Understanding What Shapes a Polycentric Governance System

• Author: Mark Lubell,Ramiro Berardo
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12532
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Date: 01 September 2016

738 Public Administration Review • September | October 2016

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 76, Iss. 5, pp. 738–751. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12532.

Mark Lubell is professor in the

Department of Environmental Science

and Policy and director of the Center for

Environmental Policy and Behavior at the

University of California, Davis. He studies

cooperation problems and decision making

in environmental, agricultural, and public

policy. Field research topics include water

management, sustainable agriculture,

adaptive decision making, climate

change policy, local government policy,

transportation behavior, plant disease

management, invasive species, and policy/

social network analysis.

E-mail: mnlubell@ucdavis.edu

Ramiro Berardo is assistant professor of

environmental and natural resources policy

in the School of Environment and Natural

Resources at The Ohio State University. His

research focuses on the role of institutions

in solving collective action problems in the

use and management of common-pool

resources, with an emphasis on water.

Most of his work is done in complex social-

ecological systems, including large-scale

estuaries and river systems in the United

States and Latin America.

E-mail: berardo.3@osu.edu

Understanding What Shapes a Polycentric Governance System

Abstract : 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.

Ramiro Berardo

The Ohio State University

Mark Lubell

University of California , Davis

Practitioner Points

• Understanding complex governance systems requires knowing how actors participate simultaneously in

multiple forums.

• Bonding social capital is more valuable for the exchange of overlapping information that can be used to

prevent uncooperative behavior, while bridging social capital is more valuable for the acquisition of new

information for innovation.

• Regardless of the strength of formal institutions in complex governance systems, both governmental and

nongovernmental actors tend to join policy forums that are heavily attended.

• The shape of governance systems is likely a function of the strength of formal institutions, the organizational

capacity of individual policy actors, and the level of centralized authority vested in governmental actors.

F inding solutions to collective action problems

in regional arenas in which users have access

to common-pool resources has been one of the

main preoccupations of social scientists for many

years. The pathbreaking work of Elinor Ostrom

and her colleagues has improved our understanding

of how the management of a wide range of natural

resources can be optimized in complex social-

ecological systems in which multiple users interact

with each other. Among the components of social-

ecological systems that may contribute to solving

collective action problems are the networks that

stakeholders form when they communicate with

each other (Ostrom 2005 , 2009 ), which create

the social capital needed to facilitate social and

political cooperation through increased trust and

trustworthiness (Bromiley and Cummings 1995 ;

Sabatier et al. 2005 ; Scholz, Berardo, and Kile 2008 ).

In a recent contribution to the study of communi-

cation networks in complex social-ecological systems,

Berardo and Scholz ( 2010 ) examine networks in

10 U.S. estuaries and link the formation of specific

network structures to the types of problems that

stakeholders face and the risk associated with them.

According to their “risk hypothesis,” when actors in a

network (individuals or organizational stakeholders)

fear defection by others, they tend to create close-

knit bonding communication structures that facilitate

the flow of redundant information that can be used

to detect and punish defectors. On the other hand,

when actors face lower defection risk, they create links

that facilitate the emergence of bridging structures.

They do so, the argument goes, because bridging ties

provide information that helps solve the coordination

problems that are likely to exist in the absence of

widespread defection.

In parallel with this work, other research has

explicitly highlighted the need to study networks

as realizations of complex governance systems in

which actors engage in “venue shopping” in order to

advance their individual agendas (Berardo, Olivier,

and Lavers 2015 ; Lubell, Henry, and McCoy 2010a ,