Mitigation and adaptation in polycentric systems: sources of power in the pursuit of collective goals
TL;DR: In this article, a typology of design, pragmatic, and framing power that focuses on how and in whose interests power is mobilized to achieve outcomes is developed, and the conceptual model helps to explain power dynamics across different sectors and across both climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Abstract: Polycentric governance involves multiple actors at multiple scales beyond the state. The potential of polycentric governance for promoting both climate mitigation and adaptation is well established. Yet, dominant conceptualizations of polycentric governance pay scant attention to how power dynamics affect the structure and the outcomes of climate action. We review emerging evidence on power within polycentric and distributed governance across the climate, forestry, marine, coastal, urban, and water sectors, and relate them to established positions on power within research on federalism, decentralization, international relations, and networked governance. We develop a typology of design, pragmatic, and framing power that focuses on how and in whose interests power is mobilized to achieve outcomes. We propose that the conceptual model helps to explain power dynamics across different sectors and across both climate change mitigation and adaptation. Significant research challenges arising from the analysis include the measurement and monitoring of the outcomes of power asymmetries over time.
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TL;DR: The authors identify five latent risks associated with discourse that frames transformation as apolitical and/or inevitable and refer to these risks as the dark side of transformation, and suggest that scientists, policymakers, and practitioners need to consider such change in more inherently plural and political ways.
Abstract: The notion of transformation is gaining traction in contemporary sustainability debates. New ways of theorising and supporting transformations are emerging and, so the argument goes, opening exciting spaces to (re)imagine and (re)structure radically different futures. Yet, questions remain about how the term is being translated from an academic concept into an assemblage of normative policies and practices, and how this process might shape social, political, and environmental change. Motivated by these questions, we identify five latent risks associated with discourse that frames transformation as apolitical and/or inevitable. We refer to these risks as the dark side of transformation. While we cannot predict the future of radical transformations towards sustainability, we suggest that scientists, policymakers, and practitioners need to consider such change in more inherently plural and political ways.
310 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw together diverse social science perspectives and research into a variety of cases to show how different types of power shape rule setting, issue construction, and policy implementation in polycentric governance.
Abstract: Failure to address unsustainable global change is often attributed to failures in conventional environmental governance. Polycentric environmental governance—the popular alternative—involves many centres of authority interacting coherently for a common governance goal. Yet, longitudinal analysis reveals many polycentric systems are struggling to cope with the growing impacts, pace, and scope of social and environmental change. Analytic shortcomings are also beginning to appear, particularly in the treatment of power. Here we draw together diverse social science perspectives and research into a variety of cases to show how different types of power shape rule setting, issue construction, and policy implementation in polycentric governance. We delineate an important and emerging research agenda for polycentric environmental governance, integrating diverse types of power into analytical and practical models.
175 citations
Cites background from "Mitigation and adaptation in polyce..."
...…innovation, experimentation, and creativity emerges and transforms e.g. Anderies and Janssen, 2013; Bell and Morrison, 2015), and political geography (on how power dynamics in polycentric systems evolve and interrelate across scale and space (e.g. Morrison, 2017; Hettiarachchi et al., 2017)....
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...…reviews (e.g. of organisational annual reports and other records which provide participation data, data on the receipt and distribution of fiscal resources, employee and budget numbers, personnel data, media reports on conflict) (Clarke and McCool, 1996; Morrison, 2017; Varone et al., 2017)....
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...Such masking can aid polycentric system drift (whereby a regime fails to adapt to a major contextual shift) or polycentric system conversion (whereby the original goals of a regime are converted to new goals) (Morrison, 2017; Okereke, 2018)....
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01 Jan 2018
114 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors adopt a network perspective to theorize a continuum of structural capacities in social-ecological systems that set the stage for effective adaptation and transformation, and present a framework that hypothesizes seven specific socialecological network configurations.
