Understanding What Shapes a Polycentric Governance System

Recent 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.     

网络治理：公共管理的新框架

近年来,网络治理是西方国家公共管理研究的一个前沿课题,网络治理的理论主张、治理结构和治理机制是文章的研究中心.在疏理和整合当前网络治理研究的基础上,文章指出,政策网络理论与治理理论的结合,促成了行动者中心制度主义和管理复杂网络两种流派的形成,倡导网络治理作为一种新的治理模式,致力于实现主体间良性互动和互利互补的合作;网络治理的治理结构是不同于市场(自愿)与科层(强制)的复杂结构,网络是一个有着共同价值诉求的自组织系统,它不同于市场中自愿的个体行为,又不同于科层的命令服从体系;网络治理的治理机制在于信任机制和协调机制的培育,信任机制是网络的运作基础,其地位类似于市场的价格机制或科层的权威机制,而信任机制的落实,又需要回到协调机制的构建上,只有在价值协同、信息共享以及诱导与动员等方面建立起良好协调机制的基础上,才能真正地培育起成员间的信任关系以及成员与集体之间的信任关系,最终实现互利互惠的合作.     

Focusing Events and Changes in Ecologies of Policy Games: Evidence from the Paraná River Delta

Solving environmental problems on a regional scale demands joint efforts by multiple stakeholders, but coordinating such efforts can be difficult in complex governance systems. In this article, we combine the literature in Adaptive Governance with the Ecology of Policy Games (EPGs) framework to enhance our understanding of how complex governance systems react to environmental focusing events. We study the EPGs in the Paraná River delta in Argentina following widespread fires caused by slash‐and‐burn practices in 2008, and analyze how new forums created to address the consequences of this event differ from the forums created prior to the event in terms of their capacity to attract stakeholders and to provide higher interconnectivity to the whole governance system. Furthermore, we offer an initial evaluation of the Comprehensive Strategic Plan for the Conservation and Sustainability of the Paraná River delta, the main forum in the EPGs created to address the negative consequences of the focusing event. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the study of complex governance systems where stakeholders are able to address the management of natural resources at a regional scale.     

Governance Arrangements for Transboundary Issues: Lessons from the Food Waste Programs of Italian Regions

Focusing on transboundary issues contributes to highlighting how new governance modes can emerge from increasing interdependence and complexity in public policies. This article analyzes food waste as a transboundary issue that cuts across different policy subsystems (PSs), intersects multiple levels of government, and calls into question consolidated policy making for new modes of governance. The analytical framework provides a multidimensional approach and a new typology of governance arrangements to be used in empirical research. Evidence from an Italian case study and an empirical investigation of 20 regional food waste programs shows that regions can adopt different driving ideas and can activate a variety of governance arrangements and differentiated, as well as viable, modes of integration between consolidated PSs. The article argues that different tool mixes combined with different levels of governance complexity may lead to a variety of governance arrangements and a differentiated likelihood of policy integration.     

测量治理：国外的研究及其对中国的启示

对治理的测量是构建经验性治理理论的基础。采用文献分析方法,首先简要介绍了国外,特别是世界银行、联合国人居署等国际组织的学者创建的测定治理的原则及指标体系,并对其获取资料和数据的调查研究方法进行了介绍。在此基础上,就中国地方治理测量指标体系的构建提出了原则性的意见,并初步设计了基层地方政府层次的治理水平测量指标体系,这为今后进一步深入研究乡镇基层地方治理发展变化奠定了基础。认为,治理理论打破了以往"政治-行政"二分法的研究取向,为政治和行政的研究与实践提供了一个更为综合的理论视野。国外学者对治理理论的价值定位和实证角度的获取资料和数据的方法也值得国内学术界借鉴。同时主张,作为一个从西方学术界引进的概念和理论,中国学者在利用这一理论来解释和分析中国的相关社会现象时要意识到其理论和测定概念指标的适用性问题。     

The Democratic Anchorage of Governance Networks

Governance through the negotiated interaction of a plurality of public, semi-public and private actors seems to provide an efficient means for governing our increasingly complex, fragmented and multi-layered societies. However, the big question is whether governance networks also contribute to the democratic governance of society. Governance network theory and post-liberal theories of democracy claim that there are both democratic problems and potentials associated with interactive network governance. In order to be able to assess, and possibly improve, the democratic performance of governance networks, the authors of this article develop and substantiate an analytical model for measuring the democratic anchorage of governance networks in different political constituencies and in an appropriate set of democratic rules and norms. In addition, it is argued that politicians should play a key role in efforts to ensure the democratic anchorage of governance networks.     

Knowledge for Governance,Governance of Knowledge: Inclusive Knowledge Management in Collaborative Governance Processes

ABSTRACT

Different ways of knowing (WOKs) present in governance processes easily give rise to controversies and conflicts and forestall collective action. To resolve these conflicts it is necessary to understand what constitutes a WOK and how we can organize inclusion through collaborative governance. This paper argues that WOKs contain different knowledge elements: they contain different bodies of factual knowledge, formulate specific knowledge questions, and prefer different methods and knowledge institutes. WOKs also encompass different frames, interpretations, or normative perceptions of reality. And finally, different WOKs make use of different sources and types of organizing capacity.

