Complex Governance Systems Research Articles

Administrative and Economic Systems of the Mughal Empire: A Historical Analysis of Governance and Revenue Policies

The Mughal Dynasty commenced in 1526, led by the esteemed Babur, who is renowned as the pioneer and founder of Indian civilization through the process of unification. Due to its vast territorial reach from Kabul to Bengal, with natural boundaries such as the Arabian Sea and Himalayas, this dynasty was able to establish sophisticated formal institutions that surpassed those of other empires worldwide at that time. This study examines the complex governance system of The Mughal Empire, with a focus on the reigns of Babur, Humayun, Akbar, and Aurangzeb. Abul-Fazl Ibn Mubarak, a prominent historian during Akbar's reign, elucidated the Mughals' adoption of the dual strategies of 'JahanBani' (state maintenance) and 'Jahangiri' (imperial expansion). The article also examines Akbar's reforms in land revenue systems, which aimed to provide uniformity and economic stability in order to sustain the Empire's prosperity. The inclusion of women in the Mughal court is examined to highlight their cultural, political, and social achievements. This examination thoroughly explores the functioning of the Mughal administration and how it effectively maintained the empire's supremacy.

Climate Change-Related Disaster Risk Mitigation through Innovative Insurance Mechanism: A System Dynamics Model Application for a Case Study in Latvia

This study explores how the System Dynamics modeling approach can help deal with the problem of conventional insurance mechanisms by studying the feedback loops governing complex systems connected to the disaster insurance mechanism. Instead of addressing the disaster’s underlying risk, the traditional disaster insurance strategy largely focuses on providing financial security for asset recovery after a disaster. This constraint becomes especially concerning as the threat of climate-related disasters grows since it may result in rising long-term damage expenditures. A new insurance mechanism is suggested as a solution to this problem to lower damage costs while safeguarding insured assets and luring new assets to be protected. A local case study utilizing a System Dynamics stock and flow model is created and validated by examining the model’s structure, sensitivity analysis, and extreme value test. The results of the case study performed on a city in Latvia highlight the significance of effective disaster risk reduction strategies applied within the innovative insurance mechanism in lowering overall disaster costs. The logical coherence seen throughout the analysis of simulated scenario results strengthens the established model’s plausibility. The case study’s findings support the innovative insurance mechanism’s dynamic hypothesis and show the main influencing factors on the dynamics within the proposed innovative insurance mechanism. The information this study can help insurance firms, policy planners, and disaster risk managers make decisions that will benefit local communities and other stakeholders regarding climate-related disaster risk mitigation.

The contribution of the resilience approach to the governance of complex systems: A qualitative study in the Po delta area, Italy

The increase in climate and weather extremes calls for a strengthening of resilience and governance in coastal areas. One of the primary challenges faced by decision-makers, managers, and communities in implementing measures to build disaster-resilient societies is that priorities vary depending on the location and are subject to diverse interpretations. This diversity makes resilience a societal issue, and its operationalization a challenging process.While the importance of resilience-thinking has gained widespread recognition in coastal management policy, and considerable research has been dedicated to defining the concept, there remains a scarcity of empirical studies delving into the discourse surrounding disaster resilience among stakeholders and its significance in managing complex situations. To effectively integrate resilience into the realm of coastal governance, gaining a better understanding of the concept is necessary. Engaging various actors in the assessment of a system's resilience is vital as it holds the potential to uncover shared solutions.By employing the Grounded Theory Methodology approach and utilizing the diverse expertise and practical insights of 17 governance actors in the Po Delta in Italy, we identified key factors that should be considered in the policy design when operationalizing coastal resilience, with the notions of stability and transformation envisioned as a central component of the strategy.

