Participation and Political Influence in Complex Governance Systems

Abstract

Public policy generally emerges from interactions among actors embedded within complex governance systems, composed of multiple actors and forums (issue‐based arenas where stakeholders repeatedly interact to resolve collective action problems). Such systems allow actors multiple forums wherein they can influence policy decisions. But actors do not value the decisions made in each forum equally, and it remains unclear how actors allocate resources across forums. This article links actor strategy to their influence within the forums the actors identify as most important (their primary forum). There is theoretical ambiguity about how actors invest their limited resources across the forums that affect their interests to maximize primary forum influence. Do they concentrate all their effort within the primary forum or participate more broadly? To answer this question, we offer two competing theories. First, broad participation may allow actors to develop political capital necessary to influence other actors and thus influence primary forum policies. The second approach notes the opportunity costs of broad participation—actors have fewer resources to invest in their primary forum. An analysis of stakeholder participation in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and Tampa Bay Watershed governance systems demonstrates that broader participation is associated with greater primary forum influence.

The Impact of Forum Interdependence and Network Structure on Actor Performance in Complex Governance Systems

“…Our results demonstrate that understanding how actors perform in complex ecologies of games can be facilitated by a careful examination of the interconnectivity of forums in which they participate and the types of networks of exchange of information that they have. These findings build on recent work in the EGF demonstrating that forum interdependence can have a profound impact on policy‐making processes and influence dynamics within complex governance systems (Berardo & Lubell, ; Jasny & Lubell, ; Lubell, ; Lubell et al, ; Mewhirter et al, , ).…”

“…Thus, we include the dummy variable Primary Forum , which takes a value of 1 when it was the first forum named by the respondent, and a value of 0 otherwise. This approach is largely consistent with that used in Mewhirter et al ().…”

“…We also control for the Number of Forums that an actor participates in across the governance system (measured by counting the number of forums listed by the respondent) . Actors participating in more forums may be more productive within a forum due to their increased experience in dealing with forum matters and greater knowledge regarding effective bargaining techniques, at least in the forums that most readily impact their interests (Mewhirter et al, ). Such actors may also, over time, increase their knowledge of bargaining strategies and policy knowledge, which may impact their performance.…”

“…While forums allow actors to pursue their policy agendas, successful forum participation requires actors to invest significant time and effort (i) learning about the problems addressed in the forums, (ii) investigating and potentially aiding in the design of various policy alternatives, (iii) learning about the interests and policy views of other participants, (iv) negotiating with others to craft policy outputs, and (v) implementing and enforcing agreements (Mewhirter et al, ). Actors that face lower costs will be better able maximize their gains from participating in such forums (Lubell, Mewhirter, Berardo, & Scholz, ).…”

Institutional externalities and actor performance in polycentric governance systems

“…Due to interdependency, the forums can produce “institutional externalities”—instances where the decisions made in one forum alter the state of the policy problem or decision‐making environment in other forums, in effect “linking” them (Feiock, ; Feiock, Steinacker, & Hyung, ; Kimmich, ; Lubell et al, ; Lubell, ; McGinnis, ). The existence of these institutional externalities is a core hypothesis of the recently developed “ecology of games framework” (EGF), which integrates transaction costs analysis with the concept of polycentric institutions (Berardo & Lubell, ; Jasny & Lubell, ; Lubell, ; Mewhirter, Coleman, & Berardo, ).…”