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2018 Spring. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; Broadly, this dissertation research examines natural resources governance approaches that may facilitate the achievement of desirable social and ecological outcomes. It takes, as its point of departure, a nearly half-century-old concept that is experiencing a renaissance among natural resources governance scholars: polycentricity, a complex and multilevel form of governance comprised of a plurality of semi-autonomous decision makers. Despite its age and apparent popularity, the concept of polycentricity remains conceptually fuzzy and empirically underdeveloped in the commons. This dissertation addresses these deficiencies through conceptual and empirical contributions to the growing scholarship on polycentricity. In its conceptual contribution, this dissertation develops a theoretical model of a functional polycentric governance system for natural resources governance. For this purpose, "functional" refers to the capacity of the governance system to exhibit particular advantages that are commonly attributed to polycentric governance systems by scholars. In doing so, it builds greater clarity around the concept and the conditions under which it may lead to predicted or desired outcomes. This dissertation then examines the functioning of a polycentric governance system through a qualitative case study of small-scale fishery governance in the Northern Reef region of the Republic of Palau, a small island nation in the western Pacific. Deficiencies in institutional features are identified that partly explain why the governance system does not fully achieve the advantages commonly attributed to polycentric governance systems. In addition, analysis of the historical transition of the governance system from community based to polycentric reveals that the path to polycentricity, the particular form of polycentricity, and contextual conditions constitute additional distal explanations of deficiencies in functionality. The case underscores the need for more refined theory concerning the emergence and functionality of different forms of polycentricity in various contexts. In its empirical contributions, this dissertation also speaks to small-scale fishery policy through a finer-scale examination of the social function of customary marine tenure institutions in the Northern Reef state of Ngarchelong. These informal institutions define, among other things, eligibility criteria for those having a recognized right to fish in the state. Flexible administration of customary marine tenure institutions enables Ngarchelong residents to secure material support from nonresident community members and also strengthens social bonds and networks as the community becomes more dispersed in Palau. This research calls attention to the possible social impacts of fishery policies that redefine or formalize fishery access and use rights, and it describes a general approach for better harmonizing fishery policy with local social context and customary institutions.

Among Vincent Ostrom's many contributions to the study of public administration, policy, and political science, the concept of polycentricity remains his single most important legacy. This essay locates the origins of this concept in Ostrom's early research on resource management in the Western United States and demonstrates its continuing influence throughout The Intellectual Crisis in Public Administration, The Political Theory of a Compound Republic, and his other major publications. Although typically pigeonholed within the confines of the public choice tradition, Ostrom's body of work should be widely appreciated as an early statement of the critical importance of network forms of governance in democratic societies.

Mega-City Regions are nodes in the network of information flows and therefore important locations of the knowledge based economy (KBE). This new spatial scale is recognized by planners and politicians as being crucial to develop competitive national economies. In this paper we want to examine the spatial patterns and firm connectivities of the KBE in the Mega-City Region of Munich. We test the hypothesis whether (1) High-Tech-Branches and Advanced-Producer Services (APS) have different location strategies and (2) whether the firm connectivities and the role of the surrounding functional urban areas are different from those of the core city of Munich. In order to deal with both hypotheses we combine a quantitative value-chain approach with the method of the Global and World City Study Group (GaWC) to analyse inter-firm as well as intra-firm networks. We hypothesise that APS branches follow a different location strategy to ensure proximity with their customers then high-tech branches. The latter are more capital-intensive and their location patterns and strategies are in general more path-dependent. Our study shows indications for a division of labour among functional urban areas within the Mega-City Region of Munich. It seems that Munich plays the role of the international knowledge hub whereas the other functional urban areas are contributing in various ways to the distinctive character of the Mega-City Region of Munich.

AbstractWhile evidence of polycentric urban form is extensive, questions remain regarding the value of agglomeration economies in an information economy, and hence whether polycentricity will persist over time. This paper examines employment spatial structure in four U.S. metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2009. We describe the spatial distribution of employment among centers and non‐center locations across time, examine the persistence of center boundaries, and test for monocentric and polycentric form via density gradient estimations. Results show that the four areas are all polycentric but of different degree. Despite some small fluctuations, metropolitan spatial structure is persistent even in the face of economic shocks in the 2000s: employment centers have not lost their importance and influence in the metro‐wide employment distribution over time.

