Collaborative Governance of Climate Change Adaptation Across Spatial and Institutional Scales

• Published in: Policy studies journal Vol. 46; no. 2; pp. 222 - 247
• Main Authors: Hamilton, Matthew, Lubell, Mark
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.05.2018
• Subjects: Adaptation; Climate adaptation; Climate change; climate change adaptation governance; Collaboration; Decision making; East Africa; Environmental policy; Governance; Joint participation; Participation; Policy making; spatial and institutional scales; Spatial data; Transaction costs
• ISSN: 0190-292X; 1541-0072
• DOI: 10.1111/psj.12224

We examine two related questions that are key for understanding collaborative outcomes in complex governance systems. The first is the extent to which collaboration among policy actors depends upon their joint participation in policy forums. The second is how the scales at which these forums operate conditionally affect the likelihood of collaboration. We address these questions using data from a recent survey on actors’ collaborative interactions as well as their participation in climate change adaptation policy forums in the Lake Victoria region in East Africa. Exponential random graph models show that actors are more likely to collaborate if they jointly participate in policy forums. However, this effect weakens at progressively higher spatial levels at which forums operate. Similarly, collaboration is less likely among actors jointly participating in forums that sponsor decision making at the higher collective choice level rather than lower operational choice level. While policy forums may catalyze collaboration, our findings suggest that their capacity to do so may be subject to scale‐dependent transaction costs of political contracting. 摘要 我们分析了有关理解复杂治理体系的合作结果的两个关键性问题。 首先是政策行为者间的合作程度取决于多个政策论坛中他们的共同参与。其二是这些论坛的运行规模如何有条件地影响了合作的可能性。我们通过使用对东非维多利亚湖地区行为者的调查问卷回答了以上问题。这一问卷针对的是这一地区行为者的合作互动和他们对适应气候变化政策论坛的参与。指数随机图模型表明共同参加政策论坛的行为者更容易合作。然而, 这个效果随着论坛运行的空间范围的扩大而逐步减弱。相似地, 当一个论坛主办方的决策在更高的集体选择层面而非在更低的操作选择层面时, 参加同一政策论坛的行为者更不易合作。尽管政策论坛可能催化合作, 我们的结论表明它们实现这一催化作用的能力可能会受制于由规模影响的政治合同的交易成本。