- Email: [email protected]
Constructing diagnostic trees: A stepwise approach to institutional design
Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Earth System Governance journal homepage: www.journals.elsevier.com/earth-system-governance
Research article
Constructing diagnostic trees: A stepwise approach to institutional design Oran R. Young Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 30 October 2018 Received in revised form 1 February 2019 Accepted 6 February 2019 Available online 22 February 2019
The idea of institutional diagnostics has sparked considerable interest over the last twenty years, especially among those seeking to assess how architectural choices can affect the performance of institutions established to address environmental issues. But so far, this appealing idea has not developed into a practice that is useful in making choices regarding the architecture of regimes addressing needs for governance arising at various levels of social organization. I argue that this is attributable to a dramatic expansion in the range of concerns we now include in thinking about needs for governance and how to respond to them. Diagnosis cannot deal with the full range of these concerns in one step. To make diagnostic procedures useful, we must proceed in stages, identifying the basic nature of a need for governance and then proceeding in a stepwise fashion to identify and evaluate institutional options. I introduce the idea of a diagnostic tree as a tool to guide this process and explore its usefulness in a generalized account of key issues arising in the realm of fisheries management. I conclude with a discussion of points to bear in mind in any effort to use this tool to sort out the complexities of institutional design in a variety of real-world settings. © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Keywords: Architecture Diagnosis Diagnostic tree Governance Governance system
1. Introduction Over the last twenty years, the idea of institutional diagnostics has sparked considerable interest, especially among those seeking to understand the role that choices among architectural options play in determining the effectiveness of environmental regimes (Mitchell, 1994; Young 2002, 2008; Ostrom, 2007; Ostrom and Cox, 2010; Cox, 2011; Cox et al. 2015, 2016; Young, Webster et al., 2018). The source of this interest is easy to identify. It is rooted in the familiar aphorism that form follows function when it comes to the design and implementation of institutions created to address needs for governance arising in settings ranging from smallscale social systems to international society. As the Science Plan developed in the 1990s to guide the longterm research project on the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change puts it, “the effectiveness of social institutions is a function of the match between the characteristics of the institutions themselves and the characteristics of the biogeophysical [and socioeconomic] systems with which they interact” (IHDP, 1999/2005, 57). The resultant “problem of fit” has become an ongoing topic of interest to
E-mail address: [email protected].
researchers interested in environmental governance, emerging in the words of the initial Science Plan of the Earth System Governance Project as the “first analytical problem” concerned with the “architecture of earth system governance” (Biermann et al., 2009, 5; see also Berkes and Folke, 1998; Folke et al., 1998; Wilson, 2006; Galaz et al., 2008; Young, Webster et al., 2018). In this setting, the term diagnosis refers to the development and deployment of procedures that are helpful in identifying key features of needs for governance on a case-by-case basis and especially in evaluating architectural options in order to ensure a good match between a need for governance and the institutional response selected (Young, 2008). Yet, as often happens with concepts that achieve popularity in the social sciences, the idea of institutional diagnostics has not provided a basis for the development of a robust theory of institutional design, much less an operational practice that is useful to those engaged in crafting the provisions of regimes to address specific needs for governance under real-world conditions. Undoubtedly, this is attributable at least in part to the usual problems of developing operational indicators that plague most efforts to produce cumulative knowledge in the social sciences. In a more fundamental sense, however, I argue that the difficulties confronting efforts to develop a practice of institutional diagnostics
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2019.02.001 2589-8116/© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ).
