There has been a rapid expansion of academic interest and publications on polycentricity. In the contemporary world, nearly all governance situations are polycentric, but people are not necessarily used to thinking this way. Governing Complexity provides an updated explanation of the concept of polycentric governance. The editors provide examples of it in contemporary settings involving complex natural resource systems, as well as a critical evaluation of the utility of the concept. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, this book makes the case that polycentric governance arrangements exist and it is possible for polycentric arrangements to perform well, persist for long periods, and adapt. Whether they actually function well, persist, or adapt depends on multiple factors that are reviewed and discussed, both theoretically and with examples from actual cases.

Analyses European Union governance from the perspective of polycentric theory, aimed at improvements in achieving individual self-governance.

Climate change governance is in a state of enormous flux. New and more dynamic forms of governing are appearing around the international climate regime centred on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They appear to be emerging spontaneously from the bottom up, producing a more dispersed pattern of governing, which Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom famously described as 'polycentric'. This book brings together contributions from some of the world's foremost experts to provide the first systematic test of the ability of polycentric thinking to explain and enhance societal attempts to govern climate change. It is ideal for researchers in public policy, international relations, environmental science, environmental management, politics, law and public administration. It will also be useful on advanced courses in climate policy and governance, and for practitioners seeking incisive summaries of developments in particular sub-areas and sectors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Theory and empirical work on the organization of metropolitan government

Development analysts often focus on the role of “the state” in making the right rules by which to govern society, assuming that governance is exclusively or mainly the work of the central government authority. The reality in many developing countries, particularly those with weak central government authorities, is that governance happens through diverse rules and in many centers of decision-making, in ways that are formal and informal, official and unofficial. This real-world polycentricity can be dysfunctional or productive, depending in part on shared understandings between decision-making entities about how to relate to each other. Those shared understandings come from cultural backgrounds, historical interactions, and other sources. Political economist Anas Malik argues that well-functioning polycentricity in developing countries depends in part on the shared understandings between official government entities and unofficial units that provide collective choice in particular arenas. In Muslim-majority contexts, the Islamic tradition – contrary to the image of a top-down, single-voiced religious law- provides ample resources supporting shared understandings that accommodate diverse rules and collective choice units. Pakistan, the largest Muslim-majority country at its founding, provides an important case. After building on the development literature to suggest a typology of collective choice units in developing countries, Malik explores resources in the Islamic tradition that support polycentric governance. The book then examines major deliberations in Pakistan’s history, particularly through documented inquiries into serious political crises such as sectarian religious agitation and civil war, and through a selective survey of types of jurisdictions and collective choice units. Malik argues that there are significant polycentric understandings in Pakistan’s historical lineage, but that these are heavily contested. While there is potential for polycentric development in Pakistan, the viability of polycentric order is constrained by countering forces and contextual factors.

This work sets out to demonstrate the inadequacy of current legal paradigms in explaining the phenomena of fragmentation through conceptions of modern law. It also addresses the possibility of legal and ethical alternativesand political counterstrategies.

The author argues for the virtues of diversity in cities, organizations, strategies for development, and human discourse in general. The opening chapter develops the vision of Jane Jacobs (the "diva of diversity") for the development of city regions. Many of the later chapters are based on the author's ten years in the World Bank and Senior Advisor and speechwriter for Joseph Stiglitz. Many of the problems in the World Bank's policies were based on a narrow ideological vision that did not tolerate a diversity of pragmatic approaches to the complex questions of economic and social development. Finally, the narrow social-engineering criterion for evaluating social projects is cost-benefit analysis, and the penultimate chapter develops a logical fallacy in the Kaldor-Hicks Principle that is the theoretical basis for cost-benefit analysis.