Collaborative partnerships in complex institutional systems

Collaborative partnerships in complex institutionalsystemsMark Lubell

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect

Collaborative partnerships exist in the context of complex

institutional systems that feature multiple institutions and

actors interacting in the context of interconnected collective-

action problems within ecosystems. How collaborative

partnerships contribute to the overall capacity of complex

institutional systems to sustainability govern natural resources

remains an open question. This article reviews several

theoretical approaches for studying complex institutional

systems, and discusses how collaborative partnerships would

be viewed from these perspectives. The approaches covered

include neo-institutional economics, polycentric governance,

complex adaptive systems, and evolutionary models of

institutional change. The conclusion calls for synthetic

theoretical frameworks that integrate many of these ideas, and

identifies the research on social–ecological systems as a

promising direction.

Addresses

UC Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95618, United States

Corresponding author: Lubell, Mark ([email protected])

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2015, 12:41–47

This review comes from a themed issue on Sustainability governance

and transformation

Edited by Bruce M Taylor and Ryan RJ McAllister

Received 05 June 2014; Accepted 29 August 2014

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2014.08.011

1877-3435/# 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

IntroductionThe vast majority of the research on collaborative partner-

ships ignores the fundamental reality that environmental

policy is formulated in complex institutional systems.

Complex institutional systems feature multiple policy

institutions, which are rule-structured venues where

actors deliberate and make collective decisions about

what Ostrom [1,2] calls ‘operational rules’ governing

resource-use. The mix of institutions is diverse, featuring

collaborative partnerships, command-and-control regula-

tions, market-based policies, and other approaches. In

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policy domains, the actors are usually individuals who

represent governmental, non-governmental, or private

organizations; sometimes individuals participate on their

own behalf. Actors participate in different institutions in

order to achieve their policy goals, which may include a

mix of altruistic and self-interested motivations. Complex

institutional systems do not address just one resource

such as a fishery, but simultaneously address multiple

interconnected public goods and common-pool resource

dilemmas.

This article reviews some promising theoretical perspect-

ives and concepts for analyzing complex institutional

systems: transaction cost economics, polycentric govern-

ance, policy networks, complex adaptive systems, and

evolutionary models. These approaches are not mutually

exclusive and have overlapping ideas, but highlight

different aspects of complex institutions. Each section

briefly reviews the core ideas of the theoretical perspect-

ive, and then comments on implications for collaborative

partnerships and sustainability. Social–ecological system

(SES) frameworks, which explicitly consider the links

between social and ecological processes, can potentially

integrate these ideas and provide a better understanding

of the role of collaborative partnerships as parts of com-

plex institutional systems.

Complex institutional systems exist all over the world,

and their structure varies across SES. For example,

Figure 1 uses network analysis methods to represent

the complex institutional system for water governance

in San Francisco Bay, which features hundreds of

actors and institutions [3��]. In contrast, the Parana

Delta in Argentina features far fewer institutions and

actors, and those institutions that do exist tend to be

ephemeral over time [4�]. Complex institutional sys-

tems exist for many different environmental issues;

research examples include climate change [5,6] and

invasive species [7]. Complex institutional systems

evolve as institutions change over time, actors enter

and leave the system, and patterns of participation

shift. As with ecological systems, the diversity and

abundance of actors and institutions, and the struc-

tural relations among them, are important properties

[8��].

A key question in the literature is the extent to which

such complex institutional systems can effectively solve


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42 Sustainability governance and transformation

Figure 1

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability

The complex institutional system for water governance in San Francisco Bay, California. The blue circles represent different types of actors and the red

squares represent different types of institutions, lines indicate actors participating in different institutions, and larger shapes have more ‘degree

centrality’ in the network.

the numerous collective-action problems they face. Sol-

ving collective-action problems requires three key pro-

cesses: learning, cooperation, and distribution [3��].Actors must learn what types of policy solutions can

provide mutually beneficial outcomes, cooperatively act

together to implement the agreed-upon policy solutions,

and bargain over the distribution of the costs and benefits.

