the key components of the integrated spatial development strategy promoted by the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). Whilst polycentricity is increasingly shaping the spatial policy discourses both in the Commission and in member states, the precise meaning of the term has remained elusive. The first two sections of this article aim to unpack the concept of polycentricity, trace its origin and its development and clarify the confusion over its multiple interpretations at various spatial scales. The third section of the article explains how the concept of polycentricity which has traditionally been used as an analytical tool to explain an existing or emerging reality is now increasingly being used to determine that reality. This is based on the analyses of the use of polycentricity within the European spatial planning framework and in particular the ESDP. Here, the article raises a number of questions regarding the promotion of the polycentric urban regions as one of the ESDP's key policy options for a balanced territorial development across Europe.     

Polycentric Systems of Governance: A Theoretical Model for the Commons

Polycentricity is a fundamental concept in commons scholarship that connotes a complex form of governance with multiple centers of semiautonomous decision making. If the decision‐making centers take each other into account in competitive and cooperative relationships and have recourse to conflict resolution mechanisms, they may be regarded as a polycentric governance system. In the context of natural resource governance, commons scholars have ascribed a number of advantages to polycentric governance systems, most notably enhanced adaptive capacity, provision of good institutional fit for natural resource systems, and mitigation of risk on account of redundant governance actors and institutions. Despite the popularity of the concept, systematic development of polycentricity, including its posited advantages, is lacking in the commons literature. To build greater clarity and specificity around the concept, we develop a theoretical model of a polycentric governance system with a focus on the features necessary or conducive for achieving the functioning predicted by commons scholars. The model is comprised of attributes, which constitute the definitional elements, and enabling conditions, which specify additional institutional features for achieving functionality in the commons. The model we propose takes the concept a step further toward specificity without sacrificing the generality necessary for contextual application and further development.     

Measuring Polycentricity and its Promises

Even a decade after the concept of polycentric development became popular and increasingly widespread in Europe as a normative policy stance allegedly leading to cohesion and competitiveness, its empirical basis is still rather weak. This is partly due to a lack of conceptual clearness, which makes its measurement difficult. This research briefing synthesises the results of two recent ESPON projects that aim to create a quantitative measurement of the extent of polycentricity of national urban systems, as well as the links they find between polycentricity and economic and social objectives. Both approaches have their limits and have been, and can be criticized from various perspectives. Some suggestions on how to proceed with this research agenda are presented.     

The Impact of Forum Interdependence and Network Structure on Actor Performance in Complex Governance Systems

One of the main assumptions of the Ecology of Games Framework (EGF) is that governance processes are heavily affected by the interactions among policy actors that take place in multiple decision‐making forums, which often function interdependently. In this article, we use data collected in the Tampa Bay and California Delta water governance systems to examine how “biophysical interdependence”—the extent to which forums deal with interconnected policy problems—impacts the costs that actors face when they participate in forums, which in turn can affect their performance in them. Furthermore, we examine how the individual information exchange networks that actors have (i.e., their ego‐networks) can mediate the previous relationship. We find that actors with networks that have more closure are better able to mitigate the costs associated with participating in biophysically interdependent forums, thus leading to better in‐forum performance. Our findings shed new light on the relationship between structure and function in complex ecologies of games.     

Polycentricity and the Hollow State: Exploring Shared Personnel as a Source of Connectivity in Fragmented Urban Systems

The Ecology of Games (EoG) theory couples institutional rational choice with social network theory, articulating how transaction costs, social capital, and collective action dilemmas shape networks and network outcomes in polycentric governance systems. EoG literature has often focused on social–relational ties across organizational boundaries. However, jurisdictional fragmentation and increased reliance on private contractors in local public service delivery foster another source of network connectivity—shared personnel who work for multiple service providers. Drawing upon novel data of organizational personnel from more than 500 special purpose entities responsible for delivering drinking water to local neighborhoods in the Houston metro area in the state of Texas (United States), we examine how managerial, technical, and financial service delivery personnel connect otherwise independent organizations. We find that districts regulated by a common groundwater management agency and districts which contract with one another are both more likely to share technical and managerial personnel. By studying special districts that have overlapping personnel, we broaden the scope of the EoG framework to include additional layers of governance network complexity. As individual bureaucrats and service professionals play a key role in information transfer and innovation diffusion across organizations, shared personnel networks merit consideration as a mechanism for coordination and collective problem solving in fragmented urban systems.     

