Meta-Organizing Polycentric Governance

Polycentric governance (PG) has been first defined by Ostrom et al (1961) as characterized by a multiplicity of decision-making units that overlap in the governance of a public good or natural resource; and as an efficient and adaptive way to govern resources in a context of environmental and climate change (Shawoo and McDermott, 2020; Patali et al., 2022). Polycentric governance requires a forum of discussion and deliberation (Carlisle and Gruby 2019, Heikkila et al. 2011). The literature overemphasizes the role of decentralization, institutions and norms in governance, but underestimates the notion of organization. Yet, organizing matters for grand challenges (Gümüsay et al 2022). We know little about the organizational forms this forum can take and their effects on polycentric governance of resources. In this paper, we precisely do this and examine the various organizational forms the PG forum or regulatory intermediary can take. We argue that the theory of meta-organizations, organizations which members are themselves organizations (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2008) might help understand how to create the necessary arenas to enable cross-scale, cross-level linkage, or linkage between geographically distant unit, and to find an adequate balance between competition and cooperation to achieve efficient polycentric governance. We conduct a comparative case study of various polycentric arrangements and look at the outcomes of different organizational forms. We analyze several dimensions, such as type of resource, type of territory, stakeholder representation and involvement, membership composition (voluntary or not), form (e.g. network, meta-organization, etc), formation of the forum (at whose initiative), authority and decision (are there organized devices for decision-making), production of rules (what type, they binding or not), and effects on resource sustainability. We contribute to the literature by showing how organization and meta-organization matter for polycentric governance. We also show the variety of meta-organizational forms and origins (with public mission or not).