Complex Governance Networks Research Articles

Complex Governance Network Analysis Between Brazilian Public Policies

Objective: The objective of this article is to create a Complex Governance Network Analysis Framework between two public policies. To prove the predictions of this study, the Theoretical Framework proposed here was applied between the National School Feeding Program (PNAE) and the School Health Program (PSE) in two locations. Theoretical Framework: To discuss the objective of this article, the approaches of Complex Governance Network (Morçöl, 2023) and Individual and Social Learning (Habermas, 1984, 1987; Lankester, 2013; Maarleveld and Dangbenonpag, 1999) were used. Method: This research is of a qualitative-descriptive nature and abductive logic, using as a strategy a study of multiple embedded cases and collection of primary and secondary data. Results and Discussion: By proposing a complex governance network analysis framework between two public policies, this study made a theoretical contribution by adding more dimensions to this theoretical lens. The study of learning contributes to understanding the cognitive evolution of the population, including adult learning, a responsible individual active in public policies. Research Implications: As practical contributions, this research helps in monitoring and structuring strategies in public management. Because, by understanding the learning level of each public servant, it is possible to observe the creativity of each actor involved in solving problems. Originality/Value: The study of learning contributes to understanding the cognitive evolution of the population, including adult learning, a responsible individual active in public policies.

Leveraging Chennai’s Complex Governance Network for Addressing the City’s Water Woes

Chennai’s governance network plays a critical role in shaping the city’s waterscape. Through an urban political ecology (UPE) lens, this article investigates the intersection between water as part of nature and water as shaped by social context, with a focus on existing governance networks. Using a combination of social network analysis and thematic analysis, the article studies data gathered from in-depth semi-structured interviews, workshop discussions with stakeholders, and extensive literature and policy reviews. The analysis reveals a need to reconfigure the urban governance network and the relationships therein to work towards a sustainable future for Chennai’s water system. The article concludes by offering policy recommendations to leverage the strengths and weaknesses of the complex inter-agency relations that shape Chennai’s current waterscape.

Space, Time, and Hydrosocial Imaginaries: Water Quality Governance of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe

We examine ways in which space and time, as well as governance, are embedded in and revealed by hydrosocial imaginaries. As conceptions of space and time are fundamental to the establishment of sociocultural-political relationships, they are central to water governance in providing a framework on which overall hydrosocial relations are constructed. We also recognize the ways in which Tribes continually redraw trajectories of power through engaging and reshaping complex governance networks. Our focus is how tribal governance of water quality connects a core value of the Pyramid Lake Paiutes to two of their hydrosocial imaginaries. Both hydrosocial imaginaries motivate governance practices and actions through which social meaning is constituted for the Pyramid Lake Paiutes and relationships are built with respect to water. We find that water quality governance is an avenue in which the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe move beyond partial and abstracted rights of inclusion by incorporating multidimensional Indigenous systems of obligation that span time and space. Key Words: hydrosocial imaginaries, Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, spatiotemporalities, tribal environmental governance, water quality.

‘Real-world’ priority setting for service improvement in English primary care: a decentred approach

ABSTRACT This article develops an analysis of population-level priority setting informed by Bevir’s decentred theory of governance and drawing on a qualitative study of priority setting for service improvement conducted in the complex multi-layered governance context of English primary care. We show how powerful actors, operating at the meso-level, utilize pluralistic and contradictory elements of complex governance networks to discursively construct, legitimize and enact service improvement priorities. Our analysis highlights the role of situated agency in integrating top-down, bottom-up and horizontal influences on priority setting, which leads to variation in local priorities despite the continuous presence of strong hierarchical influences.

Kaupungin strateginen spatiaalinen suunnittelu – Navigointia eri mittakaavatasojen ja rationaliteettien välillä

This article scrutinises the role of communicative and strategic rationalities in the strategic spatial planning of a city. With an analytical framework that draws on Habermas’ theory of communicative action, the article identifies communicatively and strategically rational action orientations in competitive and collaborative settings at different scales of strategic spatial planning. The analytical feasibility of the framework is examined by analysing strategic spatial planning in the city of Turku (Finland). By providing insights on the central role of strategic rationality, the article contributes to the theoretical discourse on strategic spatial planning that has been strained by an overemphasis on communicative rationality. Regarding relevance to planning practice, the article adds to the understanding of the complex governance networks in which a city engages in its strategic spatial planning.

