Balancing Costs and Benefits of Collaboration in an Ecology of Games
Abstract
enThe growth of collaborative approaches to governance has resulted in increasingly complex policy and management landscapes, where actors are presented with ever-increasing numbers of decision-making venues they can participate in and actors they can collaborate with. Given that actors face constraints on their capacity to manage actor and venue relationships in such polycentric governance systems, we assume the marginal benefit of yet another relationship should begin to diminish at some level of engagement. Furthermore, we hypothesize that such capacity limitations are not static, but decrease as actors learn, develop skills, and formulate strategies for how to navigate complex polycentric systems more effectively. Drawing on the Ecology of Games framework, this article investigates two Swedish collaborative governance initiatives where a multitude of actors came together to address a range of different, but interrelated, policy issues and management tasks. The empirical findings suggest that actors’ capacities to successfully navigate polycentric governance arrangements increase as they gain experience and develop their networking skills. Our findings imply there is a need to balance increased complexity in polycentric systems with increased capacity, otherwise the overall effect of an ever-increasing number of venues and actors could be collaborative fatigue and decreased abilities to address diverse governance challenges.
Abstract
zh协同治理方法的发展带来了越加复杂的政策和管理环境，在这些环境中，行为者可以参与的决策场所以及可以合作的伙伴都越来越多。在这种多中心治理体系中，行为者管理参与者和场所关系的能力有限。由此，我们认为，增加一种关系所带来的边际效益应该会在某一参与度上开始减少。此外，我们假设这种能力的局限不是静态的，而是随着行动者学习、发展技能，以及制定更有效地驾驭复杂多中心体系的策略而降低。借助生态博弈学框架，本文对瑞典的两个协同治理计划进行了探讨。在这两个治理计划中，有众多参与者聚集在一起来解决一系列有差异但相互关联的政策问题和管理任务。我们的实证研究结果表明，随着行动者获得更多经验并提高网络技能，他们成功驾驭多中心治理安排的能力会得到增强。我们的研究结果表明，多中心体系在扩容，我们需要权衡随之增加的复杂性，否则不断增加的场地和行为者带来的总体影响将会是协作疲劳和应对各种治理挑战的能力的降低。