Complex institutional systems that facilitate these pro-

cesses will be more successful at sustainably governing

the associated collective action problems.

From this perspective, the analysis of collaborative part-

nerships requires understanding how they function

within the broader system. For example, the San Fran-

cisco Bay system contains many different institutions that

feature attributes of ‘collaborative partnerships’ [9–13].


While the vast majority of the literature focuses on the

internal dynamics of individual collaborative partner-

ships, how collaborative partnerships influence the

capacity of the broader system to solve collective-action

problems is a crucial open question. The different theor-

etical frameworks discussed next provide some insight on

these questions. The final section discusses the potential

for SES frameworks to integrate these different ideas.

New institutional economics and transactioncostsNew institutional economics [14–17] focuses on how

institutions affect the transaction costs of cooperation:

searching for mutually beneficial exchanges, bargaining

over the terms of the contract, and monitoring and enfor-

cing the resulting agreement. Institutions are the mix of


Collaboration in complex institutional systems Lubell 43

formal rules and informal norms that structure human

interaction in different social settings [14]. Institutions

that reduce transaction costs are hypothesized to increase

cooperation. New institutional economics is one way to

view Ostrom’s [1] work on local common-pool resources,

which identifies the characteristics of local governance

institutions that reduce the transaction costs of solving a

wide range of resource problems including irrigation,

groundwater, rangelands, and fisheries management.

The transaction cost approach can potentially encompass

complex institutional systems by treating the entire set of

institutions as a single consolidated system [18��]. How-

ever, such a view ignores the reality that different parts of

the system are influenced by different actors and there is a

potential for spillover effects when decisions in one

institution have positive or negative consequences for

decisions in other parts of the system. Hence, complex

institutional systems are fragmented because there is no

overall coordination, which also makes it difficult to

analyze the transaction costs at the system level.

Neo-institutional economics has been in important

approach for studying collaborative partnerships, which

may reduce transaction costs by providing networks, trust,

brokerage, and scientific information, among other mech-

anisms [19–21]. Collaborative partnerships may be better

than command-and-control institutions for reducing the

transaction costs of managing ecosystems or other diffuse

problems like non-point source pollution [22]. The

benefits of a single collaborative partnership can spread

out to influence transaction costs throughout the system.

For example, two actors who build trust and networks

within a collaborative partnership may use that ‘social

capital’ [23–25] in the context of other institutions. How-

ever, collaborative institutions could also increase trans-

action costs given the common complaint of how much

time is required for effective participation.

Polycentric governanceScholars in the institutional analysis and development

(IAD) tradition developed the idea of polycentric govern-

ance to describe how collective decisions are made in

multiple institutions. The concept of polycentric govern-

ance was first employed in the debate about fragmented

versus consolidated local government jurisdictions in the

provision of local public goods [26]. Over time, the poly-

centric governance idea has expanded to encompass

decision-making at multiple levels of a social system.

Ostrom [6] analyzes polycentric governance in the con-

text of climate change, where cooperation is required at

local, regional, national, and global levels. McGinnis [27]

introduces the idea of ‘adjacent action situations’, where

different institutional functions, such as monitoring/sanc-

tioning and dispute resolution, take place in adjacent

action situations but apply to the same common-pool

resource like a lobster fishery. As defined by IAD scholars,


action situations are any social setting where outcomes are

a result of joint decisions by involved actors.

Collaborative partnerships are potentially one ‘center’ of

governance in a polycentric system. Collaborative part-

nerships often emerge to coordinate among existing

institutions, and resolve conflicts due to fragmentation.

However, the idea of polycentric governance does not

usually consider how complex institutional systems must

tackle multiple and interdependent collective action

problems and not just a single common-pool resource.

In addition, collaborative partnerships will often simul-

taneously address multiple institutional functions as

identified by McGinnis, rather than specialize. Hence,

polycentric governance is an important property of com-

plex institutional systems, but is not a theory of them.

