Polycentric Governing and Polycentric Governance

Abstract

Abstract Existing literature has tended to define polycentric governance in the sense developed by the Bloomington School of Political Economy. In contrast, this chapter promotes polycentricity as a lens for analysing governance from an institutionalist perspective. Such an approach can be applied locally (e.g. to metropolitan, water, and landscape governance) as well as globally (e.g. to transnational value chains, marine, or migration governance). Under different names numerous analytical approaches that share the working assumptions of New Institutional Economics work on this basis. The lens of polycentric governance allows one to bring together multiple actors engaged in the provision and consumption of collective goods. The approach analyses the interplay of multiple interdependent but autonomous individual and collective, public, private, and civil society actors operating on and across different scales. Research on polycentric governance wonders to what extent ‘order’ or ‘coherence’ emerges out of these multi-actor multi-scalar dynamics and how this mode of organization fares in terms of other performance criteria such as accountability, effectiveness, equity, and sustainability. ‘Techniques’ from the perspective of polycentric governance relate to institutional processes. ‘Power’ is in this approach conceptualized as the capacity to shape the institutions of governance. ‘Legitimacy’ is conferred upon polycentric governance by citizens and consumers. As a major weakness, this approach has little eye for un-institutionalized politics.