2
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
that is helpful in guiding thinking about the creation of regimes to meet specific needs for governance stem from more basic considerations relating to our thinking about governance as a social function involving the development of steering mechanisms. In a nutshell, my argument is that what began as a fairly straightforward effort to devise regulatory measures to solve collective-action problems has mushroomed into a much broader examination of the multiple roles that various types of institutions play in addressing a diverse collection of societal concerns (Krasner, 1983; Haas et al., 1993; Miles et al., 2002; Breitmeier et al., 2006; Young et al., 2008; Biermann et al., 2009; Biermann and Pattberg, 2012; Biermann, 2014; Earth System Governance Project, 2018). It is not feasible to apply diagnostic procedures to this broad landscape of governance issues in a single step. To make diagnostic procedures useful, we must start by identifying the general character of needs for governance associated with an issue domain and then proceed stepwise to consider institutional options, starting with first-order concerns and moving toward more specific concerns one step at a time. In the body of this article, I suggest a way forward that responds to the research community's broadened perspective on needs for governance and how to meet them by introducing what I call a diagnostic tree as a tool to guide the assessment of institutional options on a stepwise basis. Section 2 introduces the logic of stepwise assessment. It describes the development of a diagnostic tree as a tool allowing the analyst to break the diagnostic process into a number of well-defined stages on the understanding that the option selected at each branch point of a diagnostic tree provides guidance regarding the range of issues to be considered at the next stage. Section 3 turns to issues arising in the realm of fisheries management to develop a generalized demonstration of the use of this tool to address specific needs for governance. Section 4 takes up several issues that are important both in clarifying what is distinctive about this approach to institutional diagnostics and in seeking to make the transition from generalized applications to the construction of diagnostic trees to address the complexities arising in real situations involving institutional design. The argument of this article is preliminary; it is far too early to arrive at any conclusions regarding the merits of this tool as a means of evaluating institutional options in real situations. But the analysis does suggest a way forward in the effort to make institutional diagnostics useful as a procedure for assessing architectural options systematically in a variety of settings. 2. Diagnostic trees: the logic of stepwise assessment Contemporary thinking about governance began with a focus on the challenge of addressing situations involving collective-action problems or, to use Thomas Schelling's evocative terminology, situations in which there is a tension between micromotives and macrobehavior (Schelling, 1978). Drawing on game-theoretic ideas such as the prisoner's dilemma (Rapoport and Chammah, 1965), analyses of the logic of collective action (Olson, 1965), and socioecological insights relating to the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968; Baden and Noonan, 1998), analysts considered various ways to achieve cooperative outcomes under conditions in which the members of a group experience incentives to defect from cooperative efforts in order to pursue their individual interests. Governance in such settings is fundamentally a matter of devising arrangements that can steer the behavior of group members in such a way that everyone ends up better off than would be the case in the absence of cooperation (Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal, 2002). From this relatively well-defined point of departure, studies of governance treated as a social function involving societal steering have proliferated to address an expanding range of concerns. We
have examined needs for governance dealing with issues featuring social costs and value conflicts in addition to the original focus on collective-action problems (Coase, 1960; Singer, 2009). We have added procedural, programmatic, and generative tasks to the original emphasis on regulative tasks (Young, 1999). We have introduced an important distinction between rule-based governance systems and goal-based governance systems (Kanie and Biermann, 2017). Overarching these considerations, we have begun to address the insight that institutional arrangements designed to handle specific needs for governance are affected by the increasingly complex settings in which they operate (Steffen et al., 2004; Duit and Galaz, 2008; Lenton et al., 2008; Galaz, 2014; Young, 2017; Dryzek and Pickering, 2019). Under the circumstances, what began as a relatively focused matter of evaluating procedures for curbing the incentives of individual group members to defect in collective-action situations has burgeoned into a much larger enterprise involving a wide range of needs for governance coupled with a growing menu of options for responding to specific needs. This poses a fundamental challenge for those interested in making institutional diagnostics useful as a tool for evaluating architectural options. Where should we begin, and how should we proceed under these conditions? The initial step, I argue, is to formulate a description of the issue that has triggered an awareness that a steering mechanism is or may be needed to achieve some collectively desirable outcome or to avoid some collectively undesirable development. As in the case of diagnosis in other realms, triggering events normally give rise to an interest in diagnostic processes. When diagnosis is in order, it is important to avoid introducing ideas at the outset (e.g. prisoner's dilemma or tragedy of the commons) that presuppose conclusions about the nature of the need for governance associated with the issue or about the relative merits of institutional responses. A simple description of the issue will suffice at this stage. For example, the issue may be a matter of managing fisheries sustainably, protecting the climate system, regulating commercial shipping, or maintaining biological diversity. Once formulated, this characterization can serve as the base or point of departure for the construction of what I call a diagnostic tree (see Fig. 1). The next step is to formulate a series of focused queries that make it possible to structure thinking in a stepwise fashion, starting with broad considerations and moving to more specific matters depending upon the answers provided to each of the preceding queries. Each query directs attention to a branch point in the tree. The answer in each case determines which of the branches available at that point to follow. Following a response to an initial query about the character of the issue, for example, we might proceed by
Fig. 1. An abstract diagonstic tree.
