Adapting to Sea‐Level Rise: Centralization or Decentralization in Polycentric Governance Systems?

Abstract

How do polycentric governance systems respond to the emergence of new collective‐action problems? We study this question in the context of the evolution of polycentric systems of sea‐level rise adaptation in the San Francisco Bay Area. We focus on how the structure of polycentric systems changes over time to support cooperation and learning and whether those changes represent a process of centralization or decentralization. The ecology of games framework provides the theoretical background for developing hypotheses about the structure of the system over time. We test the hypotheses by analyzing the polycentric system as a two‐mode network where actors are linked to policy, divided into five time periods from 1991 to 2016. The results suggest that the polycentric system for sea‐level rise adaptation started with a centralized set of actors, which evolved over time to a more decentralized structure. The research has general implications with respect to how polycentric systems manage the trade‐off between maintaining local autonomy and coordinating decisions at the regional level across fragmented policy communities.