Polycentric Governance Systems Research Articles

Co-participation in the Swiss water forum network

In polycentric governance systems, actors interact in different venues, such as forums which foster cross-sectoral interaction. This analysis centres on water forums in Switzerland and on actors with multiple forum memberships, creating interactions throughout the entire forum network. Findings show that the central actors in the entire water forum network are predominantly from the public administration sector, even though members from the private sector are most numerous. Despite an emphasis on the bottom-up and self-organizing character of polycentric governance systems in the literature, this analysis shows that public administration actors still play a crucial role as network managers and brokers.

Governing fisheries through the critical decade: the role and utility of polycentric systems

The next 10 years are considered a critical decade for fisheries. Declining fish stocks in combination with mounting climate pressure are likely to lead to significant and adverse socio-ecological impacts, threatening sustainability. Responding to these challenges requires modes of governance that are capable of dealing with the complexity and uncertainty associated with the world’s fisheries and their ecosystems. While a range of governance frameworks exist, the concept of polycentric governance has gained prominence in the environmental sector and is posited as a key principle underpinning the resilience of complex socio-ecological systems. However, the application of polycentric governance to fisheries management has been seldom explored. To examine this prospect, we review the literature on polycentric governance to elucidate its potential value in improving the outlook for fisheries and their associated ecosystems. We highlight a number of unique characteristics that overcome known limitations in other forms of governance—polycentric systems are highly participatory and promote the broadest levels of stakeholder involvement, they increase policy freedom at the local level, and they improve the spatial fit between knowledge, action and socio-ecological contexts to ensure that governance responses are implemented at the most appropriate scale. Through fisheries case-studies, we demonstrate that these characteristics are important in helping fisheries respond to complex challenges. Finally, we articulate key knowledge gaps that should be addressed through future research to understand the conditions under which polycentric governance systems are most suited, and the ways in which they can be operationalised most effectively.

Polycentric Systems of Governance: A Theoretical Model for the Commons

AbstractPolycentricity is a fundamental concept in commons scholarship that connotes a complex form of governance with multiple centers of semiautonomous decision making. If the decision‐making centers take each other into account in competitive and cooperative relationships and have recourse to conflict resolution mechanisms, they may be regarded as a polycentric governance system. In the context of natural resource governance, commons scholars have ascribed a number of advantages to polycentric governance systems, most notably enhanced adaptive capacity, provision of good institutional fit for natural resource systems, and mitigation of risk on account of redundant governance actors and institutions. Despite the popularity of the concept, systematic development of polycentricity, including its posited advantages, is lacking in the commons literature. To build greater clarity and specificity around the concept, we develop a theoretical model of a polycentric governance system with a focus on the features necessary or conducive for achieving the functioning predicted by commons scholars. The model is comprised of attributes, which constitute the definitional elements, and enabling conditions, which specify additional institutional features for achieving functionality in the commons. The model we propose takes the concept a step further toward specificity without sacrificing the generality necessary for contextual application and further development.

The Role of the OECD National Contact Points in Improving Access to Justice for Victims of Human Rights Violations in the EU Member States

In the perspective of the UN Guiding Principles, the OECD National Contact Points constitute important components of a polycentric governance system that must be reinforced and made increasingly coherent to improve victims’ ability to access remedies in the EU. This Chapter provides, first of all, an overview of how the NCPs have been implemented and are functioning in EU member countries, highlighting the persisting challenges to their credibility and effectiveness. It then investigates current trends in the handling of specific instances by EU-based NCPs with the aim of illustrating to what extent these non-judicial mechanisms are improving access to remedy for victims of corporate-related human rights abuses. The concluding paragraph summarizes the points of strength and of weakness of these mechanisms in the European context.

Orchestration: Strategic Ordering in Polycentric Climate Governance

This paper considers how the soft and indirect mode of governance known as orchestration has contributed to the growth and structure of the increasingly polycentric climate governance system – a system with multiple centers of authority, public and private, at different governance levels. It also considers the implications of orchestration’s significant role for some of the major propositions of polycentric governance theory. First, that theory suggests that governance organizations emerge spontaneously through local self-organization, yet governments, international organizations and other actors have orchestrated the formation of many climate governance organizations. Second, the theory suggests that governance organizations coordinate their activities on a decentralized basis through mutual adjustment, yet orchestrators have helped to structure the climate governance system and modestly coordinate its constituent organizations. And third, the theory suggests that polycentric governance encourages experimentation, innovation and learning, yet climate governance lacks an organized system that can promote systematic experimentation and learning. The paper concludes by considering how, in this and other areas, further orchestration would be beneficial.