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
asking whether it is reasonable to expect that an informal social practice will emerge that can serve as an effective steering mechanism. If the answer to this query is affirmative, there is no need to pursue the issue further. If the answer is negative, on the other hand, we need to proceed along the branch of the tree dealing with what I will call intentional regimes. This sets the stage for launching the next query. This query might focus on whether the intentional regime needed to address the issue may take the form of a rulebased governance system or a goal-based system. The answer to this query will tell us which branch of the diagnostic tree to follow next. We can repeat this procedure one step at a time until we arrive at a conclusion that is sufficiently well-defined to provide the basis for a concrete response to the original issue triggering a need for governance. Several points of clarification regarding this procedure require emphasis at the outset. The development of a diagnostic tree dealing with a particular need for governance is not a mechanical process. There may be more than one way to characterize the issue itself. What is more, there is nothing automatic about the identification of a diagnostic tree's branch points. There is considerable room for creativity in this regard; thoughtful analysts may arrive at different ways of identifying the individual branches of a diagnostic tree. It is important to recognize, under the circumstances, that the development of this approach to institutional diagnostics leaves ample scope for innovative thinking in the design of governance systems. This may seem disappointing to those in search of more routinized procedures. Yet this feature of the process does not differentiate institutional diagnostics from the diagnostic procedures practitioners develop in other complex settings such as medical diagnostics (Gawande, 2002). Diagnostic trees bear some resemblance to what many analysts think of as decision trees (Kingsford and Salzberg, 2008). Like decision trees, they start from some more-or-less well-defined point of departure and proceed by identifying a number of branch points featuring two or more options. Yet it would be a mistake to overemphasize the similarity between decision trees and diagnostic trees. The typical decision tree has a relatively focused point of departure (e.g. how to invest a sum of money, which school to attend, where to go on vacation). Diagnostic trees, on the other hand, deal with the development of steering mechanisms to address issues that are less well-defined and that commonly involve higher orders of uncertainty regarding the consequences associated with individual branches. There is some presumption as well that the decisionmaker (whether an individual or a collective entity) is in a position to select and implement whatever option an analysis of the decision tree finds preferable. By contrast, there is no presumption that a single or unified decisionmaker will be in a position to adopt an option emerging from the development of a diagnostic tree, much less to implement this choice in a manner that remains faithful to the design. In the normal situation, the formation of governance systems involves more or less protracted negotiations among actors whose interests are by no means identical. Perhaps most important, the logic of stepwise assessment calls for moving from branch point to branch point, setting aside further consideration of those branches not selected at individual branch points. Whereas a decision tree may feature calculations of likely outcomes associated with all its branches, a diagnostic tree provides a way of moving from one branch point to another in a manner that leads toward a clearcut outcome regarding the preferred response to a need for governance.
stepwise analysis in thinking about how to respond to needs for governance, it offers little guidance regarding how to construct diagnostic trees and use them to come to grips with specific issues involving needs for steering mechanisms. The next step, then, is to consider the procedure involved in constructing a diagnostic tree to address a familiar issue domain featuring prominent needs for governance. Of course, no two issues are alike. Diagnostic trees will assume distinctive forms depending upon major features of the issues at stake. But a worked example will help to elucidate what is involved in translating the concept of a diagnostic tree from an abstract idea to an applied practice. In this section, I consider issues of governance arising in the realm of fisheries management. While the discussion remains conceptual rather than empirical, it should suffice to convey a sense of what is entailed in launching a series of diagnostic queries, starting with a query about the issue giving rise to a need for governance and moving on from there (see Fig. 2).
3.1. Query 1: What is the issue? In the domain of fisheries management, the core concern centers on the problem of sustainability. In the typical case, the goal is to achieve sustained yields, harvesting as many fish from a stock as possible on a yearly basis without jeopardizing the future of the stock. Of course, things are never as simple as this formulation suggests when it comes to real-world situations. Fisheries biologists often disagree regarding how much of a stock can be harvested without impairing the productivity of the stock itself (Ludwig et al., 1993; Pauly et al., 2002; Worm et al., 2009). Moreover, the answer to this question is apt to be sensitive to the effects of a variety of conditions, including interactions with other species, the influence of pollutants or contaminants, and changing water temperature or increasing acidification arising from forces like climate change. Nevertheless, the core concern is to limit the activities of appropriators in a manner that allows for sustainable harvests over the course of time (Webster, 2015). In the typical case, the issue of fisheries management includes
3. A conceptual application: fisheries management So far, my characterization of diagnostic trees has been highly abstract. While this may suffice to convey a sense of the role of
3
Fig. 2. A diagonstic tree for fisheries management.
