Institutional design for a complex commons: Variations in the design of credible commitments and the provision of public goods

Abstract

Sustainably managing regional‐scale common pool resources and providing for environmental public goods often requires the cooperation of multiple governments in the design and adoption of diverse institutional arrangements. Do government actors anticipate the collective action challenges of credible commitment and public goods provision in devising institutional arrangements? Drawing on public–private partnerships, local public contracting and political economy literatures, hypotheses on expected diversity in design are developed. The hypotheses are tested using fine‐grained data from the approximately 3,000 rules composing the New York City watersheds governing arrangements focusing on measures of discretion, shared decision‐making, monitoring, compliance and sanctioning. Using mixed methods we find that actors resort to distinct designs to create credible commitments, when compared to the provision of public goods. Also, the design of primary public goods arrangements varies from secondary public goods. The article presents a novel approach for using textual data to empirically test hypotheses grounded in theories of institutional design.

New opportunities for institutional analysis in public administration research

“…The second paper, authored by Rice et al (2021), discusses the use of computational text analysis and natural language processing in Institutional Grammar research. The third article, by Schlager et al (2021) presents a novel mixed methods approach for using Institutional Grammar textual data to empirically test hypotheses grounded in theories of institutional design. Each of these three papers is discussed in turn below.…”

“…Larger‐N analyses of institutional design and associated dynamics are likely to be particularly impactful if they can also engage other methodological techniques as well as ground in theory. Schlager et al (2021) showcase the value of using a theoretically informed mixed‐method approach in larger‐N Institutional Grammar research in the third article presented in this Symposium. Their article is briefly described below.…”

“…Schlager et al (2021) engage the Institutional Grammar in an assessment of the designs of institutions governing New York City watershed management. Their assessment of institutional designs focuses on exploring distinctive patterns in the designs of institutions intended to govern different kinds of collective action dilemmas—one of ensuring credible commitments among actors coordinating in the watershed management domain, and two of public goods provision.…”

“…Their institutional analysis is grounded in theories of public–private partnerships, local public contracting, and political economy. For their analysis, Schlager et al (2021) code approximately 3000 institutional statements. They use multiple forms of data analysis to discern patterns in among Institutional Grammar coded institutional data, including Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and logit regression.…”

“…Scholars of public administration have exhibited an enduring interest in the study of institutions—rules, norms, and strategies that govern social systems and organizations. This interest is reflected in early public administration studies concerned with the mechanisms through which public goods and services are delivered (Ostrom & Ostrom, 1977) as well as in contemporary research that examines how governments adapt the design of institutions to different types of collective action dilemmas and public goods (Schlager et al, 2021). Contemporary institutionally focused public administration research has been particularly shaped by institutional theory developed during the 1990s.…”