Session 3. 5.

Institutional theory and analysis are the basis for commons research in social science. Scholars continue to explore ways to improve theory and measurement to better understand institutional phenomena, such as State (governmental) involvement in collective and self-governing solutions to commons dilemmas. Recent developments in the concept of state-reinforced self-governance (SRSG) and institutional analysis through the Institutional Grammar (IG) are illustrative. This paper offers an integrated application of the SRSG and IG to formally explore theoretical and analytical opportunities, operational steps, and potential for future research. It does so in the context of fisheries management—a complex multi-scale dilemma involving diverse actors, policies, and ecological factors.

The SRSG framework identifies four principles by which governments enable adaptive and transformative capacities of governance bodies via polycentric, self-governing systems: adequate responsibility, authority, operational resources, and flexibility/stability to engage in (a) multistakeholder cooperation (cf. Ostrom 1990) and (b) constitutional, administrative, and operational decision-making to modify important rule systems and production activities. The reliable and rigorous measurement of these principles is fundamental.

We develop the IG to support this measurement. We address several interlocking theoretical and methodological questions. For example, how are State power, State-reinforced cooperation, and capacity for self-governance represented and transmitted to key actors in formal policy? What role(s) do councils play in adaptive/transformative governance; how are these roles tied to fundamental characteristics (design principles)? What regulative and constitutive statements define critical aspects of responsibility, authority, operational resources, and flexibility/stability? What syntactic patterns emerge among principles? How can these patterns inform understanding of constitutional, administrative, and operational decision-making?
We examine the 2007 Magnuson-Stevens Act governing the formation and operation of U.S. fishery management councils. The Act is the most important legal document guiding and potentially reinforcing the operations of fishery management councils to make policy decisions. Overall, this research advances the study of SRSG by clarifying how recent IG advancements support diagnosis of SRSG principles. Theoretically, it may provide tools to address foundational questions about State involvement in adaptive/transformative governance.

The dynamics and evolution of self-governance systems are difficult to understand. Human choice plays a fundamental role. However, this relationship—especially collective behavior and institutional design—is poorly articulated in theory and research. Government involves Faustian bargaining—exchanging individual liberty for collective efficacy, security, and public good delivery. This exchange is central to concepts of the “State” and State-reinforced self-governance (SRSG)—how governments enable/constrain societal self-governance for public good provision and commons management. A behavioral theory of institutional design requires understanding of human motivation, reasoning, and decision-making, as well as learning and memory. This understanding must build on individual and group processes to articulate how boundedly rational agents conceptualize social-ecological dilemmas and governance systems. It must also account for dilemma stakeholders’ strategic positions, goals, and beliefs.

We address this challenge by building on prior attempts by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom to account for Bayesian reasoning and Faustian bargaining in constitutional choice. We integrate these perspectives with principles of social cognition and learning, developing both a conceptual framework and agent-based model (ABM) of the individual and collective learning and decision-making processes involved in creation of self-governing systems. The framework outlines core premises of boundedly rational constitutional decision-makers. Constitutional choice is conceptualized as a bargaining process, whereby stakeholders discuss alternative institutional designs in terms of (a) configurations of design features (e.g., collective choice and regulatory arrangements) that (b) bear on actors’ fundamental needs and liberties (e.g., self-determination, procedural justice, security) and (c) strategic goals. The ABM attempts to empirically test these assumptions with data from a lab experiment, investigating evolution of regulatory systems in a commons dilemma. We describe how constitutional agents form and update mental representations (mental models) via communication, and form preferences for particular institutional designs based on current mental models, goals, and needs.

We further employ the Institutional Grammar and communication coding techniques as the basis for institutional analysis and integration with SRSG and the ABM. This research informs behavioral theory underlying governance of commons, State influence, and collective action via constitutional decision-making.