The pitfalls associated with more intensive engagement in collaborative forums: The role of behavioral spillovers and cognitive load

Polycentric governance systems feature numerous decision-making venues (“forums”) where policy actors repeatedly interact to address a subset of policy problems. Previous studies find that forums where actors dedicate greater time and cognitive resources tend to be perceived as more effective. Drawing on behavioral game theory and the Ecology of Games, we argue that the improvements afforded to any one forum vis-à-vis more intensive participation may come at a cost: lower levels of perceived effectiveness in linked forums. We use survey data collected in the Tampa Bay (FL) and California Delta (CA) water governance systems to examine our contention. Using a series of spatial Durbin models, we find that perceived effectiveness of a given forum is directly impacted by the intensiveness by which actors participate in that forum (positive association). However, there are also behavioral spillovers: the intensity with which actors participate in other forums in the system has indirect negative consequences for perceived forum effectiveness.

Ecologies of Information and Communication Technology Platform Design for E-Government Service Provision

This research chapter, through the presentation of an empirical case study surrounding the implementation and use of an electronic property tax collection system in Bangalore (India), developed between 1998 and 2008, critically examines both the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in governmental reform processes and the contribution of such technologies to the deeper understanding of the social dynamics shaping e-government projects used to reform public sector institutions. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives of the ‘Ecology of Games' and ‘Design-Actuality Gaps', both of which recognise the importance of a multitude of diverse motives and individualistic behaviour as key factors influencing organisational reform and institutional change, the chapter contributes not just to an understanding of the role of ICTs in public administration reform, but also towards that emerging body of research which is critical of managerial rationalism for an organization as a whole, and is sensitive to an ecology of actors and their various motivations operating within the symbiotic organisation.

Exploring Coordinative Mechanisms for Environmental Governance in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area: An Ecology of Games Framework

To solve regional environmental problems, there is a trend of establishing urban agglomerations and formulating cooperative policy institutions in China. The extant studies on policy institutions largely focus on the coordinative mechanisms of multiple actors within one single institution. Only a few studies have tried to understand how different policy institutions are interlinked and mutually affected to influence actors’ decisions and problem resolutions. This article applies a network-based analytical approach and adopts the Ecology of Games Framework to explore how regional environmental governance is coordinated in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. It was found that coordinative mechanisms in regional environmental governance can happen around three elements: policy institutions, policy actors, and policy issues. Policy institutions tend to serve as an umbrella for many diverse and interdependent activities and actors within individual institutions. Additionally, positive externalities emerging between different policy institutions perform as coordinators across institutions. For actors, state-level actors usually play as facilitators of policy institutions while they are not active in participating in policy games in later phases; it is regional actors, particularly from Guangdong, that are active in the operation of policy institutions. For policy issues, they emerge because they are often tied with each other, and some of them play as the common ground for seemly separating policy institutions.

Contrasting Visions for Macroeconomic Theory: DSGE and OEE

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) modeling remains the workhorse of contemporary macroeconomics despite a growing number of critiques of its ability to explain the aggregate properties of an economic system. For the most part, those critiques accept the DSGE presumption that traditional macro data are primitive, causal data. This leads to a stipulative style of analysis where macro variables are explained in terms of one another. In contrast, we set forth an open-ended evolutionary (OEE) framework for an OEE macroeconomics. Within this framework, systems data are not primitive, but are derived from prior microlevel interactions without any presumption that those macrolevel derivations reflect systemic equilibrium among the microlevel primitive sources of action. We explore some contours of an OEE framework by placing coordination games within an ecological setting where there is no agent who has universal knowledge relevant to that ecology of games.JEL Classifications: B40, C73, D51, D85, E02