Examining the US amateur-radio community through a polycentricity lens

Abstract

Amateur radio (AR) operators provide societal services in public safety, spectrum applications, and training future experts. However, benefits derived from these services are challenging to define formally or contractually, resulting in potential under-provisioning in traditional market economies. We propose that communities like AR that aim to promote such open-ended innovation may not benefit from exclusive-resource rights and trading. Instead of market mechanisms, non-exclusive rights regimes can be analyzed through a lens of polycentricity, but such regimes require consensus on adaptable non-market governance rules and incentive-compatible mechanisms for monitoring, sanctioning, and exclusion of nonmembers. Our AR case study exemplifies stakeholders replacing market governance with nonexclusive property-rights models to harmonize diverse autonomous entities in producing open-ended societal services.