Federal Issues in Pakistan: Challenges and Prospects (2013-2023)

Pakistan is a federal republic with a complex system of government. The federal government shares power with the provincial governments, but the distribution of power between the two levels of government has been a contentious issue since the country's independence. This paper examines the major federal issues in Pakistan from 2013 to 2023, including the impact of political instability and polarization, economic challenges and opportunities, and the rise of extremism and intolerance of diversity and dissent. This article aims to explore and analyze these issues from a multidisciplinary perspective, using the secondary sources of data. The article argues that Pakistan’s federal system has been under strain due to various internal and external factors, such as corruption, nepotism, civil-military relations, ethnic conflicts, terrorism, regional rivalries, and global pressures. The article suggests some possible solutions and recommendations for improving the federal governance and performance of Pakistan, such as constitutional reforms, fiscal decentralization, institutional strengthening, social inclusion, and dialogue. The article concludes that Pakistan’s federal system has the potential to overcome its challenges and achieve its prospects, if there is a genuine commitment and cooperation among all stakeholders.

Sustainability: A Complex System Governance Perspective

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the sustainability field from a complex system governance (CSG) perspective. In general, sustainability suggests maintenance at a specific rate or level. It is also frequently held as maintaining ecological balance to negate the depletion of natural resources. CSG offers sustainability a theoretically grounded, model based, and methodologically sound approach to better inform sustainability design, execution, and development for complex systems. CSG examines sustainability as an outcome‐based product resulting from effective governance of an underlying system which produces sustainability. Thus, sustainability is proposed as a ‘systems engineered product’, whose design, execution, and development will be favored by CSG systems engineering. Following an introduction, two primary objectives are pursued. First, systems theory is used to provide an alternative view of sustainability. Second, a perspective of sustainability is developed through the paradigm of the emerging CSG field. The paper closes with the contributions, opportunities, and challenges for deployment of CSG for enhanced development, transition, and maintenance of sustainable systems.

Is ‘hope’ helpful or a hinderance? Implications for coastal governance

Projected population growth and climate change paint an increasingly bleak picture for many coastal communities and their already threatened ecosystems. Yet, coastal managers and residents provide expressions of hope. In this short communication we reflect on the findings of a four-year research project examining coastal governance in rapidly growing Australian coastal communities. Practitioners shared their perspectives on current coastal governance approaches and were hopeful that sought-after goals would be achieved. However, hopefulness contrasts with self-reported barriers to change and limited evidence of transformative action. Thus, we ask whether hopefulness is misplaced, and a barrier to change, or whether hope remains a necessary precursor to transformative action. We find it is both: hope can provide a vision for a resilient future and a beacon towards the challenge of creating novel, exciting, and equitable futures. Yet, hope is insufficient unless accompanied by actions for resilient social and ecological communities. Hope without action is baseless and exacerbates vulnerability by limiting proactive responses, squandering valuable time, and further weakening systems. The findings have relevance in responding to global environmental challenges by distinguishing between ‘hope that helps’ versus ‘hope that hinders’ in the governance of complex systems.

Institutional change in community-based management for organic labeling: a case study from a Participatory Guarantee System in France

This paper investigates how the process of institutional change shapes community-based organizations, by considering both formal and informal governance rules over several different periods. For this purpose, we examine how the community-based management of organic farming has changed in the past five decades. The French association, Nature & Progrès (N&P), adopted a “Participatory Guarantee System” (PGS) to monitor compliance with their organic standard, created in 1972. Yet, following the European regulation “Organic Agriculture” enforced in 1995, N&P was excluded from the public policy framework for organic farming, which was reserved for operators that were certified by a third party. Ostrom and Basurto’s (Journal of Institutional Economics, 7(3), 3, 2011) analytical tool is useful to describe the changes in collective rules. Drawing on original data collected from N&P, we examine how institutional changes in the European legislation have affected the governance of a community-based certification scheme. We focus on prescriptions that rely on internal or external sanction mechanisms and discuss the implications for enforcement. Our results show that the N&P structure has become an institutionalized PGS. N&P members have managed to build a complex governance system to certify organic products despite the European restriction on access to the organic label. However, the conformity system used by local groups is largely based on unwritten norms, which can cause confusion and conflicts between users, especially since PGS communities are “evolving communities.”

