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.     

Uncommon Ground: The ‘Poverty of History’ in Common Property Discourse

It would not be a great exaggeration to say that scholars of environmental conservation and conflict have re‐discovered the institutional foundations of social and economic life. At the heart of this ‘renaissance’ is the belief that property and property relations have a strong bearing on how people use, manage and abuse natural resource systems, and that institutional arrangements based on the creation and management of common property can have positive impacts on resource use and conservation. Two bodies of thought compete for a voice in this literature. One, which aims to resolve Hardin's tragedy of the commons, is primarily concerned with the problem of encouraging collective action to conserve resources that are both depletable and unregulated. A second, influenced by notions of moral economy and entitlement, deals with the problem of creating and sustaining resource access for poor and vulnerable groups in society. This article argues that the literature on common property has become divided between a body of scholarship that uses deductive models of individual decision‐making and rational choice to explain the ways in which different types of property rights arrangements emerge and change over time, and one whose questions, aims and methods are more modest, and historically‐specific. It then aims to understand this evolution by situating the mainstream common property discourse in the wider intellectual trend of positivism, methodological individualism and formal modelling that has come to dominate social science in the United States. In so doing, it attempts to unravel the political and ideological foundations of what has come to be a dominant mode of understanding environmental problems, and solutions to these problems.     

Customary Tenure and Reciprocal Grazing Arrangements in Eastern Ethiopia

This article examines how customary tenure provides a basis for reciprocal access arrangements and facilitates access to grazing resources in order to adapt to changing conditions. A critical review of the literature on the range ecology and institutions of resource governance guides the overall analysis, while empirical results from three case studies show that internal social relationships and kinship structures still remain important determining factors in facilitating access to the grazing commons. Many forms of institutional arrangements exist, providing different kinds of incentives. For instance, trading of grazing rights at household level provides an important safety‐net for poor pastoral and agropastoral herders, in spite of fears regarding negative externalities for de facto co‐owners of the commons. Evidence from the three studied districts reveals that the influence of resource attributes on institutional choice favours flexibility rather than supporting the axiom of the conventional property rights theory, which considers greater exclusivity to be a natural response to scarcity. Institutions supporting reciprocal grazing relations are characterized by negotiability and by an ambiguity of rights: clan rules facilitating reciprocal grazing are not based on maximization of benefits from own grazing commons, but rather on maximization of security of use rights through investing in relations with others.     

Why Does Polycentric Governance Work for Some Project Sites and Not Others? Explaining the Sustainability of Tramline Projects in the Philippines

Why are some tramlines, as human-made common pool resources, sustained while others are not, even under a similar polycentric governance structure? Do the institutional design principles of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework explain these different outcomes? The National Tramline Program is a national rural infrastructure development project started in 2009 by the research institute of the Department of Agriculture in the Philippines. Using originally collected survey data and employing mixed methods, we examine the determinants of the operational status of tramlines by comparing successful and failed cases. Building upon the IAD framework and polycentric governance for common pool resource management, we demonstrate that in addition to the farmers’ commitment to collective actions, the institutional characteristics of micro-institutions, namely, the democratic selection of a leader for the farmers’ associations, are key to sustaining tramlines. Furthermore, case studies of both success and failure illustrate that the active involvement of municipal local governments and the presence of coordination among related agencies at various levels are essential for maintaining tramlines as human-made common pool resources.     

A Nonparametric Analysis of Employment Density in a Polycentric City

Nonparametric estimation procedures offer distinct advantages in modeling polycentric cities because they are flexible enough to account for functional form misspecification and incorrect subcenter sites. This paper presents locally weighted (LW) regression estimates of employment density in suburban Chicago. LW regression estimates are more accurate than OLS regression and capture the effects of missing variables. The results demonstrate that Chicago is indeed a polycentric city: although the traditional city center continues to affect employment density patterns in the suburbs, local peaks have developed around secondary employment centers.     

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.     

The Ecology of Games as a Theory of Polycentricity: Recent Advances and Future Challenges

The Ecology of Games approach to examining complex governance systems in democratic societies has been recently refurbished to infuse renewed vitality in the analysis of institutions and collective action in polycentric governance systems. This opening article to the special issue on the Ecology of Games Theory (EGT) will discuss the main component elements of the theory, as well as recently produced empirical advances that test and extend it. The article is structured in three sections. The first section describes the EGT as a theory of polycentricity and explains why it is critical to study both the structure and function of polycentric governance systems, including collaboration among policy stakeholders, learning about problems, and equitably distributing the resources generated by policy interactions. The second section reviews empirical evidence that examine structure and function in polycentric systems, including their coevolution. Finally, the third section will provide insights on future research needs to strengthen this newly developed theory of polycentricity.     