Building blocks of polycentric governance

Success or failure of a polycentric system is a function of complex political and social processes, such as coordination between actors and venues to solve specialized policy problems. Yet there is currently no accepted method for isolating distinct processes of coordination, nor to understand how their variance affects polycentric governance performance. We develop and test a building-blocks approach that uses different patterns or “motifs” for measuring and comparing coordination longitudinally on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Our approach confirms that polycentric governance comprises an evolving substrate of interdependent venues and actors over time. However, while issue specialization and actor participation can be improved through the mobilization of venues, such a strategy can also fragment overall polycentric capacity to resolve conflict and adapt to new problems. A building-blocks approach advances understanding and practice of polycentric governance by enabling sharper diagnosis of internal dynamics in complex environmental governance systems.     

资源系统支撑下的乡村旅游地多中心治理研究

乡村旅游地开发已经成为农村经济发展的积极政策选择。本文立足资源与环境的约束,探索根据公共型、公用型和私人型三类不同乡村旅游地形态,分别构建稳健的多中心治理结构,通过“官、产、民、学、媒”等利益主体不同模式下的职能划分与协作互促实现利益均衡和价值最大化,促进乡村旅游地可持续开发目标的实现。     

Questioning Polycentric Development and its Effects. Issues of Definition and Measurement for the Italian NUTS-2 Regions

Polycentric development is a widely used term both in academic research and in the normative agenda. However, its theoretical foundations and economic implications are still unclear and the concept of polycentricity still does not have a shared definition or a shared measurement method. The aim of this study is two-fold. First, it defines and measures polycentricity at a NUTS-2 regional level, by comparing functional and morphological methods. Second, in the light of the role assigned to polycentric development in terms of policy, the study investigates the relationships between the degree of regional polycentricity and the key economic variables of performance, namely, competitiveness, social cohesion and environmental sustainability. Our main finding was that functional and morphological methods lead to similar results. In addition, we find a correlation between polycentricity and a more unequal income distribution and a higher level of productivity, especially when polycentricity was measured in functional terms. No stable correlations were found between polycentricity and measures of environmental sustainability, such as land consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.     

Participation in Multiple Decision Making Water Governance Forums in Brazil Enhances Actors’ Perceived Level of Influence

The Ecology of Games Framework (EGF) draws attention to the intertwined nature of different forums in a given policy setting and how this affects governance outcomes. In this article, we associate the EGF with the literature on power asymmetries, in order to investigate hypotheses of actors’ perceived level of influence in a forum. Focusing on the Paraíba do Sul river basin committee in Brazil, we specifically explore actors’ participation in multiple forums, time spent participating in the basin committee, and actors’ degree of involvement in the committee as factors that might explain actors’ level of perceived influence in the forum. The findings suggest participation in multiple forums is a key driver of perceived influence and thus highlight a way to challenge traditional power asymmetries. More research, however, is needed to determine to what extent perceived influence is affecting decision‐making processes and governance outcomes in the Paraíba do Sul river basin committee.     

Polycentricity – one concept or many?

This paper aims to discuss polycentrism and its implications. Polycentricity plays a key role in EU Cohesion Policy and has done so since 1999 when the notion was included in the European Spatial Development Perspective. Politically, it emerged as a key tool because of its ability to fuse together the two primary and conflicting perceptions of spatial–economic development, cohesion and competitiveness. No agreed definition of polycentricity exists. Furthermore, different actors and disciplines define polycentrism differently. The absence of a concise and coherent definition makes it difficult to measure polycentricity. Moreover, several studies have concluded that it is difficult to identify empirical evidence to support the positive claims made in its name. Polycentrism is assumed toolbox to reduce regional disparities, but polycentric countries display higher regional disparities than monocentric countries. Polycentric countries do not perform better than monocentric countries with regard to competitiveness and GDP/cap. As such, this paper concludes that not only does the political meaning of polycentricity struggle over aims with the inherit dichotomy at its heart, it also struggles in terms of basic credibility.     

Contestability ‘theory’, its links with Australia’s competition policy,and recent international trade and investment agreements

This article examines how contestable market theory (contestability) has come to reconfigure the economic and regulatory concept of competition in order to enhance the compatibility of Australia’s economy with international trade and investment agreements. Australia has recently negotiated and signed a raft of bilateral, plurilateral and regional agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Australia–China Free Trade Agreement. In order to ensure that Australia meets its obligations and commitments to these agreements, two key advisory bodies—the Harper Panel on Competition Policy Review and the Financial System Inquiry—made recommendations, the majority of which were accepted by the government, to ready Australia’s competition governance and economic policy for greater global integration. Such impact is dependent on, among other things, how domestic competition policy meshes with the free market ideology underpinning such international agreements, which favours the breakdown of barriers to markets. Less well known is the role of contestability in radicalising ideology as it countenances monopolisation and privatisation in the guise of market access by justifying the substitution of actual competition with the mere threat of competition. The article concludes that the monopoly power of transnational corporations will be enhanced through the acquiescence of governments to the new governance regime of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which, supported by domestic policy, is set to redraw competition policy in the light of contestability theory.     