4
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
considerations that extend beyond sustainability. Among the most important of these are pursuing efficiency, securing the welfare of fishing communities, and protecting the larger ecosystems in which fish stocks are embedded. Maximizing the economic yield from a fishery is not the same as maximizing the sustainable yield. There are many cases in which fisheries have too many fishers and too much gear to produce efficient results. Similarly, the operation of fisheries may generate serious impacts on coastal communities or surrounding ecosystems. The loss of jobs when smallscale fishers are eliminated and the damage that trawling operations cause to sensitive benthic ecosystems constitute familiar cases in point. That said, however, fisheries management provides a familiar example of a need for governance (Clark, 2006; Mahon et al., 2015; Webster, 2015). Without making an extended effort to parse the issue into its constituent elements, we can proceed from this point of departure to address the next query. 3.2. Query 2: Will an informal social practice suffice to meet the need? The identification of a clearcut need for governance does not lead automatically to the conclusion that it will be necessary to launch a conscious effort to create a governance system to provide the necessary steering mechanism. Those who think about governance, especially in settings involving governance without government, know that informal social practices can and often do evolve over time to handle the social function of steering. Nowhere is this response to needs for governance more relevant than in the case of fisheries management. As research on smallscale traditional societies has shown, governance systems may arise through informal processes that do not require conscious intervention on the part of specific actors or agents possessing the authority to deal with matters of governance. Those who have studied such systems in depth have sought to identify conditions likely to produce successful results. Perhaps the most prominent example is the effort of Elinor Ostrom who distilled a series of what she describes as design principles dealing with matters like community-defined rules, accountability of monitors, ease of enforcement, graduated sanctions, and so forth (Ostrom, 1990; Ostrom et al, 2002; Cox et al., 2010). Nevertheless, there are many situations in which informal social practices will not suffice to address issues of fisheries management. When the arrangements are not embedded in a social setting featuring a strong sense of community, informal steering mechanisms are unlikely to arise, much less suffice to regulate behavior effectively. When fisheries transcend political boundaries, such arrangements are seldom effective. When the relevant biophysical systems or social systems are subject to rapid and especially nonlinear changes, the slow pace at which informal practices typically develop will constitute a problem. When fisheries interact with other human activities (e.g. shipping, oil or gas development), informal practices arising among fishers cannot address the complexities associated with these interactions. In short, while the idea of governance through the operation of informal social practices is attractive in much the same way that the idea of the invisible hand is attractive in thinking about relations among producers and consumers, there are many situations in which we cannot depend on the emergence of this form of governance to address issues of fisheries management. This produces a distinct branch point in the diagnostic tree. If we conclude that an informal social practice will suffice to provide the necessary steering in the case in hand, the exercise in institutional diagnostics can stop at this point. If, on the other hand, we conclude that a consciously created governance system or what I will call an intentional regime is necessary to address the issue at hand, we can move on to the next stage in the diagnostic process.