Policy networksPolicy networks consist of relationships or interactions

between different types of policy actors, where the inter-

actions may include information sharing, collaboration,

and conflict. The last three decades witnessed a major

growth in different approaches to analyzing policy net-

works [28]. Public administration scholars often use the

term ‘network governance’ to analyze policies that lever-

age networks [29–31]. The term ‘social capital’ is used to

describe networks that facilitate social learning by

sampling diverse sources of information [32–35], or sup-

port cooperation through building of mutual trust and

overlapping relationships [25,35]. Methodological

advances in network science now provide many different

approaches for quantitative analysis [36–38], including

using networks to represent the structure the complex

institutional systems like in Figure 1 [39�].

Networks are consistently included in hypotheses about

the effective management of common-pool resources and

SES. However, there is currently no consensus on what

network structures are most desirable in different situ-

ations [40,41]. Maintaining relationships entails costs, and

the benefits of networks depend on the type of associated

collective-action problems [42]. Given the many variables

that characterize SES, there may be a diverse range of

network structures that fit a particular situation, with

dynamic changes over time [43�]. Fully understanding

the role of networks in SES will require many more

comparative and longitudinal studies.

Collaborative partnerships can facilitate the formation of

policy networks [44], and networks are considered an

important predictor of partnership effectiveness. How

policy networks link collaborative partnerships to com-

plex institutional systems is less understood. Networks

developed in the context of one partnership may provide

social resources that are helpful in other partnerships or

institutions. Networks may help actors effectively choose

which institutions they should participate in order to



achieve their policy goals. Future work will focus on

multi-level networks [39�,45��], which simultaneously

model social and ecological connectivity, along with

the links between social and ecological systems.

Complex adaptive systemsLevin [46–48] defines complex adaptive systems accord-

ing to three basic properties: diversity and individuality of

components, localized interactions among those com-

ponents, and evolutionary processes that select some

components for replication or enhancement. Complex

adaptive systems are hierarchical and self-organizing;

they are not controlled by any single actor or institution.

Complex adaptive systems often exhibit non-linear pro-

cesses, multiple stable states, and threshold effects.

Resilience and robustness are key outcome variables

for complex adaptive systems—policy seeks to increase

resiliency of desirable states and shift out of undesirable

states. What constitutes a ‘desirable’ state is usually a

subject of social discussion, but normatively should be

related to solving collective action problems. Achieving

these outcomes requires balancing different features of

complex systems, such as redundancy, diversity, and

modularity [49].

Complex adaptive systems are a central concept in social–ecological systems (SES) frameworks [50–52]. Policy

seeks to move SES to stable states that provide a high

level of ecosystem services to human society, and once a

desirable state is achieved, policy should adaptively

manage SES to increase resiliency in the face of uncertain

change [53,54]. Some policy scholars have also started to

use the idea of complex adaptive systems to study policy

and political systems in general [54]. A group of Dutch

researchers have developed important qualitative insights

about how to manage or steer complex systems and

networks [55,56].

Collaborative partnerships can serve as self-organizing

components of the larger complex adaptive system. They

can potentially enhance resilience and adaptive capacity

at multiple scales. The vast majority of scholarship on

collaborative partnerships has focused on how variables

like networks and trust facilitate local cooperation among

actors within a single partnership [57–59]. But there are

usually multiple collaborative partnerships in a complex

institutional system, and cooperation within one partner-

ship can spill over to the broader system. In some cases,

the spill-over could be positive and help facilitate learn-

ing and cooperation in other parts of the system. But there

is also the possibility of negative feedbacks, for example if

participating in collaborative partnerships drains

resources away from other institutions [60]. Thus, exactly

how many and what types of partnerships would be

optimal for a particular system remains an important

question that will depend in some fashion on the SES

context.