Metropolitan Governance in Sydney: A Case of ‘Joint Decision-Making’

This article analyses metropolitan governance arrangements in contemporary Sydney. Debate about the efficacy of these arrangements typically degenerates into an argument about the pros and cons of institutional consolidation. The article moves beyond this dispute, drawing on the concept of ‘actor-centred institutionalism’ to argue that Sydney's urban sprawl, combined with its rigid institutional setting, has produced what can be described as a ‘joint decision system’ of governance. Effective metropolitan governance in Sydney mainly depends on the ability to reach negotiated agreements within this system. However, a rising level of conflict between the New South Wales State government and local councils located within metropolitan Sydney increases the likeliness of undesirable blockades within the joint decision system. The article concludes that a cautious exercise of new overriding powers by the State government is crucial to promoting more effective metropolitan governance in Sydney.     

Not Learning from the Past: Adaptive Governance Challenges for Australian Natural Resource Management

Australia's governance arrangements for natural resource management (NRM) have evolved considerably over the last 30 years. The impact of changes in governance on NRM planning and delivery requires assessment. We undertake a multi‐method programme evaluation using adaptive governance principles as an analytical frame and apply this to Queensland to assess the impacts of governance change on NRM planning and governance outcomes. Data to inform our analysis includes: (1) a systematic review of 16 audits/evaluations of Australian NRM over a 15‐year period; (2) a review of Queensland's first‐generation NRM plans; and (3) outputs from a Queensland workshop on NRM planning. NRM has progressed from a bottom‐up grassroots movement into a collaborative regional NRM model that has been centralised by the Australian government. We found that while some adaptive governance challenges have been addressed, others remained unresolved. Results show that collaboration and elements of multi‐level governance under the regional model were positive moves, but also that NRM arrangements contained structural deficiencies across multiple governance levels in relation to public involvement in decision‐making and knowledge production for problem responsiveness. These problems for adaptive governance have been exacerbated since 2008. We conclude that the adaptive governance framework for NRM needs urgent attention so that important environmental management problems can be addressed.     

POPULATION DENSITY IN A CENTRAL‐PLACE SYSTEM

The existing empirical literature about polycentric population density has focused on the urban scale, and the alternative models proposed in that context have been justified using heuristic arguments. This paper describes how polycentric density distributions can, in general, be endowed with a theoretical framework which differs from the existing literature with respect to the treatment of centers: instead of assuming that they represent places of work, it assumes they are places that provide goods and services to households. This imposes a hierarchical structure on the model, which allows replacing the set of distances to all centers (typically used in the existing literature as the same explanans irrespectively of location) with a smaller set of distances that corresponds to the number of levels in the hierarchy and varies with location. The central‐place framework used also provides a direct link between a polycentric model and the Clark formula, in the sense that the latter can emerge through a smoothing procedure of the former. Finally, in the context of central places, the scope of related empirical investigations can be extended naturally from the urban to the regional scale. This is the scale of a simple test presented here, which has been specifically included to support the corresponding theoretical arguments about the structure of a polycentric density gradient. The paper concludes with some expected problems and advantages of applying these ideas to the urban scale.     

The Political Construction of Extractive Regimes in Two Newly Created Indian States: A Comparative Analysis of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh

This article presents a multidimensional account of the politics of resource extraction in two subnational regions of India in response to the question: what are the political conditions that facilitate extraction? Emerging from the same moment of state creation in 2000, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are adjacent mineral-rich states with similar demographic profiles and comparable levels of economic development. The authors argue that despite these similarities and India's highly centralized legislative framework for natural resource governance, the two states have developed distinctive ‘extractive regimes’ in the years since statehood, which contrast in important ways across three dimensions: political organization and history, institutional effectiveness, and the nature and management of social resistance. The article offers the first in-depth, comparative account of how subnational territorial reorganization in India acts as a critical juncture enabling the formation of extractive regimes, which have also converged in important ways in recent years.     

From the Guerra Del Agua to the Guerra Del Gas: Resource Governance,Neoliberalism and Popular Protest in Bolivia

Recent resource protests in Bolivia have crystallized broad sets of claims involving livelihood rights, political participation, regional autonomy, and the meanings of citizenship and the nation. In both the 2000 “Water War”, and the 2003 “Gas War”, protestors objected to the restructuring and re‐scaling of resource governance that has taken place under recent waves of neoliberal reforms in Bolivia. In both cases, protestors demanded greater participation in decision‐making regarding resource management, more equitable distribution of the economic benefits derived from resource exploitation, and a more socially oriented alternative to Bolivia's neoliberal model of economic development. In spite of these similarities, however, these struggles were characterized by markedly uneven geographies of popular protest. The water and gas wars had different spatial dynamics, stemming in part from the biophysical differences between water and natural gas, and the ways these resources enter into social life. Moreover, the protests had very uneven social effects, and in some respects excluded the most marginalized sectors of Bolivia's poor.     

空间联系视角的沈阳市多中心城市结构研究

以沈阳市为研究案例,借鉴国际著名团队POLYNET的研究经验并加以改良,进行了空间联系视角的多中心城市结构的实证分析。分别从人口密度分布、就业-居住空间联系网络与企业空间组织网络三个维度来识别沈阳市的人口中心、就业中心与产业中心,综合分析这些"中心"得出四点结论:①城市核心区就业与居住中心构成十字交叉的内循环结构;②浑南新区次中心特征颇具雏形;③外围人口中心、就业中心与产业中心错位发展;④沈阳市呈现不均衡的多中心结构特征。     

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.     

