Institutional Analysis And Development Framework Research Articles

Water and sanitation services in Brazil: evaluating the regulatory governance based on the institutional analysis and development framework

Abstract Brazilian's framework of water and sanitation services (WSS) is complex, with several actors from different legal natures and varied rules. The new Brazilian sanitation law aims to achieve universal access to WSS and effective provision of services, encouraging more efficiency by promoting competitiveness. However, the regulatory governance of the sector poses a challenge to achieve these objectives. This article addresses identifying and analyzing the WSS structures based on the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework, which provides a multidimensional conceptual map that combines levels of macro and micro situations. Databases from the National Sanitation Information System (SNIS) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) were cross-referenced to evaluate the structures that exist in the provision of WSS, focusing on municipalities located in the metropolitan regions and urban agglomerations of Brazil. It is possible to conclude that the IAD Framework helps to clarify the actors, its functions, responsibilities, and the interactions between them, as well as the exogenous factors and how they influence the action arena, reaching recommendations, supported by a Delphi approach, such as to improve industry regulation in terms of governance and regulatory governance.

Indicators, Strategies, and Rule Settings for Sustainable Public–Private Infrastructure Partnerships: From Literature Review towards Institutional Designs

Public–private partnerships (PPPs)-driven infrastructure projects frequently disappoint in terms of sustainability outcomes. This paper substantiates this. It develops and presents an institutional design that can integrate environmental and social sustainability principles into PPP infrastructure projects (sustainable PPPs). The institutional design includes principles for the planning processes (preparation, procurement, contracting) and outcome indicators. The paper builds upon and synthesizes extant research through a literature review that employs the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) statements. The review covers the appropriateness of the used indicators for the investigation and measurement of environmental and social sustainability policy strategies designed to enhance sustainability and institutional intercalation. About the latter, a specific lens to focus on the relationships between the institutional design characteristics (the rule settings) of planning processes and the sustainability outcomes is developed based on three variables within the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework of Ostrom. Consequently, rule settings that enable the investigation of the institutional process preconditions for sustainable PPPs and the evaluation of the sustainability outcomes are amalgamated. Our study indicates that the IAD framework provides a useful theoretical lens to harmonize and categorize process principles to achieve the rule settings that guide involved actors towards sustainable PPPs and place lenses on the envisioned environmental and social sustainability outcomes.

Root-Cause Analysis of Water System Failures in Jackson, Mississippi, and Flint, Michigan, Using the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework

Failures of drinking water systems in Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, were similar, other than their contextual situations. Each episode spurred media accounts and policy actions, but these may not address long-term systemic issues. Application of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework can provide a repeatable approach to study such problems, and depending on its scope of application, can provide insights to patterns of interaction in critical action arenas where solutions must begin. The IAD framework evolved from work by policy scientists on a range of complex problems, and its use to analyze issues in Flint and Jackson explored its potential for addition to the tools of Integrated Water Resources Management. IAD can incorporate information from other methods and sources to enrich its knowledge base. For example, media attention highlights problems, and the case studies that follow can identify issues, action arenas, and players. Tools like systems analysis can be used to study the patterns of interaction in the action arenas and the feedback loops between them. Flint and Jackson require multiple solution approaches like these to address systemic issues. They should involve better utility management supported by political leadership and effective governance, as well as attention to equity issues involving human rights and responsibilities to pay for services. In shedding light on root causes of failures, IAD can help point the way to improving services despite formidable obstacles.

A computational model of Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development framework

The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework developed by Elinor Ostrom and colleagues provides great conceptual clarity on the immensely varied topic of social interactions. In this work, we propose a computational model to examine the impact that any of the variables outlined in the IAD framework has on the resulting social interactions. Of particular interest are the rules adopted by a community of agents, as they are the variables most susceptible to change in the short term. To provide systematic descriptions of social interactions, we define the Action Situation Language (ASL) and provide a game engine capable of automatically generating formal game-theoretical models out of ASL descriptions. Then, by incorporating any agent decision-making models, the connection from a rule configuration description to the outcomes encouraged by it is complete. Overall, our model enables any community of agents to perform what-if analysis, where they can foresee and examine the impact that a set of regulations will have on the social interaction they are engaging in. Hence, they can decide whether their implementation is desirable.

Institutional Logic of Carbon Neutrality Policies in China: What Can We Learn?