The Taming of the Stew

Based on a case study of food safety governance, this article examines how rule-makers can employ additional intermediaries to address agency problems between the rule-makers and the initial intermediaries upon whom they rely to govern targets of regulation. Reliance on additional intermediaries can reduce agency problems between rule-makers and initial intermediaries, without replicating those problems between the rule-makers and the additional intermediaries. This analysis also reveals that, in some cases, intermediaries make rules, which blurs the distinction between rule-makers and intermediaries. Moreover, in complex governance networks, such as the food safety system, it is misleading to attribute the origin of many governance standards to authoritative “rule-makers.” Instead, standards emerge out of network interactions. The article concludes that by favoring the term “regulator” rather than “rule-maker,” the RIT model can avoid mischaracterizing rulemaking in complex regulatory systems without compromising its explanatory power with regard to reliance on intermediaries.

Carvajal, S.A.: Building on a Century of Business Growth and Family Values

This case presents the history and recent governance challenges of Carvajal, S.A., a Colombia-based, family-owned, billion-dollar-plus holding company that had offered printing-related (e.g., Yellow Pages, notebooks) and other products and services across and beyond South America for more than a century. Specifically, the case details the company’s state of affairs in early 2011, a time by which Carvajal’s flagship businesses had matured rapidly with the emergence of digital technology and diminished demand for paper/print-based products. Though profits and growth remained positive, Carvajal’s leaders knew that upholding the business’s legacy of returns, dividends for all family members, and extensive philanthropy would take significant strategy and execution.Compounding the strategy issues, Carvajal faced these market challenges with new leadership: the first non-family CEO since the company’s inception. Well-established Colombian executive Ricardo Obregon had been hired in 2008 over two family candidates to lead the business. Obregon was to oversee a complex governance network that included a holding company with seven operating companies, their management and respective boards, a family council, and 280 members (including spouses) of a shareholding family in its sixth generation. Carvajal’s business and family leaders had to face market issues and decisions that included the possibility of taking public the operating companies and/or the holding company while maintaining the business’s long traditions of unity, respect, strong ethics, and philanthropy. That meant optimizing several crucial relationships: between the family and the new CEO; between the family and the board; between the operating companies and the holding company; and between members of the large Carvajal family, many of whom now resided outside of Colombia and Latin America.Understand general and specific challenges associated with carrying on a longstanding family business facing multiple market challenges; explore the process of engaging a complex family-business governance network to handle business challenges while maintaining family values; consider the effects of culture on a multi-generation family business.

The emergence of an environmental governance network: the case of the Arizona borderlands

Across the country, government agencies increasingly collaborate with non-governmental actors on environmental dilemmas to gain access to resources, expertise, and local knowledge; to mitigate conflict; and to share risks in a changing environmental context. Collectively, these often overlapping collaborations form a complex and dynamic governance network (GNet). This paper examines the establishment and growth of an environmental GNet over a period of 15 years in conflict-ridden southeastern Arizona, USA. Using social network analysis, we detect the emergence of several influential organizations acting as political entrepreneurs and observe an overall change in network composition. We describe three phases: (1) a newly emerged network, (2) a network dominated by national non-governmental organizations, and finally (3) a shift toward local non-governmental organization involvement. Using institutional analysis, we explore how conflict over natural resource use, decreasing public and private monies for management, and increasing tensions over border security, leads to the establishment of new collaborations and new network participants. While this research focuses on environmental governance in southeastern Arizona, this methodological approach—and insights into the key role of organizations acting as political entrepreneurs—provides a useful starting place for analyzing networks of collaborative governance in other geographic and political contexts. Organizations’ perceptions of risk and trust are keys to understanding the dynamics of collaboration within a GNet.

Implementing the EU Water Framework Directive in Norway: Bridging the Gap Between Water Management Networks and Elected Councils?

To handle the challenge of complex cross-sector and multilevel coordination in the implementation of the European Union Water Framework Directive, Norway has established multilevel governance networks. Observers have pointed to a risk of such governance arrangements being dominated by experts. This article studies the highly complex multilevel governance networks of water management in Norway, and unveils the importance of political anchorage of such governance networks at local and regional levels. The study finds evidence that political anchorage matters for further network achievements. Because the water governance networks are subordinated to the hierarchy of government, they need to ‘talk to' the system of hierarchical government in order to be effective. In this regard, it seems crucial that networks are politically anchored. Furthermore, the study unveils the important role of political leadership and network managers in ensuring political anchorage.