Desafios para o estudo comparado do financiamento da segurança pública nos estados

This article examines public security funding in five Brazilian states: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Ceará, Pará, and Rio Grande do Sul. The study presents the budget structures of these states and aims to understand variations in public security spending, as well as the feasibility of comparing such information across the states. The results reveal that public security expenditures are structured differently, reflecting unequal and complex governance systems where similar actors hold distinct significance in each state, notably the state police forces. Furthermore, in addition to the disparities between states, the analyzed budgets vary within a state over the years. Consequently, comparing public security expenditures in Brazil becomes challenging, highlighting the need for standardized accounting practices among states and greater transparency in monitoring relevant actions to combat violence. Lastly, the findings suggest the potential for comparing the correlation between state expenditures and their outcomes, analyzing efficiency and effectiveness.

Regional complex system simulation optimization through linking governance and environment performance: A case study of water environmental carrying capacity based on the SDES model

The resolution of issues related to sustainable development in regions and urbans is closely related to the complex systems, which lie not only in the numerous subsystems and spatial hierarchy, but also in the complex relationships between humans, socioeconomic, environmental and governance.The system dynamics (SD) model has been widely used in modeling regional and urban complex systems which involve multi-dimensional socio-economic and environmental issues. However, most simulations have focused on the state variables, such as the end-state social-economic and environmental situation, while the interaction between governance and their consequences on complex systems has been scarce. In addition, the social-ecological system (SES) framework has been endorsed worldwide because of its ability to explicitly recognize the complex interactions among socioeconomic-ecological-governance subsystems. To date, there have been few studies that combine the SES framework and complex systems models to quantitatively simulate the environmental performance of governance. In this research, we try to fill this gap by combining both to create a SDES model to quantitatively simulate the impacts of stakeholders' actions on environmental performance, and the feasibility of SDES model is verified by simulating the impacts of stakeholders' actions on water environment carrying capacity (WECC) in Liyang City, China. Moreover, we establish a cost-benefit analytical framework to identify the most cost-effective action to improve WECC based on the SDES model. Findings of this research contribute new theoretical and methodological insights into addressing environmental issues while we are facing a more complex regional and urban system and fragmented governance.

Combining multiple data sources to identify actor involvement in environmental governance: Wildfire in the American West

In this paper, we developed a novel data collection and analysis approach that uses manual and automated processing of large datasets and combines them to offset the limitations of past research and practice when it comes to identifying actors in complex environmental governance systems. Our empirical context is wildfire governance in Colorado. Wildfire governance represents a pressing challenge for interested actors in the western United States. We characterize Colorado’s wildfire governance system by using big data triangulation techniques to identify key actors and their topical domains to reveal meaningful subgroups. Our results highlight the importance of understanding the pitfalls of each source of data and the potential benefits of combining them to gain a more complete understanding of the system. The true potential of multi-source analysis becomes apparent when one pays special attention to the degree of overlap that exists between sources. Each source reveals a unique makeup of actors (both in terms of individuals and organizational types) and different forms of engagement in the system. In addition to providing different sets of actors, we found evidence of different emergent topics in each data source.

Информальные структуры и диалоговые форматы в международном климатическом управлении

In recent years there was a significant of international structures that are being created as platforms for multilateral policydialogue on climate change issues outside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).Such structures are, for example, the Major Economies Forum (MEF), the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, the on CleanEnergy Ministerial and a wide variety of partnerships. There is no common definition for such formats of cooperation andconceptual ground for understanding their place in international climate governance system. This includes both traditionalinterstate cooperation mechanisms embodied by the UNFCCC, as well as non-state initiatives, climate finance institutions,formats that support a constant dialogue between states, business representatives, academia, and NGOs on climate policyissues. The aim of the study was to clarify the nature of quasi-formal climate governance, to establish a typology and assessof the dynamics of development of quasi-formal entities to better understand the processes of its formation and implementation.I describe three types of quasi-formal entities from the new dataset of quasi-formal entities created in the period from2001–2022: intergovernmental forums, UNFCCC party groupings, and hybrid partnerships. The study reveals an increasein the number of political forums and hybrid partnerships amid stabilization or even reduction of negotiating blocs within theUNFCCC. In complex system of international climate governance, quasi-formal entities are playing an increasing role inthe accumulation and exchange of knowledge and experience between states on the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Sustainability: A Complex System Governance Perspective