Literature on environmental governance has shown renewed interest in polycentricity and polycentric governance, a perspective that has been first suggested by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom throughout studies of metropolitan governance in the sixties. This paper is to provide greater clarity to the recent discussions of polycentricity by introducing the polycentricity approach based on the different roles that the concepts of polycentricity and polycentric governance and associated theoretical claims adopt in research on environmental governance. The polycentricity approach aims to connect these perspectives in a coherent way. Based on revisiting the Ostroms' writings on polycentricity, I distinguish between its use as ontological, operationalizing and sensitizing concept, as normative and positive theory, and as analytical framework. I use these perspectives to review the literature on environmental governance that relates to polycentric governance. The distinction of uses of concepts proves helpful to organize the literature and uncover research gaps. These gaps are: the role of constitutional and meta-constitutional rules and social problem characteristics for polycentric governance, ways to distinguish the domain of overarching rules and the domain of polycentric governance, the way polycentric governance shapes public agents' behavior in acts of public service provision, and the relation between constitutional rules, polycentric governance structures and innovative criteria to evaluate social-ecological system performance such as robustness, resilience, etc. The polycentricity approach allows us to coherently link these gaps in one framework guiding research.

Abstract: Despite the changes, the configuration of global and regional power centers can still be represented as an hierarchy in which the first among equals, the equal, the peripheral and the marginal centers coexist with each other. BRICS' as the means for increasing adaptivity to global realities and influencing global and regional process can potentially contribute to the shaping of multipolarity. The article suggests that BRICS is the most prospective project for coordinating of actions of various power centers of the world, as this format combines the political will, the economic foundation and the use of soft power tools. A Greater Europe continues to be the priority region for Russia in a political, economic, financial and cultural sense, and due to its geographical and civilizational particularity Russia can act as the link between other world major players both within BRICS and Russia-BRICS-EU triangle. ; Аннотация: Несмотря на изменения, конфигурация мировых и региональных центров влияния представляет собой иерархию, где есть первые среди равных, равные, второстепенные и маргинальные центры влияния. Потенциальный вклад БРИКС в форматирование многополярности является способом увеличения адаптивности к мировым реалиям в результате стремления к усилению влияния на мировые и региональные процессы. По мнению автора, БРИКС является самым перспективным проектом по координации действий различных центров силы в мире, так как этот формат сочетает политическую волю, подкрепленную экономическим фундаментом, и использует инструментарий «мягкой силы». Большая Европа остается приоритетным регионом для России в политическом, экономическом, финансовом и культурном планах, а в силу своей географической и цивилизационной специфики, Россия может играть роль страны-моста между другими крупнейшими мировыми игроками и в формате БРИКС и в треугольнике Россия — БРИКС — ЕС.

The aim of this study is to discuss the impact of polycentric structures and other regional patterns on the provision of Social Services of General Interest (SSGI). Polycentricity has been a favoured spatial pattern of EU policies since the European Spatial Development Perspective ESDP 1999 which is promoted alongside efficient and resilient spatial structuring for socio-economic activities. The objective of a polycentric development was also taken further in the debate about European territorial cohesion policy (Faludi, 2006; Council of the European Union, 2006), being considered a key element to achieve territorial cohesion (Territorial Agenda, 2011). The theoretical background on SSGI provision builds upon the elaborations of ESPON/SeGI project (Rauhut et al. 2013) that defines SSGI as an open, normative EU policy field, nevertheless linked to national understandings of public services (Bjørnsen et al. 2013). First attempts of discussing the influence of polycentricity on SSGI provision have been made by Borges and Johansson (2013). In this study, the analysis shall be carried forward by using the single SSGI indicators as well as calculated SSGI indices by Humer and Palma (2013) as the dependent variables in a set of multivariate regression analyses. A multivariate cross-section OLS regression model will be used to estimate the relative impact of polycentricity on our dependent variables which is the provision of educational and health care SSGI in EU and EFTA countries. Besides a polycentricity index provided by ESPON, further explanatory/ independent variables about population densities, settlement structures as well as macro-economic indicators will help in the regression model to decipher the impact of polycentricity. An additional space-sensitive step is included by running the regression model for various dependent variables (i.e. SSGI of educational and health care sectors) of different centrality scales. We expect to see different importance of polycentricity according to the range and frequency of usage of certain services such as for instance primary schooling (local centrality), hospitals (regional centrality) or universities (supra-regional centrality) The chosen method enables to control for a subset of explanatory variables and examine the effect of selected independent variables when estimating the impact of polycentricity to the provision of SSGI. This study uses Eurostat and ESPON data.