Global warming is a critical crisis threatening human survival and development. International organizations and countries worldwide are introducing policies and practices to achieve carbon neutrality. In China, numerous carbon neutrality policies have been established; however, a systematic understanding of the underlying policy logic is lacking. Using the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, this paper analyzes selected carbon neutrality policies in China. We conducted a bibliometric visualization analysis of the texts of 20 policies and matched their logic to the elements of the IAD framework. We established 90 keywords with occurrences of no less than 10 times in China’s carbon neutrality policies. The network visualization analysis identified six clusters. We discuss implementation challenges of China’s carbon neutrality policies, address the policy implementation, and finally outline impacts on China’s carbon neutrality governance. This study responds to the global concern over China’s carbon neutrality commitments by clarifying the institutional logic of China’s policies and actions. This study could provide a reference for countries worldwide that are designing and introducing carbon neutrality policies.

Approaching the Danske Bank Scandal in a “Tragedy of the Commons” Perspective: Implications for Anti-Money Laundering Institutional Design and Regulatory Reforms in Europe

Abstract Policy- and law-makers worry increasingly about how recent money laundering scandals unfolded. There is widespread confusion, though, about what went wrong – “the failures” – and uncertainty as to how to control and cope with them. This article offers a conceptual framework and legal analysis for examining the underpinning “failures”, what causes them, and how, if at all, those failures interact with each other. In doing so, it disentangles three layers, namely “corporate failure”, “supervisory failure”, and “political failure”. Historically, scholars have tended to think of each of those failures separately. However, we believe that a greater focus should be devoted to whether and how the three failures exhibit interactions and even feed on one another. This holistic perspective reveals that scandals such as the one in Danske Bank might result from a type of “tragedy of the commons” in which each layer – corporate, supervisory, and political – generate significant asymmetries of information between parties and actors, exacerbating the agency problems which pervade financial markets. The article will apply Elinor Ostrom’s IAD (Institutional Analysis and Development) framework as to account for the complexity and interconnection in financial markets. Such framework is used to examine the recent developments in policy- and law-making in European anti-money laundering legislation. Not only does the IAD framework explain how the supervisor failure escalated and spilled over but it also sheds new light on why it happened. Together these insights are critical in a legal policy evaluation as they allow scholars to look pass the mere effects of the supervisory failure and focus diligently on the underlying causes. From a purely methodological perspective, it thus demonstrates the added value of incorporating an institutional analysis in doctrinal legal research.

How can microgrids help the Philippines’ energy transition? Adapting the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework for microgrid development

The Philippine energy sector remains plagued with issues of energy security, high electricity costs, and vulnerable grid infrastructure. This paper argues for the increased uptake of microgrids as a solution for these issues, using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework as a guide for microgrid policy. We begin this paper with an analysis of existing energy policies in the Philippines, highlighting a lacking integrated approach for energy security. The main discussion explores the IAD framework for microgrid development in the Philippines, identifying key barriers and dynamics among institutions and actors in the local energy sector. We then conclude with policy implications for adopting microgrids for the Philippine energy landscape.

Data protection for the common good: Developing a framework for a data protection-focused data commons

Abstract In our data-driven society, personal data affecting individuals as data subjects are increasingly being collected and processed by sizeable and international companies. While data protection laws and privacy technologies attempt to limit the impact of data breaches and privacy scandals, they rely on individuals having a detailed understanding of the available recourse, resulting in the responsibilization of data protection. Existing data stewardship frameworks incorporate data-protection-by-design principles but may not include data subjects in the data protection process itself, relying on supplementary legal doctrines to better enforce data protection regulations. To better protect individual autonomy over personal data, this paper proposes a data protection-focused data commons to encourage co-creation of data protection solutions and rebalance power between data subjects and data controllers. We conduct interviews with commons experts to identify the institutional barriers to creating a commons and challenges of incorporating data protection principles into a commons, encouraging participatory innovation in data governance. We find that working with stakeholders of different backgrounds can support a commons’ implementation by openly recognizing data protection limitations in laws, technologies, and policies when applied independently. We propose requirements for deploying a data protection-focused data commons by applying our findings and data protection principles such as purpose limitation and exercising data subject rights to the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. Finally, we map the IAD framework into a commons checklist for policy-makers to accommodate co-creation and participation for all stakeholders, balancing the data protection of data subjects with opportunities for seeking value from personal data.