AbstractThis paper explores the sustainability field from a Complex System Governance (CSG) perspective. In general, sustainability suggests maintenance at a specific rate or level. It is also frequently held as maintaining ecological balance to negate the depletion of natural resources. CSG offers sustainability a theoretically grounded, model based, and methodologically sound approach to better inform sustainability design, execution, and development for complex systems. CSG examines sustainability as an outcome‐based product resulting from effective governance of an underlying system which produces sustainability. Thus, sustainability is proposed as a ‘systems engineered product’, whose design, execution, and development will be favored by CSG systems engineering. Following an introduction, two primary objectives are pursued. First, Systems Theory is used to provide an alternative view of sustainability. Second, a perspective of sustainability is developed through the paradigm of the emerging CSG field. The paper closes with the contributions, opportunities, and challenges for deployment of CSG for enhanced development, transition, and maintenance of sustainable systems.

A Complex System Governance Theory and Conceptual Links to Cyber Diplomacy

A Complex System Governance Theory and Conceptual Links to Cyber Diplomacy

Contribution of subnational authorities to multilateralism from the EU perspective—Implementation of the SDGs

AbstractThe report of UN Secretary General titled Our Common Agenda argues that growing tensions between states and accumulation of global problems is a wake‐up call for international society. The choice now is either to follow the beaten track of dealing with global issues and risk a perpetual crisis or to undertake the effort to achieve a more solidary international system. One of the main protagonists of the new UN blueprint for securing multilateralism are cities and local and regional governments. The aim of the article is to examine how the EU, as a complex system of multilevel governance, supports sub‐national actors in their efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and whether this support is sufficient. I will also concentrate on Voluntary Local Reviews, which are a new extra‐state tools of foreign activities of subnational actors and try to explain why the intra‐EU channel needs to adapt to this challenge. The results show that the EU institutions facilitated subnational actors in monitoring the SDGs by providing methodological assistance. However, local and regional governments face structural problems that may hinder the process of localizing SDGs. Therefore, they need specific capacity‐building competencies. This is a challenge for the EU in the future.

Managing Svalbard Tourism: Inconsistencies and Conflicts of Interest

The Svalbard Archipelago has experienced a rapid increase in tourism-related activities over the past few decades. The Norwegian Government’s ambition to develop the Archipelago’s tourism industry offers multiple socio-economic opportunities. The development and scope of these tourism activities is affected by a complex governance system that entails strict environmental regulation and preparedness considerations. To understand the balance of goals across the national and international policy levels, we have mapped, reviewed, and analyzed the national and international regulations and agreements that affect tourism activities on Svalbard. The document analysis reveals the framework of natural and environmental consideration, access to areas and passage, requirements for organized outdoor activities, and regulatory tools. We discovered conflicts and internal inconsistencies in the way that Svalbard tourism has developed. It has been shaped by both economic growth and environmental preservation, without any specific business development objectives and goals or acceptable limits of environmental and social change in place. For tourism stakeholders, this might complicate any rational assessment of the balance between economic development and environmental status. The challenges we have identified are specific to Svalbard, but are likely to be similar in many other Arctic locations involved in tourism.

Building blocks of polycentric governance

AbstractSuccess 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.

Boundary objects in complex governance systems: collective action clauses in European sovereign debt governance

ABSTRACT This contribution argues that policymakers instrumentalise legal ambiguity to provide solutions to crises and achieve their preferences in complex governance systems. It looks at the Eurozone crisis and the introduction of sovereign debt restructuring as part of the policy solution. Despite initial opposition from the European Central Bank (ECB) and European Commission (EC), as well as negative market reactions, Greece’s debt was restructured in 2012. The notion of collective action clauses (CACs)—a private contractual term in bond documentation that enables bondholder coordination—was promoted as the credible tool for enabling sovereign debt restructuring. However, this paper argues that the success of CACs is related to how it functions as a boundary object, enabling a shared space of interpretive flexibility that allows policymakers to interpret CACs in terms of their preferences, despite a lack of consensus on the permissibility of future Eurozone sovereign debt restructurings. While enabling cooperation, this interpretive flexibility leads to different iterations of CACs—the Euro-CAC and Greece’s retrofit-CAC—which connects EU fiscal policy to monetary policy in a way that induces legal uncertainty as to the viability of future debt restructurings vis-à-vis the ECB’s bond-buying programmes.