Evolutionary models of institutional changeEvolutionary models operate on two basic principles:

variation and selection. In biological systems, variation

is driven mainly by genetics and reproduction, and fitness

is measured in terms of capacity to survive and reproduce.

In human systems, the variation is driven by purposeful

and accidental human behavior. In evolutionary

economics, the economic welfare of individual actors is

the main fitness criterion; under certain assumptions this

may enhance the efficiency of the overall economic

system [61,62]. Political systems evolve according to

some notion of political fitness—political institutions

survive when they gain enough support from key political

actors [3��]. Political power is a key aspect of evolution in

political systems because actors support institutions that

benefit their interests, and more powerful actors have a

larger influence on policy decisions. The overall system

evolves as actors change, destroy, and create institutions

to better serve their interests.

The idea of ‘institutional fitness’ [63,64] is that the

effectiveness of different institutional arrangements

depends on the economic and environmental context

in which they evolve. Exactly which institutional struc-

tures work best in different situations is one of the most

important unresolved questions in the policy sciences. At

the end of her career, Elinor Ostrom was highlighting the

ideas of ‘institutional diversity’ [2] and ‘there is no

panacea’ [65]—in other words, there is no single institu-

tional solution that works in all cases.

Collaborative partnerships are also subject to evolutionary

dynamics. Within a single partnership, actors will change

the rules over time to better solve collective action

problems. Collaborative partnerships may also be created,

if there are some potential benefits to cooperation that are

not being provided by the current system, or be dis-

mantled if enough actors believe they are failing. Within

this process, it is crucial to gain a better understanding of

the diversity of rules that are used within collaborative

partnerships—are collaborative partnerships just one

species of institution, or are there a few different sub-

species, or is there a multi-dimensional space of institu-

tional rules that are combined in many creative ways

[8��]? Collaborative partnerships may increase the overall

institutional fitness of the system if they are able to

customize rules according to the social–ecological con-

text.

Towards integrative frameworks for analyzingcomplex institutional systemsPredicting and managing complex institutional systems

requires theoretical frameworks that begin to integrate

the ideas discussed above. SES frameworks are the most

promising direction in this regard. SES frameworks

highlight the interdependence and co-evolution bet-

ween social and ecological systems and processes



[50,52,66,67]. Ostrom [51] develops an SES framework on

the basis of the IAD framework, which provides a useful

linkage to institutional ideas (see Janssen in this issue).

Lubell [3��] extends Long’s [68] ‘ecology of games’ idea

in an attempt to take seriously multiple collective-action

problems, institutional externalities, and the relationship

between learning, cooperation, and political power. How-

ever, many other SES frameworks are currently being

developed and empirically tested [69�]. In all of these

frameworks, resilience and robustness are alternative de-

pendent variables used to describe system-level out-

comes, in particular whether a system functions to

maintain a ‘desirable’ state that ameliorates multiple

collective action problems.

The role of collaborative partnerships in complex SES

needs continued examination. Two things seem clear:

collaborative partnerships have emerged all over the

world as important parts of complex institutional systems,

and studying the internal dynamics of single collaborative

partnerships is not sufficient. We need to understand how

collaborative partnerships relate to the broader complex

system, including co-existing with many other collabora-

tive and other types of institutions. How do collaborative

partnerships relate to the evolution of complex institu-

tional systems? Do they help solve the associated collec-

tive action problems or increase resiliency? Under what

circumstances can collaborative partnerships promote

cooperation, learning, and bargaining? How should col-

laborative partnerships be internally structured and

linked to the broader system, in order to achieve sustain-

ability goals? Answering these questions is crucial for

providing theoretically-grounded and evidence-based

recommendations for policy stakeholders in complex

institutional systems.

AcknowledgementAuthor’s work on complex institutional systems supported by NationalScience Foundation (NSF) Grant #0921904 ‘‘Governing ComplexCommons: Policy Networks in an Ecology of Games." Principalinvestigators Mark Lubell, John T. Scholz, and Ramiro Berardo.

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Collaborative partnerships in complex institutional systems