One and three forests: Understanding institutional diversity in Amazonian protected areas

We offer an ethnographic account of how forest conservation is diversely assembled at the contiguous Tambopata National Reserve and Bahuaja Sonene National Park, biodiversity hotspots in the southern Peruvian Amazon. In so doing, and revising Elinor Ostrom and collaborators' Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework, we put together a theory framework of forest institutional change, informed by assemblage perspectives. Given the context of high world society interest in the Amazon and low spatial reach of the Peruvian state, charismatic wildlife watching and scientific investigation, Brazil nuts harvest, and gold mining shape the customizing of conservation assemblages. Institutional change is the result of how Peruvian State and diverse local groups adapt, resist and reconfigure through the ongoing practices of assemblage, which are pulled by conservation and commodification forces. Responding to the IAD framework, we propose institutional diversity fundamentally means that practices of assemblage are neither uniform, nor static.

Analysis of an Urban Development Boundary Policy in China Based on the IAD Framework

Although urban growth control policies are widely adopted to help sustainable development in various countries, including China, few studies have been conducted to investigate the effectiveness and optimization of such policies in Chinese cities. Hangzhou, China, was chosen for this study as the research object, where the local authorities manage the urban sprawl via an urban development boundary policy. The institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework was employed to identify the conflicts between the central government and the local government as well as the developers and homebuyers in the formal/informal stage. The analysis shows that, with the implementation of the policy, problems such as fiscal crises, property inflation, and illegal construction will appear as a result of actors’ interactions. The study also highlights that industrial land transfer inside the boundary should be controlled in a reasonable range and that a land value tax should be introduced during the implementation of the urban development boundary policy.

Institutional analysis of top-down regulatory: evidence from Iran local governance

Abstract Population growth, along with climate change, has exacerbaed the water crisis in local communities. The simplest and quickest response of governments to such problems is direct intervention in local governance. Such solutions are usually proposed without regarding the indigenous knowledge of the local people. These also include top-down policies on water issues, which disrupt local institutional arrangements and eliminate the possibility of collective action by stakeholders in reaching an agreement. A case study of one of the water basins in Chaharmahal Bakhtiari in Iran (the Gorgak River in Sureshjan city) using an institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework shows that in the past, people acted collectively to solve the asymmetric distribution and drought problem. But government intervention, which initially sought to improve water conditions, has disrupted the region's institutional arrangements and power asymmetries between exploiters. Our study used the IAD framework to examine changes in institutional arrangements due to the introduction of technology and government intervention by the game theory. It clarifies that government intervention in local institutional arrangements, even if designed with the intention of improving conditions, may lead to greater inequality due to disregarding physical and social conditions and local knowledge. This inequality can eventually worsen the situation.

Institutional process for infrastructural development in Nigeria

Infrastructural development is characteristically multifaceted, but studies tend to be focused on limited context which has shed more light on structural issues at the cost of increased ambiguity as regards institutional factors that influence infrastructural development. Combining institutional theory and institutional analysis and development framework (IADF), this research studies how institutional factors influence infrastructural development. In particular, it explores three questions: what are the main differences that exist in policymaking processes? How do stakeholders interact in infrastructural development in Nigeria? How can institutions enhance infrastructural development? The findings show that institutional arrangements and legitimacy pressures are the main reasons for organizational passivity which produce under-performing infrastructures. Initially, mimetic pressures influenced infrastructural development practices as companies imitated other company’s structures that were perceived to be beneficial to attain certain goals. However, coercive pressures by government and normative pressures wielded through professional network of actors appear to be more potent institutional instruments for reducing unresponsiveness. We concluded that favourable institutional pressures support infrastructural development practices, which indicates the need for more structured decision-making process based on collective participation of relevant stakeholders.

Collective Action in Waste Management: A Comparative Study of Recycling and Recovery Initiatives from Brazil, Indonesia, and Nigeria Using the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework

Recycling and recovery provide not only a sustainable option to decrease the volume of waste that needs final disposal, but also a blueprint to a circular economy. However, rates of recycling/recovery still remain very low on a global scale. While it is important to look for technology-based solutions to improve recycling/recovery activities, such solutions might not be necessarily affordable in many countries. A solution that involves the active participation of the population, on the other hand, has the potential to succeed in any country. The challenge is to attract and unite people to achieve such common goals. The theory of collective action and the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, that have been originally used in resource management, are two concepts that can be adapted to organize recycling/recovery initiatives. This manuscript discusses what recycling/recovery programs can learn from the theory of collective action and the IAD framework, through a qualitative comparative study of such initiatives from three different cities. They are; Curitiba in Brazil, Padang in Indonesia, and Akure in Nigeria. The cases show the potential benefits of both concepts, not only in formulating and implementing recycling/recovery programs but also in making corrective measures for continuous improvements. All cases also showed the importance of increasing awareness-raising to change public perception towards waste from being a nuisance to a valuable resource.