Managing commercialised media attention in complex governance networks: positive and negative effects on network performance

Despite the importance of the media and the considerable literature on media logic and the mediatisation of politicians, there is very little research on effects of – as conceptualised here – commercialised media attention on network performance. To address this lacuna, the article draws on a survey of project managers involved in complex spatial projects in the four largest cities in The Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague) and managers from two consultancy firms involved in similar projects (n=141). Quantitative analysis shows that perception of commercialised media attention has negative effects on network performance but that these effects are reduced considerably by network management activities.

District plans in Israel: post-mortem?

In this paper, I qualitatively examine the rise and possible fall of statutory district plans as a major tool of regional planning in Israel. Rigid statutory regional plans are a top-down means, and the Israeli case demonstrates that their days are not necessarily over in an era of ‘soft spaces’ and complex governance networks. The swing of the pendulum in attitudes toward these plans is not associated with centralization–decentralization trends. Rather, it reflects power relations between two centralized coalitions of stakeholders. The one led by elected politicians favors proactive-developmental goals, aiming at state-led open-ended or non-statutory planning. The other coalition, led by central state bureaucrats, favors strict regulation. NGOs, assumed to form the core of soft horizontal governance networks, paradoxically support top-down ‘hard’ modes of regional planning, in the name of environmental sustainability that is not necessarily best served by bottom-up soft approaches.

Introduction: Social Network Analysis Applications in Complex Governance Networks

The growth in studying complexity, governance, and networks is a noticeable fact. Complex public policy problems require productive collaborations among multiple actors from different sectors. Public, private, and not-for-profit organizations work through governance networks and collaborative governance to solve complex public policy problems. There is a strong interest in both the practice and theory of networks in public governance. This interest has given boost to the use of social network analysis (SNA) in studies on complex governance networks. This special issue of Complexity, Governance, & Networks, includes theoretically, conceptually, and analytically rigorous papers with social network analysis applications. The papers help our understanding in studying complex governance networks.

Politics of technology in the informal governance of destructive fishing in Spermonde, Indonesia

Technology has politics and plays a role in societal governance. This article explores the fishing community of Karanrang island (Spermonde Archipelago, Indonesia) to consider how fishing technologies reinforce existing power structures in the local informal governance system. Informal governance actors deploy the politics of technology in order to manage a socially problematic and environmentally destructive fishing economy. In the punggawa-sawi system of patron-client relationships, fishers are economically dependent on patrons, who supply them with fishing technologies like boats, bombs, and cyanide. The patrons themselves are embedded in a complex governance network, encompassing corrupt police and officials, importers, and live food fish traders. The politics of technology contribute to maintaining the local informal governance system of patron-client relationships. This paper draws upon theories from science and technology studies and network governance to argue that although patron-client relationships are problematic in themselves, the politics of technology further maintain power imbalances.

Study on the Basin Water Pollution Control and Optimization of Network

Based on the inter-governance theory, social network theory and analysis of organizational relationships, as well as water management basin analysis, the basin water governance constitute a large and complex governance network, and the network performance as demonstrated by the network is the effectiveness of water management basin. This paper focuses on the analysis of water basin management network in order to improve the performance of basin water resources management network for the purpose of optimizing the function from the organization, inter-organizational relationships optimization, network optimization optimize the attempt to reform the three angles.

Complex Governance Networks: An Assessment of the Advances and Prospects

The case is made for a complex governance networks conceptualization. The contributions of the literatures on governance, networks, and complexity studies are discussed. Governance researchers challenged the traditional ways of thinking in public policy and administration and highlighted the multi-centered nature of policy and administrative processes. Governance networks researchers applied the refined network concepts and methods to our understanding of governance processes. Complexity researchers provide ontological and epistemological grounding to governance networks studies and conceptual and methodological tools to study the self-organizational, emergent, and coevolutionary processes within and among complex governance networks. It is argued that the concepts and methods of the three streams should be synthesized and that complex governance network researchers should incorporate the insights of well-established theories of policy processes, such as the institutional analysis and development framework and the advocacy coalition framework.

