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In the 21 st century, global issues are increasingly characterized by inter-connectedness and complexity. Global environmental change, and climate change in particular, has become a powerful driver and catalyst of forced migration and internal displacement of people. Environmental migrants may far outnumber any other group of displaced people and refugees in the years to come. Deeper scientific integration, especially across the social sciences, is a prerequisite to tackle this issue.

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In theory, polycentric governance arrangements are better able to respond to complex, uncertain, and multiscale challenges. Research on polycentric governance challenges these normative assumptions to find that the functionality of polycentric systems is constrained because different kinds of power influence not only the emergence and design of polycentric systems, but also decisions about policy choices and outcomes. This study uses a polycentric power typology to provide insights into the power dynamics underpinning the polycentric fisheries system of Lake Victoria through qualitative case study methods. The study reveals that power by design creates a polycentric structure that could potentially provide opportunities for power‐sharing between higher and lower decision centers. However, pragmatic and framing power erode power away from lower‐level authorities by either taking over or dismantling lower‐level decision centers and institutions. Without a genuine intent to share power among decision centers, cross‐level linkages are deliberately nonfunctional or have high transaction costs, creating and intensifying conflicts and competitions between the state and local governments. In the absence of functional cross‐linkages, information‐sharing, accountability, and conflict‐resolution mechanisms are hampered as is the inclusion of lower‐level actors in management. Higher‐level actors justify taking over functions of lower‐level actors by deploying frames of the lower‐level's “lack of capacity.” In combination, these factors concentrate power at the center, resulting in maladaptive outcomes in Lake Victoria's fisheries. The findings suggest that improving understanding of contextual conditions that are more suited to polycentric governance is important for refining theory and improving governance.

Governing the commons in the face of socio-cultural heterogeneity is a challenge for academicians and practitioners alike. Some studies find that socio-cultural heterogeneity has a negative, a positive, or a non-linear relationship with collective action. Another set of studies finds that institutions can mediate the effects of heterogeneity that influence collective action for improving natural resource conditions. We build on the second set of studies to identify the underlying conditions under which these institutions promote successful collective action in a socio-culturally heterogeneous group with two different castes. Our case study suggests that under conditions that create equity, accountability, symbolic capital, and member capabilities, institutions can promote successful collective action. By using the concept of interlinked action arenas, we also show that although the community-based watershed group chose to mute caste in one action arena for the purposes of collective action, outside of this action arena, caste-related norms of untouchability are actively practiced. Group members have to continually switch between the muting and unmuting of caste from one action arena to another action arena, which continues to produce, reproduce, and maintain power asymmetries between members of both castes.