Tag: Ecology of Games

Participation in multiple policy venues in governance of Chile’s Santiago Metropolitan Region: When institutional attributes can make the difference

by Karina Arias-Yurisch, Karina Retamal-Soto, Camila Ramos-Fuenzalida, & Alejandro Espinosa-Rada

Metropolitan regions present significant governance challenges, particularly due to their institutional fragmentation. We aim to contribute to the metropolitan governance literature by examining how local governments in Chile participate in various policy venues, both mandated and self-organized. We examine how the institutional attributes of these venues influence the formation of inter-municipal governance structures, using the Ecology of Games Framework (EGF) as our analytical lens.

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The Santiago Metropolitan Region, with a population exceeding 8 million, is divided into 52 local government units (municipalities), each responsible for addressing policy issues that span the region. Despite multiple efforts to reform governance in Santiago, the city has never been organized under a consolidated metropolitan authority, resulting in a polycentric system where multiple decisional spaces coexist. This fragmentation makes cooperation between municipalities essential for addressing collective problems, yet it also complicates the formation of coherent governance structures.

The EGF provides a theoretical approach for analyzing polycentric systems, like Santiago, where multiple institutions interact and influence decision-making. By focusing on how various policy venues—each governed by different institutional rules—interrelate, we can better understand how decisions made in one venue affect others. Our research seeks to explore these interdependencies by examining participation in mandated provincial forums, voluntary municipal associations, and inter-municipal agreements in Santiago.

Using data from formal inter-municipal agreements made between 2017 and 2021, we applied Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to test the following two hypotheses. Further, we analyze the formation of inter-municipal governance structures.

Hypothesis 1: Sharing participation in a mandated, centralized venue will positively affect the formation of inter-municipal agreements, supporting an expansive effect on Santiago’s governance.

Hypothesis 2: Sharing participation in a self-organized venue will negatively affect the formation of inter-municipal agreements, supporting a restrictive effect on Santiago’s governance.

Our results strongly supported Hypothesis 1. We found that participation in mandated provincial forums positively influences the formation of inter-municipal agreements, suggesting that centralized policy venues encourage further collaboration between local governments. In contrast, Hypothesis 2 was not supported by the data—participation in self-organized municipal associations did not significantly limit the formation of new inter-municipal agreements.

This finding highlights the importance of institutional attributes in shaping governance outcomes. Mandated venues, which are structured by higher levels of government, provide fewer opportunities for municipalities to set their own agendas, prompting local actors to seek additional venues for collaboration. Meanwhile, self-organized venues, where municipalities have greater control, do not appear to overwhelm local governments’ capacity for further cooperation.

Our study contributes to the ongoing debate on metropolitan governance by demonstrating the critical role that institutional attributes play in shaping inter-municipal collaboration. The findings suggest that in a polycentric system like Santiago’s, participation in mandated forums fosters further governance formation, while self-organized efforts do not hinder additional collaboration. This research offers a framework for future studies examining the relationship between institutional complexity and governance outcomes in other metropolitan contexts.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Arias-Yurisch, Karina, Karina Retamal-Soto, Camila Ramos-Fuenzalida and Alejandro Espinosa-Rada. 2024. “ Participation in Multiple Policy Venues in Governance of Chile’s Santiago Metropolitan Region: When Institutional Attributes Can Make the Difference.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (3): 583–602. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12527.

About the Authors

Karina Arias-Yurisch is an associated professor in the Department of Public Management and Policy at the Faculty of Administration and Economics in the University of Santiago, Chile. Her research focuses on local and regional governance, inter-municipal cooperation and network analysis.

Karina Retamal-Soto is a professor in the Department of Politics and Government at the Faculty of Social Sciences in the Alberto Hurtado University, Chile. Her research focuses on regional governance, inter-municipal cooperation and institutions in complex polycentric systems.

Camila Ramos-Fuenzalida is a doctoral student at the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham. Her research focused on local government dynamics, inter-municipal collaboration, governance networks, and emergency management networks.

Alejandro Espinosa-Rada is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Social Networks Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Switzerland. His main areas of interest are small groups dynamics, sociology of social networks, sociology of science and knowledge and science of science.

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Birds of a Feather Fight Together: Forum Involvement in a Weakly Institutionalized Ecology of Policy Games

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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