Multi-level policies and adaptive social networks – a conceptual modeling study for maintaining a polycentric governance system

Information and collaboration patterns embedded in social networks play key roles in multilevel and polycentric modes of governance. However, modeling the dynamics of such social networks in multilevel settings has been seldom addressed in the literature. Here we use an adaptive social network model to elaborate the interplay between a central and a local government in order to maintain a polycentric governance. More specifically, our analysis explores in what ways specific policy choices made by a central agent affect the features of an emerging social network composed of local organizations and local users. Using two types of stylized policies, adaptive co-management and adaptive one-level management, we focus on the benefits of multi-level adaptive cooperation for network management. Our analysis uses viability theory to explore and to quantify the ability of these policies to achieve specific network properties. Viability theory gives the family of policies that enables maintaining the polycentric governance unlike optimal control that gives a unique blueprint. We found that the viability of the policies can change dramatically depending on the goals and features of the social network. For some social networks, we also found a very large difference between the viability of the adaptive one-level management and adaptive co-management policies. However, results also show that adaptive co-management doesn’t always provide benefits. Hence, we argue that applying viability theory to governance networks can help policy design by analyzing the trade-off between the costs of adaptive co-management and the benefits associated with its ability to maintain desirable social network properties in a polycentric governance framework.

Polycentric banking and macroeconomic stability

AbstractWe contribute to the post-crisis literature on macroeconomic stability by arguing that polycentric banking systems can better achieve stability than monocentric systems. Building on the theories of E. Ostrom, we engage the literature on free banking systems to show that these systems met the requirements of polycentric governance systems, and that the unintentional result of the underlying governance institutions was macroeconomic stability. In contrast, modern central banking, because it is monocentric, lacks important features regarding knowledge aggregation and incentive compatibility conducive to generating macroeconomic stability. We conclude by discussing various legal barriers that stand in the way of a transition from monetary monocentrism to monetary polycentrism.

Research of Anti-poverty System of Polycentric Governance in Northwest Destitute Areas

To accurate solve the problem of poverty of destitute areas is the key of the Chinese nation becoming well-off to achieve the great rejuvenation. To achieve this goal, we need to innovate poor governance model from both the theoretical and practice ways. After analyzed and excavated the traditional Anti-Poverty governance model, we find the shortcomings of it which had paternalistic, government monopoly and alone bear the responsibility of the single-site government. Based on Anti-Poverty governance current situation of destitute areas of Northwest Yunnan ,this article use polycentric governance theory to analysis and propose constructing polycentric collaborative governance systems and implement anti-poverty measures and suggestions that system take the local Government as the main body of Anti-Poverty governance and non-profit organizations, international and local poverty NGOs, community organizations, individuals , various inter-government departments to work together within it. The proposed of polycentric collaborative governance system has helped to enrich the local anti-poverty theory of governance, broaden the horizons of anti-poverty governance model, accelerate the rate of Contiguous destitute areas out of poverty.

Transaction costs in the evolution of transnational polycentric governance

Polycentric systems of governance may help address two key challenges in the transnational governance of socioecological systems, the problems of fragmentation and fit, but there is limited understanding of the processes through which polycentric governance systems emerge. This paper draws on institutional economics and accounts of international regime formation to develop an ideal-type model of the evolution of transnational polycentric governance. In particular, the model highlights systematically different transaction costs across different phases of polycentric governance evolution. These costs result in important trade-offs between building a broad coalition during agenda setting and addressing complexity in implementation. The plausibility of the model is probed using the case of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), drawing on global-level data on REDD+ collaboration, as well as fieldwork in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. This case suggests that low transaction costs in the agenda-setting phase led to a confused vision for what REDD+ should be, ultimately hampering implementation.