Abstract: Social networks are frequently cited as vital for facilitating successful adaptation and transformation in linked social-ecological systems to overcome pressing resource management challenges. Yet confusion remains over the precise nature of adaptation vs. transformation and the specific social network structures that facilitate these processes. Here, we adopt a network perspective to theorize a continuum of structural capacities in social-ecological systems that set the stage for effective adaptation and transformation. We begin by drawing on the resilience literature and the multilayered action situation to link processes of change in social-ecological systems to decision making across multiple layers of rules underpinning societal organization. We then present a framework that hypothesizes seven specific social-ecological network configurations that lay the structural foundation necessary for facilitating adaptation and transformation, given the type and magnitude of human action required. A key contribution of the framework is explicit consideration of how social networks relate to ecological structures and the particular environmental problem at hand. Of the seven configurations identified, three are linked to capacities conducive to adaptation and three to transformation, and one is hypothesized to be important for facilitating both processes. We discuss how our theoretical framework can be applied in practice by highlighting existing empirical examples from related environmental governance contexts. Further extension of our hypotheses, particularly as more data become available, can ultimately help guide the design of institutional arrangements to be more effective at dealing with change.
110 citations
TL;DR: The environmental governance literature has seen a proliferation of analytical terms to describe actors who try to engender change for the improvement of the environment/climate, such as entreprene... as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The environmental governance literature has seen a proliferation of analytical terms to describe actors who try to engender change for the improvement of the environment/climate, such as entreprene...
76 citations
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01 Jan 1980
TL;DR: The Eye of Power: A Discussion with Maoists as mentioned in this paper discusses the politics of health in the Eighteenth Century, the history of sexuality, and the Confession of the Flesh.
Abstract: * On Popular Justice: A Discussion with Maoists * Prison Talk * Body/ Power * Questions on Georgraphy * Two Lectures * Truth and Power * Power and Strategies * The Eye of Power * The Politics of Health in the Eighteenth Century * The history of Sexuality * The Confession of the Flesh
15,638 citations
"Mitigation and adaptation in polyce..." refers background in this paper
...However, we suggest that a longer time frame is more suitable for an analysis of the capillary nature of power as it shifts over time.(37,59,69) A third analytical task suggested by our review is the clarification of causality in study design: is power an inevitable outcome of governance structures or independent of such structures?(111) Settling such methodological questions would facilitate the building of a significant evidence base on the presence, effectiveness, and distributional impacts of polycentric governance....
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TL;DR: The traditional view of natural systems, therefore, might well be less a meaningful reality than a perceptual convenience.
Abstract: Individuals die, populations disappear, and species become extinct. That is one view of the world. But another view of the world concentrates not so much on presence or absence as upon the numbers of organisms and the degree of constancy of their numbers. These are two very different ways of viewing the behavior of systems and the usefulness of the view depends very much on the properties of the system concerned. If we are examining a particular device designed by the engineer to perform specific tasks under a rather narrow range of predictable external conditions, we are likely to be more concerned with consistent nonvariable performance in which slight departures from the performance goal are immediately counteracted. A quantitative view of the behavior of the system is, therefore, essential. With attention focused upon achieving constancy, the critical events seem to be the amplitude and frequency of oscillations. But if we are dealing with a system profoundly affected by changes external to it, and continually confronted by the unexpected, the constancy of its behavior becomes less important than the persistence of the relationships. Attention shifts, therefore, to the qualitative and to questions of existence or not. Our traditions of analysis in theoretical and empirical ecology have been largely inherited from developments in classical physics and its applied variants. Inevitably, there has been a tendency to emphasize the quantitative rather than the qualitative, for it is important in this tradition to know not just that a quantity is larger than another quantity, but precisely how much larger. It is similarly important, if a quantity fluctuates, to know its amplitude and period of fluctuation. But this orientation may simply reflect an analytic approach developed in one area because it was useful and then transferred to another where it may not be. Our traditional view of natural systems, therefore, might well be less a meaningful reality than a perceptual convenience. There can in some years be more owls and fewer mice and in others, the reverse. Fish populations wax and wane as a natural condition, and insect populations can range over extremes that only logarithmic
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TL;DR: Scott as discussed by the authors describes how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed and why these schemes have failed, including the one described in this paper, See Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Abstract: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed James C. Scott. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
4,581 citations
"Mitigation and adaptation in polyce..." refers background in this paper
...Framing power-brokers produce codified rules over areas of knowledge (traditionally in engineering, science, economics, medicine, and law) and are typically evident by the existence of a large, wellfunded, and well-educated constituency with concrete discernible interests, broader political support, and the public good plans and initiatives that emanate from this support.(90) In the environmental domain, engineering and forestry experts in the US Corps of Engineers and the US Forest Service, for example, are classic examples of significant actors wielding great framing power....
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