Realizing successful collaborative governance processes means organizing inclusion of these different components of knowledge. This paper investigates the implications of this knowledge diversity for realizing collaborative governance processes and the challenges for inclusive knowledge management—through an in-depth case study of a collaborative governance process between the Netherlands and Flanders.

We conclude that realizing inclusion between various WOKs and their knowledge components contributes to the overall success of a collaborative governance process. However, managing inclusive knowledge is as much a matter of conscious strategies as it is the result of an emergent interaction process between stakeholders, experts, and officials within various WOKs. Furthermore, although knowledge inclusion facilitates successful negotiation between stakeholders, it doesn't guarantee a successful outcome of these negotiations.     

Collaborative Governance: Integrating Management,Politics, and Law

Scholars have engaged in an ongoing dialogue about the relationships among management, politics, and law in public administration. Collaborative governance presents new challenges to this dynamic. While scholars have made substantial contributions to our understanding of the design and practice of collaborative governance, others suggest that we lack theory for this emerging body of research. Law is often omitted as a variable. Scholarship generally does not explicitly include collaboration as a public value. This article addresses the dialogue on management, politics, and law with regard to collaborative governance. It provides an overview of the current legal framework for collaborative governance in the United States at the federal, state, and local levels of government and identifies gaps. The institutional analysis and development framework provides a body of theory that incorporates rules and law into research design. The article concludes that future research on collaborative governance should incorporate the legal framework as an important variable and collaboration as a public value.     

Conservation in Context: Toward a Systems Framing of Decentralized Governance and Public Participation in Wildlife Management

Governance scholars have long championed the adaptive utility of decentralized management institutions, in part due to their ability to bring diverse stakeholders into decision‐making processes. However, research into the link between decentralization and participation often looks at policy design but bypasses important system feedbacks that shape sustained participation over time. To paint a more robust picture detailing how decentralization and participation are related, this paper uses a complex systems framework to explore interacting structural, operational, and cultural components of decentralized wildlife governance institutions in the United States and Botswana. Through this comparative analysis, I argue that the landscape of public participation in decentralized governance institutions appears to be significantly impacted by three factors: 1) how decentralization processes occurred, 2) where in the process of decision making participation is situated, and 3) perceptions of power distribution between groups with competing interests.     

积极促进我国制度优势转化为治理效能

中国特色社会主义制度和国家治理体系具有无比优势,但制度优势还有待于转化为治理效能,治理能力还有待于进一步提高。实现现代化,当务之急是积极促进我国制度优势转化为治理效能。为此,应当加强和改善党对制度优势转化为治理效能的领导,各级党组织要充分认识和高度重视把制度优势转化为治理效能的重大意义,坚决贯彻党集中统一领导的各项制度,确保治理工作始终坚持正确的方向;应当充分发挥人民在制度优势转化为治理效能中的主体作用,完善人民代表大会组织制度和工作制度、立法和决定功能、监督功能,充分发挥共产党领导的多党合作和政治协商制度、基层群众自治制度的作用;应当改革和创新治理的体制机制,优化行政决策体制机制,强化行政执行体制机制,加强责任追究制度,健全行政执法责任制;应当优化政府职责体系和行政监管督察体制机制,加强决策监督、执行监管督察、效能监管督察,实现监督督察的制度化、程序化;应当正确处理和理顺各种治理关系,特别是政府和市场的关系、中央和地方关系、各行政部门之间的关系;应当强化各级领导干部的制度意识,不断提高其治理能力。     

The Loss of Governance Capacity through Corruption

Corruption manifests itself in many ways and at different levels. Corrupt behavior causes outrage to victims and those who value civil society, it impedes good government and administrative practice. The policy challenge in reducing corruption is to identify the component parts of corrupt behavior and the risk–reward profiles of offenders. This exploratory article begins this process by reporting data from 100 successfully prosecuted cases from New York City. The article analyzes data on varying degrees of corruption in service provision in New York City. The loss to the city is much more a loss of governance capacity than it is a monetary loss.     

Governance without a state: Can it work?

In this article we explore how much state is necessary to make governance work. We begin by clarifying concepts of governance and the “shadow of hierarchy” and we follow this clarification with a brief overview of empirical findings on governance research in developed countries. We then discuss the dilemmas for governance in areas of limited statehood, where political institutions are too weak to hierarchically adopt and enforce collectively binding rules. While prospects for effective policymaking appear to be rather bleak in these areas, we argue that governance research has consistently overlooked the existence of functional equivalents to the shadow of hierarchy. We assert that governance with(out) government can work even in the absence of a strong shadow of hierarchy, we identify functional equivalents to the shadow of hierarchy, and we discuss to what extent they can help overcome issues of legitimacy and effectiveness in areas of limited statehood.     