Resilience Thinking as an Interdisciplinary Guiding Principle for Energy System Transitions

Resource usage and environmental consequences of most current energy systems exceed planetary boundaries. The transition to sustainable energy systems is accompanied by a multitude of research methods, as energy systems are complex structures of technical, economical, social and ecological interactions. The description of different discipline’s perspectives in this paper show that a more mutual understanding between disciplines of their respective focus is necessary as they partly create internally competitive views arising from differing emphasis of connected matters. The purpose of this paper is to present a framework for interdisciplinary proceeding in a complex energy system transition process. Resilience thinking is chosen as a core concept for a more holistic view on sustainable energy system development. It is shown that it is already widely used in different disciplines connected to energy system research and is especially suitable due to its wide application across disciplines. The seven principles of resilience thinking (maintain redundancy and diversity, manage connectivity, manage slow variables and feedback, foster complex adaptive systems thinking, encourage learning, broaden participation, and promote polycentric governance systems) are chosen as the basis for a procedure that can be utilized to increase the interdisciplinary perspectives of energy system transitions. For energy transition processes based on scenario development, backcasting and pathway definition, resilience thinking principles are used to assess the resilience of the target energy system, the pathway resilience and the design of the scenario process with respect to the probability of a resilient outcome. The described procedure consisting of questions and parameters can be applied as a first attempt for a resilience assessment of energy transition processes. The perspective of resilience in sustainable energy systems strengthens the importance of diversity, redundancy and flexibility, which reduces the current dominant focus on efficiency of the overall system.

Advanced Metering Infrastructure Deployment in the United States: The Impact of Polycentric Governance and Contextual Changes

AbstractAdvanced metering infrastructure provides the first building block in smart grids by empowering customers and utilities with real‐time information regarding energy use. It is a key element in the U.S. government's push for electric grid modernization. Using a panel dataset for 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia over the years 2007–2012, we evaluate the impacts of a polycentric governance system and socioeconomic contexts on states' performance in smart metering deployment. We find that the advanced metering technological change in the United States has been exclusively created by the interdependencies and interactions between different layers of government. High‐tech industry is the only socioeconomic factor that has a negative impact on smart meter deployment, whereas other factors, such as pressures from energy consumers and environmental groups, and electric grid conditions, have negligible impacts.

Challenges to polycentric governance of an international development project tackling land degradation in Swaziland.

To effectively address the drivers and impacts of land degradation requires polycentric governance systems that facilitate international development projects (IDPs). This paper analyses an IDP aiming to reduce land degradation in Swaziland. A longitudinal-style qualitative approach draws on repeat household surveys, semi-structured interviews and focus groups. We aim to identify the changes that have taken place since the departure of the IDP funders, and the subsequent dynamics between stakeholders. We: (1) chart the evolution of the institutional structures and processes of the IDP; and (2) assess community perceptions of IDP outcomes. Lack of meaningful participation at various stages of the PMC caused the project to lose momentum following the departure of the funders. We discuss these findings in relation to a polycentric approach, and identify how multi-stakeholder IDP can be facilitated as part of wider polycentric governance approaches to inform policies to combat land degradation within Swaziland and more widely.

Understanding What Shapes a Polycentric Governance System

AbstractRecent research has shown that communication networks involving governmental and nongovernmental actors self‐organize based on how risk is perceived. According to the “risk hypothesis,” actors embedded in governance systems in which there is widespread risk of defection tend to form bonding structures, whereas those in low‐risk systems form bridging structures. A parallel strand of research proposes to study complex governance systems composed of multiple actors and the decision‐making forums in which they interact. In this article, the authors couple these research threads and show how bonding and bridging structures form when stakeholders participate in three complex governance systems of varying institutional strength. Findings suggest that the prevalence of one type of structure over the other depends on contextual variables such as the stability of the institutions and the occurrence of environmental focusing events that demand quick policy responses.

Polycentric Banking and Macroeconomic Stability

We contribute to the post-crisis literature on macroeconomic stability by arguing that polycentric banking systems can better achieve stability than monocentric systems. Building on the theories of E. Ostrom, we engage the literature on free banking systems to show that these systems met the requirements of polycentric governance systems, and that the unintentional result of the underlying governance institutions was macroeconomic stability. In contrast, modern central banking, because it is monocentric, lacks important features conducive to generating macroeconomic stability. We conclude by discussing various legal barriers that stand in the way of a transition from monetary monocentrism towards monetary polycentrism.

Adaptive governance for resilience in the wake of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

This study shows how the framework of adaptive governance, originally from the fields of environmental management and climate change, can be used to understand governance dynamics in the area of disaster management. By investigating the case of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, the study argues that Japan's semi-decentralized disaster governance could have been paralyzed at the municipal level due to manpower shortages at municipal government offices and their third-sector organizations. A variety of institutional arrangements were invented to muster manpower from various corners of Japan to help disaster-hit municipalities. This awakened Japan's polycentric governance systems, enabling adaptive disaster governance and thereby boosting governance capability. This experience suggests that decentralized disaster governance, prepared to mobilize its polycentric governance systems, is the key to effectively managing disasters, small and large.

