Abstract
Failure to address unsustainable global change is often attributed to failures in conventional environmental governance. Polycentric environmental governance—the popular alternative—involves many centres of authority interacting coherently for a common governance goal. Yet, longitudinal analysis reveals many polycentric systems are struggling to cope with the growing impacts, pace, and scope of social and environmental change. Analytic shortcomings are also beginning to appear, particularly in the treatment of power. Here we draw together diverse social science perspectives and research into a variety of cases to show how different types of power shape rule setting, issue construction, and policy implementation in polycentric governance. We delineate an important and emerging research agenda for polycentric environmental governance, integrating diverse types of power into analytical and practical models.
Highlights
Global environmental change is a wicked challenge: non-reducible, variable, and complex
We argue that while it is axiomatic that all governance involves uneven power dynamics, many studies of polycentric governance provide only partial analyses of the initial design or the emergent structure of polycentric systems, ignoring uneven power dynamics or relegating them to being exogenous to the system
We argue that scientists and policymakers can improve their ability to explain and enhance the environmental outcomes of polycentric systems by re-conceiving polycentric governance not just as a structural solution or a diagnostic and as a set of diverse institutions, agencies, and other social actors influenced by power-laden social relationships
Summary
Global environmental change is a wicked challenge: non-reducible, variable, and complex. Polycentric systems are attractive to a wide variety of interests in that they allow for more policy innovation and diffusion across multiple organisational units, whether through “hard” regulation or “soft” instruments such as economic incentives, voluntary agreements, selfregulation, and sustainability certification (Jordan et al, 2013, 2015). Advocates suggest that this form of governance creates new opportunities for multiple actors at multiple levels to take responsibility for initiating and implementing sustainability and resilience solutions (Carlisle and Gruby, 2017; Pattberg and Widerberg, 2016; Steffen et al, 2018). We conclude by highlighting future research needs which are dependent on a power-centred analysis
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