by Tomás Olivier & Ramiro Berardo
Policy forums play a crucial role in polycentric governance because they can facilitate collective action among diverse actors who are invested in a policy domain. Many of these arguments assume that forums are stable over time and that they attract actors with different ideas or interests. But, what happens in unstable policy settings where forums operate in a context of periodic rule change and limited enforcement? To answer this question, we look at how policy forums can facilitate interactions among actors with different perceptions about collective action challenges regarding water governance in Patagonia, Argentina.
Forums can facilitate collective action by attracting actors with different perceptions about policy problems. This fosters interactions among actors who would otherwise not interact, potentially facilitating collaboration and the generation of new insights about how to solve joint problems.
We study water governance in the Lower Valley of the Chubut River, located in Argentina’s Patagonia region. In 2017 and 2018, we surveyed 58 individuals from 34 different stakeholder groups, including government entities, private companies, and researchers. Our survey presented stakeholders with various scenarios regarding water governance in the Lower Valley and asked them to rate the extent to which they saw the scenarios as accurate or inaccurate. We also asked them about their perceptions of the forums overseeing water governance in the Lower Valley (e.g., whether they were fair, effective, etc.) and environmental conditions in the basin.
We found that out of the 31 active forums in the Lower Valley, many were attended by just one stakeholder. Furthermore, we observed that government entities do not appear to be very active in these forums, preferring to operate outside of them as needed. Part of the reason for low participation is that the forums in the Lower Valley tend to be short-lived, formed to tackle a specific problem or crisis and then dissolved shortly thereafter.
Most importantly, we found that actors who participate in the same forums tend to have similar perceptions about the dominant collective action problem in the region. This finding is meaningful from a governance perspective: in a context of high transaction costs, forums may serve as the first space where actors with similar perceptions may build the necessary commitments to engage in collective action. These forums can be problematic, as the range of views represented in them on how to solve a problem are limited. However, a silver lining is that they can also foster collaboration among actors who would otherwise may be distrustful of one another.
Our study deepens our understanding of how actors may organize to address complex policy problems in a context of weak institutions, and argues that the stability of forums in time is key to maintaining consistent stakeholder participation, a necessary condition for the solution of system-wide environmental problems.
You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at
Olivier, Tomas and Ramiro Berardo. 2022. “Birds of a Feather Fight Together: Forum Involvement in a Weakly Institutionalized Ecology of Policy Games.” Policy Studies Journal, 50(1): 176-198. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12418
About the Authors
Tomás Olivier is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Follow him on X/Twitter: @tolivier9
Ramiro Berardo is a Professor of Environmental and Natural Resource Policy at the School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University.
Follow him on X/Twitter: @BerardoRamiro
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