The regionalization of maritime governance: Towards a polycentric governance system for sustainable shipping in the European Union

Driven by the global nature of shipping, maritime governance is characterized by a long history of intergovernmental decision making with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as central locus of authority. Since the 1980s, maritime governance for the European Union (EU) and its member states is subject to processes of regionalization, especially in the environmental domain. Dissatisfaction with the ambition level of the IMO as well as lack of effective implementation and enforcement of IMO standards has driven the emergence of four regionally-based initiatives: the use of special areas in IMO Conventions, the adoption of the Paris Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Port State Control, the development of the European Union shipping policy domain and the emergence of market based initiatives by ports and cargo-owners. This article analyses how each of these regional initiatives are based on cooperation between a regional group of actors and how each initiative has become integrated in maritime governance. The article concludes that although IMO remains a central locus of authority, the emergence of the Paris MoU on PSC and EU legislation for shipping has resulted in a move from a centralized, intergovernmental maritime governance system between the 1950s and 1980s to a more polycentric governance system for EU member states today.

Legitimacy Narratives in Polycentric Water Law and Governance

Global water law and governance is horizontally and vertically fragmented, very complex, involves both state and non-state parties, and is established under and / or mandated by national, supranational (eu) or international law. Accordingly, it can be qualified as polycentric governance. Any governance system — but a polycentric governance system in particular — raises questions of its legitimacy. The paper aims to look at one specific segment of this legitimacy discourse, namely how an international organization that is a ‘centrepiece’ in a polycentric governance system attempts to legitimize itself: that is, to justify its activities in order to gain social acceptance. For this purpose, the legitimacy narratives of a rather successful river basin organization — the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River — will be analysed as a case study for obtaining a better understanding of the specific nature of polycentric governance and its legitimacy narratives.

The capacity of water governance to deal with the climate change adaptation challenge: Using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to distinguish between polycentric, fragmented and centralized regimes

The notion of polycentric governance has become increasingly popular in recent years. Such development may be attributed to expectations that polycentric governance systems have a higher capacity to deal with complex challenges arising from global and climate change. Most often, employed interpretations of polycentricity emphasize the presence of several independent centers of authority in a governance domain. A commonly neglected feature of polycentric governance, as introduced by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, is that this concept entails as well operation under one set of overall accepted rules. This paper analyzes the underlying feature of effective polycentric governance and makes a distinction between polycentric, fragmented, and centralized governance regimes. An empirical analysis of water governance systems in 27 national river basins using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) shows that a set of factors associated with polycentricity has the highest explanatory power for high performance regarding climate change adaptation. Factors associated with fragmented and centralized regimes can be identified for paths leading to low performance. Furthermore, the analysis identifies the effectiveness of formal institutions as important condition, in particular for paths leading toward low performance. The paper elaborates on these findings and discusses as well the potential of fsQCA in such comparative analyses.

The Micro Foundations of Policy Diffusion Toward Complex Global Governance

Greenhouse gas emissions trading (ET) systems have become the centerpiece of climate change policy at multiple scales, unexpectedly largely outside of the UN climate governance process. The diffusion of ET is best described as a case of polycentric diffusion, where ET systems diffused to multiple loci of governance, but where they all serve similar goals under a broad policy framework guided loosely by the UN-based climate regime. Using network analysis combined with qualitative data, we explain how this polycentric pattern of policy development emerged, who carried and spread it and how, and how the idea has spread into a polycentric governance system. We contribute to the policy diffusion literature in a novel way to explain diffusion toward polycentric governance, show the limits of the existing literature to explain the diffusion of ET, and show the utility of network analysis in understanding the process and mechanism of polycentric diffusion.

Governance Systems Analysis (GSA): A Framework for Reforming Governance Systems

Most commentators understand that contemporary social, economic and environmental challenges require quality governance from global to local scales. While public scrutiny of governance has increased in recent years, the literature on frameworks and methods for analysis in complex, poly-centric and multi-thematic governance systems remains fragmented; displaying many disciplinary or sectoral biases. This paper establishes a stronger theory-based foundation for the analysis of complex governance systems. It also develops a clear analytical framework applicable across a vast array of differing governance themes, domains and scales (GSA). The key methodological steps and evaluative criteria for the GSA framework are determined and practical guidance for its application in reform is provided.