Toward an Integrated History to Govern the Commons: Using the Archive to Enhance Local Knowledge

Communities that have used common-pool resources (CPRs) for generations often preserve a valuable ‘institutional memory’. It can be understood as a subset of local knowledge concerning strategies, norms, and rules used by the community to deal with CPR problems (e.g. overexploitation) in different time periods. Scholars have argued that institutional memory is useful in two aspects of CPR governance: as focal point to encourage users to sustain and to undertake collective action, and as support knowledge to design new policies. However, institutional memory is constrained by personal and social memories, and therefore it must be considered not as fully cumulative but subject to a steady process of adjustment according to experience. When communities have recorded their regulations in writing, e.g. in village bylaws, it is possible to undertake a learning process to recover and take advantage of their institutional memory. One way is to carry out participatory workshops to compare the historical and present-day bylaws of the community. However, the comparison of these sources is not an easy task, because, on the one hand, they constitute a large body of rules and, on the other, they have been designed using different epistemologies (e.g. concrete vs. abstract) and linguistic forms (e.g. early modern vs. contemporary grammars). In this paper we use an approach based on the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework to compare the historical and present-day bylaws of a community located in Cantabria (Spain). The utility of the IAD framework is verified. It enables one not only to undertake a systematic comparison of the bylaws, but also to easily display the results in participatory workshops. The use of the archive as a source of local information to enhance users’ knowledge is an uncommon procedure among CPR scholars and practitioners, and therefore we dedicate a specific section of the paper to discussing this utility.

Adaptive Governance and sub-national Climate Change Policy: A comparative analysis of Khyber Pukhtunkhawa and Punjab Provinces in Pakistan

This study explores the adaptive governance and effective implementation of climate policies at the subnational level in a developing country context. We focused on Pakistan as our central case as it is considered one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change and has also gone through a recent governance devolution process. This study is conduced to investigate climate governance at subnational level in Pakistan by looking at the province of Punjab and Khyber Pukhtunkhawah (KPK). We employ the Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework for this study. The framework as methodology is important to uncover the complexity of adaptive governance at subnational level after devolution and transformation of environmental institutions in Pakistan. Different aspects of governance such as engagement of local actors, activism of political leadership, awareness campaigns, and capacity building are the notable initiatives in the provinces. The study identifies the differences of initiatives in these provinces are manifest in subnational climate change policy differentiation, research capacity and institutional maturity. The study finds that the provincial government of the KPK follows more participatory and decentralized approach while Punjab is more centralized. The IAD framework provided an effective means of understanding these complex differences in outcome and scale.

Market Disputes | Legal, Social, and Long-Term Implications for an Evolving Spectrum Market

Enforcement, adjudication, and litigation enacted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) resides at an interesting intersection between traditional law and normative common property resource agreements – similar to those in common pool resources. Despite being granted specific legal powers by Congress, the FCC works to dissolve contentions that arise between spectrum incumbents through market dispute resolutions mediated through their Enforcement Bureau’s Market and Dispute Resolution Division (MDRD). The MDRD mediates and adjudicates a myriad of complaint types brought on by “market participants, entities, and organizations against common carriers, commercial and mobile data service providers, and/or utility pole operators” (EB-Market Disputes and Resolution Division, n.d.). The MDRD’s decision to promote resolutions between complainants and defendants is unique in terms of traditional enforcement mechanisms – especially as a primary regulatory agency. The initiative to have stakeholders mediate, negotiate, and ultimately settle their disputes on their level is reminiscent of dispute remediation tactics observed in common pool resource environments. To investigate this approach to enforcement, adjudication, and litigation further, we utilize the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework developed by Elinor Ostrom. Used to scaffold a myriad of policy, regulatory, and traditional CPRs, the IAD Framework incites a unique investigation into the agreements that arise between disputing parties. Our work shows that state/government regulation is not explicitly required to foster an enforcement environment. Primarily, this provides a foundation for our work regarding automated enforcement mechanisms, whereby, third party agents through automation can facilitate enforcement effectively within an increasingly overutilized spectrum market.