Theorizing Multilevel Closure Structures Guiding Forum Participation

Abstract Understanding how stakeholders choose to participate in different policy forums is central to research on complex, polycentric governance systems. In this article, we draw upon the Ecology of Games Theory (EGT) to develop theoretical expectations about how four incentive structures may guide how actors navigate the world of policy forums. We test these expectations using unique data on a three-mode network of actors, forums, and issues related to climate change adaption in the state of Ohio, in the US Midwest. Results of an exponential random graph model suggest that multilevel closure structures, which are a function of transaction costs and direct benefits, guide actors’ forum participation in ways that can either reinforce sub-optimal, ineffective governance arrangements, or conversely, encourage opportunities for innovation, increase diversity in representation, and facilitate policy learning. From a methodological standpoint, our research highlights the benefits of examining complex governance systems through the more precise approach allowed by three-mode network analysis, which has not been frequently used in research on polycentric governance systems up to this point.

A Systematic Literature Review of Structural Quality Policy Implementation in Public Preschools

The benefits of quality early childhood experiences are indisputable as more studies have demonstrated the positive results of high-quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) on child outcomes. These benefits have recently spurred many countries to prioritise preschool programmes in their national plans and pursue a quality preschool agenda. This systematic literature review (SLR) aimed to analyse the worldwide practice of policy implementation regarding public preschool structural quality and examine the related challenges. This paper was based solely on SLR, where the literature was examined via the Scopus and Web of Science databases and Google Scholar. The review adopted PRISMA Statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) and thematic analysis was employed to analyse the relevant research papers. The SLR revealed that varying service quality was the main theme of global public preschool policy implementation. In many countries in the included articles, the preschool education programmes were conducted by multiple agencies, which resulted in varied quality of the service provided. In this study, the analysis revealed five main themes: wide-ranging policy aims, combined public and private funding, complex governance and management systems with mixed national and state involvement, persistent fragmented structural and organisational aspects between ECCE and primary schooling, and varied ECCE service regulation and quality assurance. Thus, future research is necessary to bridge the knowledge gap to examine policy implementation of structural quality, specifically in individual country settings.

The role of Participatory Action Research in developing new models of healthcare: Perspectives from participants and recommendations for ethical review and governance oversight

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a methodology often used in social sciences, which involves groups of people in action, reflection and iterative change. In PAR, ‘traditional’ researchers become participants, and people who comprise ‘traditional’ participants become researchers, facilitating cohesiveness and communication within the team. However, PAR is less used in healthcare, despite the complexity of providing and receiving health and social care. Development and testing of the delivery of new models of care is an area with increasing service-user participation, but often with no structured or formalised framework to embed end-users. This may be due in part to the complex ethical and governance systems in healthcare research, and the lack of practical guidance on using PAR as a research method within this context. We carried out a PAR project to develop and evaluate the implementation of a new model of care for the assessment and management of respiratory conditions in the community (MISSION ABC). The care model delivered a community-based multidisciplinary clinic involving healthcare staff from both primary and secondary care. Regular sessions were held for participants (including patients, healthcare staff, research staff) to discuss observations, reflections and suggestions for the development and delivery of the care model. At the end of the project, meetings were held with representatives from the different groups of participants to discuss overall views about the study and ethics and research governance challenges specifically. We present key perspectives from various stakeholders involved in the PAR process, highlighting benefits and challenges. Specific challenges relating to ethical and governance approvals encountered in the set-up and delivery of the project are described. These include the design of the study protocol, approaches to consent, presentation of study information within the current ethical and regulatory frameworks and maintaining the flexibility of study methods and roles of participants throughout the study period. Recommendations for improvement in the research pathway that PAR researchers could adopt to enable a meaningful and successful PAR approach are made, in addition to suggestions for overarching ethics and governance frameworks. Developing new models of healthcare benefits significantly from collaboration with stakeholders so that the design and delivery are feasible and acceptable to all. However, the current UK research approvals and governance frameworks present challenges to design and successfully deliver PAR studies in healthcare; we present possible solutions.