Deep commoning: public folklore and environmental policy on a resource frontier

Abstract

This article explores the concept and practice of the commons as a holistic, multi-sectoral, cross-disciplinary framework for critical heritage work on resource frontiers. Drawing from my research on forest commoning in the Appalachian coalfields, I argue that land-based systems of commoning vital to communities in the path of resource extraction merit more attention from heritage workers. Commons tend to disappear through their atomization into siloed objects of study and stewardship. This disappearance, partly a function of reductionist, dualistic thinking, also signals a persistent colonialist myth of emptiness. I argue that the embodied, participatory field methods of public folklorists are particularly well-suited to the study and accreditation of land-based commons as heritage. Building on the idea of ‘deep ecology’, the notion of ‘deep commoning’ espouses our implication in worlds we bring into dialogue through the practice of public folklore as critical heritage work.     

The Formation of Large-scale Collaborative Resource Management Institutions: Clarifying the Roles of Stakeholders, Science, and Institutions

This article explores the emergence of collaborative institutional arrangements for managing natural resources in large-scale and complex resource settings, among numerous political jurisdictions and stakeholders. It examines four regional institutions in the United States: the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's Fish and Wildlife Program, the Chesapeake Bay Program, the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, and the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. While a wealth of literature has looked at the emergence of smaller-scale resource management institutions, and some literature has begun to look at the characteristics and successes of these regional institutions, theory is lacking to explain the formation of these regional institutions. We first introduce three relevant streams of literature—on common pool resources management, on policy entrepreneurs and social capital, and on science and information in policy change—to frame our analysis. The comparisons of the cases point to the importance of integrating key insights from the literature for understanding the formation of collaborative resource governance. We emphasize how science, leadership, and prior organizational experience interact in facilitating institutional change, particularly in the process of raising awareness about resource management problems. In tracing the formation of these institutions, we also identify how external institutional triggers can help spur collaborative governance.     

Carl Schmitt, Reinhart Koselleck and the foundations of history and politics

This article explores the intellectual relations between Carl Schmitt and the German historian Reinhart Koselleck with a focus on the inspiration that Koselleck found in Schmitt's work in the early 1950s. The article goes beyond earlier contributions in the field by illuminating how the most important discursive features that Koselleck drew from Schmitt were utilized toward a very independent intellectual project. This project concerned an attempt to revise modern political thought by means of outlining a new concept of history. Koselleck's concept of history was to depart from all utopian notions of history as a singular, unified and goal-directed process. Instead, it aimed to outline certain fundamental existential structures of the human condition and to take account of the social relations existing among human beings in order to understand (historically) and contain (politically) the potential conflict in human societies. Hence Koselleck believed that his new concept of history would lead to a more responsible foundation of political order and decision making. Following an analysis of how Koselleck developed his project in a dialogue with the work of Schmitt and a number of other scholars, first of all Friedrich Meinecke and Martin Heidegger, the article presents a brief perspective on how his new concept of history was received in the 1950s and on how it came to provide his work with a certain analytical, thematic and argumentative unity.     

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.     

Data Integration Issues in Research Supporting Sustainable Natural Resource Management

Current decision‐making in natural resource use and management aims at delivering ecologically‐sustainable development to achieve conservation and economic benefits. The process of guiding natural resource use requires the integration of social, economic and biophysical information on which to base management decisions. This paper discusses the integration of socio‐economic information for natural resource management (NRM) planning and decision‐making in the Australian context. A comprehensive resource of socio‐economic data is the Census, which is undertaken every five years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for the whole of Australia. Unfortunately there are qualitative and quantitative issues stemming from the use of ABS census data maps for NRM decision‐making, as they are at a different scale to and the boundaries do not coincide with biophysical information. These issues include the variable shape of collection districts, the use of enumerated data for population‐based statistics, the large size of collection districts in low populated areas, and the averaging of socio‐economic information over the collection districts. Examples highlight these issues and show a way forwards in improving data integration, which includes simple spatial overlay methods and regression modelling.     

World Bank Influence and Institutional Reform in Argentina

During the 1990s, reforms concerned with ‘good governance’ became popular with multilateral and bilateral lenders. This trend was led by the World Bank, which claimed that in order to achieve economic development, institutions mattered. This article looks at governance reforms in Argentina, specifically in the judicial sector, and contends that World Bank involvement affected the nature, reach and depth of these initiatives. The influence of the Bank can be traced through three dimensions that have characterized its approach to institutional reform: donor‐driven designs for project reform; reliance on technical approaches; and restricted forms of decision making in project initiatives. Such an approach to institutional change conditioned domestic reform in Argentina and contributed to piecemeal and inadequate initiatives. The author also argues that the Bank's approach in Argentina can be traced to wider strategies that derive from embedded institutional practices and ideological foundations within the institution that throw into question the Bank's capacities to promote such reforms.