Network Governance of the Commons

Abstract

The survival of the commons is closely associated with the potential to find ways to strengthen contemporary management systems, making them more responsive to a number of complexities, like the dynamics of ecosystems and related, but often fragmented, institutions. A discussion on the desirability of finding ways to establish so-called cross-scale linkages has recently been vitalised in the literature. In the same vein, concepts like adaptive management, co-management and adaptive comanagement have been discussed. In essence, these ways of organizing management incorporate an implicit assumption about the establishment of social networks and is more closely related to network governance and social network theory, than to political administrative hierarchy. However, so far, attempts to incorporate social network analysis (SNA) in this literature have been rather few, and not particularly elaborate. In this paper, a framework for such an approach will be presented. The framework provides an analytical skeleton for the understanding of joint management and the establishment of cross-scale linkages. The relationships between structural network properties-like density, centralization, and heterogeneity-and innovation in adaptive co-management systems are highlighted as important to consider when crafting institutions for natural resource management. The paper makes a theoretical and methodological contribution to the understanding of co-management, and thereby to the survival of the commons.

The social structural foundations of adaptation and transformation in social–ecological systems

“…Network closure, which involves structures of cohesive (sub) networks where actors are connected through redundant and strong connections (configuration A, Fig. 3), has a long history of being recognized as a source of bonding social capital (Burt 2005). In fact, these structures are thought to emerge as a response to perceived risks that others may not act as "agreed" (i.e., a lack of trust; Berardo andScholz 2010, Berardo 2014).…”

“…The existence of multiple different stakeholder groups, i.e., subgroups, is common in SESs (e.g., fishers and dive tourism operators or actors from different socioeconomic or cultural backgrounds). Importantly, such diversity among actors in SESs can pose a barrier to knowledge sharing, inhibit conflict resolution, and make process-based tasks inefficient (Carlsson and Sandström 2008, Barnes-Mauthe et al 2013, Barnes et al 2016). Yet successfully initiating SES transformations will almost always require diverse groups of people to overcome such barriers and work together in the social decision process to imagine new futures and take advantage of new opportunities; undertakings that often involve a need for crafting new constitutional rules (Walker et al 2004, Wilson et al 2013.…”

Balancing collaboration with coordination: Contesting eradication in the Australian plant pest and disease biosecurity system

“…Bridging capital, on the other hand, underpins access to additional, and therefore valuable, resources through unique relationships to distant parts of a network (Burt 2005;Putnam 1993). With bridging capital, information such as instructions relating to coordination, can be rapidly dispersed across a network (Carlsson and Sandstrom 2008). The benefits of bridging capital however can only be yielded in cases where the risks of encountering uncooperative behaviours are low, which generally requires that individuals in such interactions have little to gain from uncooperative behaviour.…”

The Use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Managing High Arctic Tourism Sites: A Collective Action Perspective

“…This, in turn, means that the most successful collective action to manage common-pool resources may still result in resource degradation or depletion, if actors operating outside established collective action networks cannot be not excluded from resource use [80] or at least required, e.g., by governmental mandates, to operate in accordance with the rules established by the collective action network. Alternatively, non-member operators could be encouraged to join a network, but this traditionally only works if they already share similar values and backgrounds with an existing network's members, which in turn increases network homogeneity [81]. The latter can also be strengthened by creating dependence on network-specific technologies.…”