Polycentrism as a Multi-Scalar Relationship Between Urban and Rural Areas: The Case of Portugal

This article introduces a reflective analysis of polycentrism. Since the 1990s, polycentrism has provided the foundation for countless spatial planning policies in Europe. Most studies highlight the importance of cities and towns as the principal nodes for regional development. This article discusses whether polycentrism is the best planning solution for managing the imbalances and relationships between urban and rural areas. Empirically, it will focus on the polycentric discourse that has recently gained strength in Portugal, by evaluating the national spatial planning policy programme and its consequences for regional development. It will make a comparative analysis between the national spatial development perspective proposed by the programme and certain sociological findings that characterized the rural areas caught out between urbanization and marginalization. This will be illustrated with research on the Alentejo region, one of the largest rural areas in Portugal.     

The Implementation of Public Policy: Still the Missing Link

Although theories of public policy and theories of governance both seek to establish relationships between policymaking and its consequences, they do not complement each other very well. Public policy models tend to de-emphasize that which governance theories tend to emphasize: the influence on government performance of implementation, broadly described as the actions taken by those engaged in administration (including managers at all levels, those engaged in service delivery, and third-party agents) after a policy has been lawfully promulgated by elected officials and interpreted by the courts. A comparison of a recently developed theory of public sector performance with several prominent theories of policymaking suggests that multilevel governance theories can supply what continues to be the missing link in public policy theories. At the same time, governance theories might be enriched by the process modeling of public policy theories.     

Discourses of Mobility and Polycentric Development: A Contested View of European Spatial Planning

This article carries out an analysis of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), a policy document which represents a critical moment in the emergence of a new discourse of European spatial development. The analytical approach probes at the power relations which have shaped the ESDP framework and its contents, focusing on the twin core themes of spatial mobility and polycentricity. The analysis concludes that in the contested policy process a new spatial discourse of economic competitiveness is emerging at the expense of social and environmental interests. This new discourse will be further contested as implementation takes place in an uncertain policy environment.     

Analyzing Policy Networks Using Valued Exponential Random Graph Models: Do Government‐Sponsored Collaborative Groups Enhance Organizational Networks?

This paper examines collaborative management groups from the perspective of policymakers seeking to increase coordination within a policy network. While governments often support collaborative groups as a tool to address perceived network failures such as a lack of coordination, the net impact groups have is unclear. I use valued exponential random graph models (ERGMs) to model relationships of varying strength among a regional network of organizations involved in 57 collaborative groups. This provides a unique opportunity to study the interplay between numerous groups and organizations within a large‐scale network. Valued ERGMs are a recently developed extension of standard ERGMs that model valued instead of binary ties; thus, this paper also makes a methodological contribution to the policy literature. Findings suggest that participation in collaborative groups does motivate coordination and cooperation amongst individual network organizations; however, this effect is strongest for: (i) organizations that are not already members of another group and (ii) organizations that do not have a preexisting tie. These results support a transaction‐cost–based perspective of how government‐sponsored collaborative groups can influence network coordination; further, they also provide an empirical example of the Ecology of Games, in which multiple collaborative institutions have interactive effects on one another within a policy network.     

Reality versus Policy: The Delineation and Testing of Local Labour Market and Spatial Policy Areas

As part of the empirical planning science, this article integrates theory, empirical findings and policy. It first deals with the question how to reach a theoretically well-grounded and empirical applicable delineation of local labour market areas. An inductive classification method is selected based on the behaviour of individual commuters without selecting a priori central places. By this, new urban forms like polynodality are included. In using this method for the Netherlands, 31 local labour market areas (LLAs) were distinguished. Moreover, the article elaborates some simple measures to test the optimality of LLA classifications. The 31 LLAs adequately reflect the 'reality' of actual functional labour market relationships. The article also investigates the matching between reality and the LLA classification as used in spatial policy. There is a large gap between reality and policy. This urges bringing the policy classification more in line with existing LLAs. Alternatively, if one considers the present policy classification as an instrument for future spatial structure, much additional effort will be required. The findings of the article can be easily applied to other European countries.     

Regional Design in the Context of Fragmented Territorial Governance: South Wing Studio

In the Netherlands, the formation of governance arrangements around planning issues that cross administrative boundaries has been assisted frequently by a design approach that is often referred to as “regional design”. This is a distinctive method of policy argumentation that makes use of spatial representations of the plausible future of regions. Such representations are intended not only to indicate physical changes, but also to stimulate debate on sharing responsibilities and resources for planning tasks among planning actors. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the performance of regional design in the context of fragmented regional governance through a case study in the southern part of the Randstad in the Netherlands. We argue that regional design has contributed to institutional capacity in a complex polycentric and, looking at the governance structure, pluricentric region like the Randstad South Wing, largely by allowing for multiple interpretations.