Mapping Ostrom’s common-pool resource systems coding handbook to the coupled infrastructure systems framework to enable comparative research

In the study of common-pool resource (CPR) governance, frame- works provide a metatheoretical language to describe system states, dynamics, elements, and relationships. The coding manuals which accompany CPR frame- works–in addition to providing guidelines for connecting empirical case work to conceptual variables–define a vocabulary of coding questions. For empirical work, connecting variables and coding questions with framework elements con- tributes to conceptual advance. In the process of analysis and publication, it is tempting to offer a novel framework without also developing, applying, or modi- fying the foundational questions and variables of coding manuals buttressing said frameworks. However, if the scholarly community is to generate robust knowl- edge for the study of CPR dilemmas, we must provide the underlying work of comparing across frameworks. In this paper, we report on one way the community might conduct such comparisons. We present results and challenges of using a group consensus process to link the more than 450 coding questions derived from the original Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IADF) to the recently proposed Coupled Infrastructure Systems Framework (CISF). Despite overlap, discrepancies in the conceptual positions of the IADF and CISF suggest a need to modify or create new coding variables related to concepts of system boundaries, externalities, cross-scale interactions, multi-functionality, and tech- nological change. We suggest that such work needs provisioning if commons scholars are to navigate the continued challenges of tailoring frameworks and coding manuals to evolving CPR governance dilemmas.

Effects of Community Perceptions and Institutional Capacity on Smallholder Farmers’ Responses to Water Scarcity: Evidence from Arid Northwestern China

Community contextual factors including community perceptions and institutional capacity are among the key determinants in community-based water resource management. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework proposed by Ostrom is commonly employed to examine the outcome of common-pool resource management including water resources. However, community perceptions typically examined in behavioral economics and comparative community analysis literature are rarely incorporated in institutional analysis studies. This study draws on the IAD framework to investigate smallholder farmer communities’ responses to water scarcity in arid northwestern China. Adopting alternating multiple regression and multivariate regression models, this study conducts an empirical analysis using farmer survey data. The results show that the perceptions of water scarcity promote community actions in coping with water shortage. The perception of production risks encourages overall community responses, as well as farming- and irrigation-related responses. Communities with a stronger institutional enforcement are more responsive in taking farming-, irrigation-, and infrastructure-related actions, as well as having better overall responses. The analysis also shows that community interactional capacities and socio-economic factors may influence community actions to mitigate and adapt to adverse effects of local water scarcity. Our findings provide insights for understanding social and institutional aspects of rural farming communities toward sustainable response decisions to overcome water scarcity challenges.

Sustainability of Renewable Off-Grid Technology for Rural Electrification: A Comparative Study Using the IAD Framework

This paper analyses the implementation of renewable off-grid technologies in rural areas, especially where an extension to the national electricity grid was not considered economically feasible. Implementation of remote, stand-alone, electricity technologies as alternatives to a grid connection to provide sustainable electricity access have often failed with many planned projects not realised or abandoned. Our initial assumption was that stand-alone electricity project exhibiting higher scores on sustainability indicators would benefit communities more and make their endurance more likely. However, the impact of the stand-alone technology was often overruled or its quality weakened by government preferences wishing to realise a connection to the central electricity grid. Empirically, the study compares three cases of stand-alone micro-hydropower projects and three cases of stand-alone solar photovoltaic projects in Bogor Regency, Indonesia. It is based on qualitative document analysis, complemented by multiple rounds of semi-structured interviews and observations. The paper assesses the extent to which each project met indicators of technical, economic, social, environmental, and institutional sustainability. The paper tries to explain the endurance of the project from these sustainability scores and uses additional explanations from Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. The findings show that, for the studied local communities, the attractiveness of a grid connection overrules the virtues of a stand-alone electricity project, despite its quality, successful operation and impact. Our research also shows that government policy priorities changed in the rural electrification programme for some communities. In these situations, the off-grid rural electrification programme predominantly provided only temporary access to sustainable electricity for remote local communities that remained waiting and hoping for a grid connection to connect them to fossil fuel-dominated electricity.

Using the politicized IAD framework to assess integrated forest management decision-making in Slovakia

Developments in the past 20 years have changed both the context and the goals of forest management in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in general and Slovakia in particular. One might therefore wonder if introduced “integrative” forestry paradigms on the national level are able to provide assimilation of different forest management claims and what are the drivers behind these developments. Analysis of forest management and its context therefore requires a multilevel approach including decision-making at higher institutional levels down to the decisions of local natural resources users. In this paper, we use a politicized Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework that can link various institutional levels and allows for the simultaneous evaluation of a broad context of forest management decision-making and its outcome. The research problem is addressed by means of case studies and a qualitative methodology. The results of 50 in-depth interviews with forest managers, owners, and other actors revealed that both the role of power and institutional setup are the core drivers of the socioecological outcome. Although the behavior and relationship of forest managers and owners in various networks vary, it is against this background that distinct forest management approaches are employed. Each approach delivers a similar set of ecosystem services. As timber is the main source of income, the provisioning services have primary importance. Thus, an integration of various forest management claims is challenging due to current forestry paradigms and the amount of resources available.