New Governance, the Internet, and Country Code Top-Level Domains in Europe

Much academic work on governance in recent years has explored responses that states have made to sectors of the economy, usually historically well rooted nationally, that have been subject to globalizing pressures. Less work exists on responses that are being made to new parts of the economy emerging outside the nation state with inherently global characteristics. The Internet—and specifically its naming and addressing system—provides an example of how the state has aimed to assert public interest governance authority in a system initially absent of its influence. This article explores the nature and consequences of this activity in the process contributing to the study of the Internet and governance. Working within the limitations but also the opportunities created by policy norms developed at the global level, the article finds that the state has been instrumental in the development of novel public–private governance systems for Internet country code Top-Level Domains.     

Private Actors and the State: Internationalization and Changing Patterns of Governance

This article investigates the implications of political and economic internationalization on patterns of governance from a statecentric perspective. The actual patterns of governance in internationalized environments can be related to the respective governance capacity of public and private actors, which hinges in turn on the strategic constellation underlying the provision of a public good. The specific strategic constellation varies in three dimensions: the congruence between the scope of the underlying problem and the organizational structures of the related actors, the type of problem, and the institutional context, all of which involve a number of factors. With this concept in mind, we identify four ideal-typed patterns of governance, enabled by different configurations of public and private capacities to formally or factually influence in various ways the social, economic, and political processes by which certain goods are provided.     

Beyond Kyoto: Climate Change Policy in Multilevel Governance Systems

Climate change policy has commonly been framed as a matter of international governance for which global policy strategies can be readily employed. The decade of experience following the 1997 signing of the Kyoto Protocol suggests a far more complex process involving a wide range of policy options and varied engagement by multiple levels of governance systems. The respective experiences of the United States and Canada suggest that formal engagement in the international realm of policy is not a good indicator of domestic policy development or emissions reductions. The different contexts of intergovernmental relations, varied resources available to subnational governments for policy development and implementation, and role of subnational leaders in policy formation have emerged as important factors in explaining national differences between these North American neighbors. Consequently, climate change increasingly presents itself as a challenge not only of international relations but also of multilevel governance, thereby creating considerable opportunity to learn from domestic policy experimentation.     

The Origins of Conflict in Polycentric Governance Systems

Natural resources are governed by polycentric systems, which can be conceptualized as an “ecology of games” in which policy actors participate in multiple policy forums governing interdependent issues. This article analyzes why actors perceive different payoffs across the forums in which they participate, ranging from mutually beneficial games of cooperation to conflictual zero-sum games in which one actor's gain means another actor's loss. The authors develop hypotheses at the level of the individual, the forum, and the overall polycentric system and test them using survey data collected in three research sites: Tampa Bay, Florida; the Paraná River delta, Argentina; and the Sacramento–San Joaquin River delta, California. The empirical findings suggest that levels of conflict in policy forums are higher when the actors who participate in them are concerned with hot-button issues, when the forums have large and diverse memberships, and in systems with a long history of conflict. The results shed new light on the drivers of conflict and cooperation in complex governance systems and suggest ways to manage conflict.     

The Institutionalization of Private Governance: How Business and Nonprofit Organizations Agree on Transnational Rules

This article assesses the recent trend of cooperation among antagonistic private actors that results in the creation and implementation of issue-specific transnational norms and rules and the subsequent shift from public to private forms of governance. Many political scientists agree that authority also exists outside of formal political structures. Private actors increasingly begin to make their own rules and standards that acquire authority beyond the international system. This observation is often referred to as private transnational governance as opposed to public or international governance. Although the concept of private governance gains prominence in academic debates, it is not clear how private governance on the global scale is constructed and maintained or what specific or general conditions are necessary for private governance to emerge. Based on the review of common theoretical propositions, this article develops an integrated model along which the necessary conditions for the emergence of private governance can be assessed and understood. As most research has hitherto focused on institutionalized cooperation between business actors (self-regulation), this article takes a closer look at those transnational systems of rule that result out of the enhanced cooperation between profit and nonprofit actors (coregulation).     

Governance landscapes for emerging technologies: The case of cryptocurrencies

Scholars call for “adaptive governance” to balance concern about technology uncertainty with the need for innovation in the governance of emerging technologies. Yet, empirical assessment of such governance systems remains sparse. Do the actors interested in the potential regulation of an emerging technology focus on their own interests and opportunities, or do they think in terms of the collective interest? We focus on the actors who embed such systems from a novel landscape perspective that combines two dimensions of governance: the nature of the regulatory target, and the nature of the process they advocate for governing the target. We present data from over 70 actors in the area of cryptocurrencies for evaluating this new logic.     

Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance

The multifaceted challenges of contemporary governance demand a complex account of the ways in which those who are subject to laws and policies should participate in making them. This article develops a framework for understanding the range of institutional possibilities for public participation. Mechanisms of participation vary along three important dimensions: who participates, how participants communicate with one another and make decisions together, and how discussions are linked with policy or public action. These three dimensions constitute a space in which any particular mechanism of participation can be located. Different regions of this institutional design space are more and less suited to addressing important problems of democratic governance such as legitimacy, justice, and effective administration.