Governance and transportation policy networks in the cross-border metropolitan region of Luxembourg: A social network analysis

Two major processes have increased the need for cross-border public transportation policies in European metropolitan regions in the recent past: the imperative of a region’s accessibility within the inter-urban competition and the aspired EU-wide regional harmonization and de-bordering process. Governing such multifaceted issues in cross-border regions requires the implementation of suitable and efficient organizational solutions. In the example of the cross-border metropolitan region of Luxembourg, we discuss the contradicting ‘border effects’ of a complex cross-border governance network. Such flexible policy networks are supposed to make the proclaimed economic, socio-cultural, and spatial European integration work on the very local level. We suggest that the governance typology of Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks offers a useful guiding heuristics for function-specific governance arrangements in cross-border regional contexts. We utilize a method mix of a quantitative social network analysis and a complementary qualitative survey to illuminate structural notions of the policy network relations to relate our empirical results to the conceptual debate on governance structures in the politically proclaimed de-bordering regions within the EU.

Governance structures for ecosystem-based adaptation: Using policy-network analysis to identify key organizations for bridging information across scales and policy areas

Abstract Ecosystem service degradation, exacerbated by climate change, requires flexible and effective communication within governance systems to foster actions that reverse current trends and can cope with changing conditions. Key organizations bridge information to a variety of actors across administrative scales and policy areas in complex governance networks concerned with ecosystem services. In this paper, we use quantitative analysis of information flows, perceived influence and competence within a multi-actors’ governance network to identify key information bridging organizations (BrO) for an example involving soil regulation services in a watershed in Costa Rica. Here, heavy soil erosion (due to intense cultivation on steep slopes, and increasing frequency of extreme precipitation events) affects both farmers (by loss of fertile topsoil) and hydroelectric generation (by rapid siltation of reservoirs downstream). To gauge the information-bridging capacities of organizations we use the network parameter betweenness centrality, and we created two new parameters to measure the extent of cross-scale and cross-policy area exchange of information of the organizations. The regional agricultural extension office is identified, among others, as a crucial BrO in keeping with other studies of agricultural systems. The results also show that network analysis provides an empirical basis for understanding information flows and influence in governance networks, in order to identify key organizations. In this manner, we can diagnose potential bottlenecks, when these organizations lack the resources to achieve their mandates and need support to strengthen their efforts in information provision and influence in governance for ecosystem services.

Connective Capacities of Network Managers

This article investigates the relationship between the connective style of network management and outcomes of governance processes and explains differences and developments in managerial styles in complex governance networks in relation to outcomes. We found that a strong connective style of network management is related to good outcomes. We also found that discontinuity in management has a negative impact on outcomes. Moreover, we found that the background of managers and their connective management style are related: Network managers with a governmental background proved to have a less connective orientation than professional external managers.

Accountable Climate Governance: Dilemmas of Performance Management across Complex Governance Networks

How can accountability be institutionalized across complex governance networks that are dealing with the transboundary pollution problem of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions at multiple spatial, temporal and social scales? To address this question, we propose an accountability framework that enables comparison of the democratic, market and administrative anchorage of actor accountability within and across governance networks. A comparative analysis of performance measures in a sample of climate governance networks is undertaken. This comparative analysis identifies four critical performance management dilemmas in the areas of strategy, uncertain science, integration of multiple scales, and monitoring and verification of performance measures.

Cross‐Border Resolution of Failed Banks in the European Union after the Crisis: Business as Usual*

AbstractThe post‐2007 financial crisis created an opportunity for reforms that could close the regulatory gap between transnational banks and national bank resolution regimes. During the decade before the crisis, the European Union tried to develop a cross‐border bank resolution regime relying on voluntary agreements and complex governance networks. However, these arrangements failed to commit national authorities to multilateral resolution as was exemplified by the case of Fortis. The crisis experience provided the Commission with an opportunity to propose legislation that would either deepen the pre‐crisis co‐ordinated regime, or replace it with an integrated resolution regime for systemically important cross‐border banks. The Commission considered the more ambitious reforms, but after the experience with negotiations over the powers of European Supervisory Authorities, postponed the proposals for an integrated regime until after 2014. The initial round of post‐crisis reforms thus remained limited to minimal improvements of the pre‐crisis status quo.