Governing change: a dynamical systems approach to understanding the stability of environmental governance

Abstract. The ability to adapt to social and environmental change is an increasingly
critical feature of environmental governance. However, an understanding
of how specific features of governance systems influence how they
respond to change is still limited. Here we focus on how system features
like diversity, heterogeneity, and connectedness impact stability,
which indicates a system's capacity to recover from
perturbations. Through a framework that combines agent-based
modeling with “generalized”
dynamical systems modeling, we model the stability of thousands
of governance structures consisting of groups of resource users and non-government organizations interacting strategically with the decision centers that mediate their access to a shared resource. Stabilizing factors include greater effort
dedicated to venue shopping and a greater fraction of non-government
organizations in the system. Destabilizing factors include greater
heterogeneity among actors, a greater diversity of decision centers,
and greater interdependence between actors. The results suggest that
while complexity tends to be destabilizing, there are mitigating factors
that may help balance adaptivity and stability in complex governance. This study demonstrates the potential in
applying the insights of complex systems theory to managing complex
and highly uncertain human–natural systems in the face of rapid social
and environmental change.