3.3. Query 3: What are the relative merits of rule-based vs. goalbased governance strategies? Mainstream thinking about governance, at least among those concerned with environmental issues, is regulative in character. That is, it assumes the key to steering is the introduction of rules in the form of prohibitions and requirements that apply to the behavior of members of the relevant group. If the challenge is to prevent excessive harvesting of fish, the proper response is to prohibit harvesting during certain seasons or at certain places, to mandate the use of specified gear types, to require fishers to be in possession of a valid permit, or to introduce other measures of a similar nature. Once the rules are in place, the focus shifts to the processes involved in moving them from paper to practice, including the articulation of the rules in the form of operational regulations, the development of effective compliance mechanisms, and the establishment of procedures to render authoritative interpretations in cases where there are disputes regarding the application of the rules to specific fact patterns. Taken together, these measures are often characterized in terms of the concept of the rule of law (Zaelke et al., 2005). Yet this is not the only strategy available to those responsible for coming to terms with needs for governance. An alternative, which has received increasing attention in recent years, takes the form of goal-based governance (Sachs, 2015; Kanie and Biermann, 2017). The essential idea here is to set a well-defined social goal, to prioritize efforts to fulfill this goal over other activities, to allocate resources to the pursuit of the goal, and to launch a campaign aimed at meeting the goal over a specified period of time. The concerted and ultimately successful effort spearheaded by the World Health Organization to eradicate smallpox during the 1960e1970s constitutes a prominent example (Fenner et al., 1988; Bazin, 2000). But similar strategies featuring goal-based governance are common at other levels of social organization. Whereas rule-based systems are well-adapted to steering behavior in situations involving ongoing activities, goal-based systems are attractive in cases where there is reason to believe that a focused campaign can solve a problem once and for all. There is a political dimension to the choice between rule-based and goal-based governance systems that is worth noting. Whereas most western systems are founded on a commitment to the rule of law, other systems (e.g. the contemporary Chinese system) operate through top-down procedures for setting and prioritizing goals coupled with related procedures for mobilizing concerted efforts to fulfill them (Young et al., 2015). From a broader perspective, however, there is much to be said for including both rule-based systems and goal-based systems in the toolkit we use to address needs for governance on the understanding that the choice of one system or the other or some hybrid arrangement should be made on a caseby-case basis. Given the fact that fisheries management requires steering that continues on an indefinite basis, there is a good case for adopting a rule-based strategy in this issue area, though it may make sense to adopt goal-based measures on a temporary basis in cases where analysts conclude it is essential to impose a moratorium on harvesting in order to rebuild stocks before reopening them to commercial harvesting. Following this logic, we can proceed along the rule-based branch of the diagnostic tree and move to the next query. 3.4. Query 4: For purposes of formulating rules, should we treat the issue as a collective-action problem, an externality, or a value conflict? The next step in developing a rule-based governance system is to identify the sources or roots of the behavior that requires
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
regulation to meet a need for governance. In the classic case of collective-action problems, all members of the group stand to gain from the introduction of effective prohibitions or requirements. The trick in such cases is to provide assurance to individual members of the group that compliance on their part will not be exploited by others hoping to violate rules while others comply. But this is not the only target of regulatory arrangements. Externalities involve unintended (and often unforeseen) side effects of behavior motivated by a desire to pursue other goals. Although it is important to note that some externalities are positive in the sense that their impacts are beneficial, most attention among those interested in environmental issues understandably focuses on cases where the unintended side effects are harmful to others. Ronald Coase pointed out long ago that the relevant parties may be able to negotiate agreements on their own that can internalize these effects (Coase, 1960). But there are many cases in which this response is either ineffective or likely to produce inequitable results. Under these conditions, there is a convincing case for the introduction of regulatory arrangements designed to limit side effects or to require those responsible for them to compensate victims. Still other regulatory arrangements deal with value conflicts in which there is no prospect that unregulated interactions can resolve the relevant differences. A prominent example involves the idea that animals (e.g. whales, seals, bears) have rights of their own that humans are obligated to respect (Singer, 2009). Whereas harvesters may be receptive to the introduction of rules needed to ensure sustainable yields from the relevant stocks, advocates of animal rights are likely to oppose all deliberate killing of individual animals. In the typical case, battles regarding such value conflicts are apt to take the form of arguments over proposals to introduce rules banning or sharply restricting the harvest of the relevant animals (e.g. great whales or polar bears). The core concern regarding sustainable fisheries is normally a matter of solving collective-action problems. When fish are treated as a common pool resource, unregulated harvesters will experience incentives to continue catching fish until the tragedy of the commons sets in. It is understandable, then, that much attention focuses on the development of regulatory arrangements aimed at solving this problem, a fact that makes it reasonable to move on to the next branch point in the diagnostic tree. Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that fisheries management may require efforts to address externalities and even value conflicts in addition to solving collective-action problems. Harvesting fish can produce unintended side effects that may prove highly destructive to encompassing ecosystems. The classic example involves the destructive impact of trawling on benthic communities. Value conflicts arise when others value fish for reasons that have nothing to do with their value as sources of food. A case in point involves removals of important species from coral reefs that detract from the value of the reefs to those wishing to visit pristine and aweinspiring natural environments. Even as we move on to consider ways to solve collective-action problems, therefore, it is appropriate to observe that it would be a mistake to ignore or lose track of these other branches emanating from this branch point of the diagnostic tree in thinking about fisheries management. 3.5. Query 5: What are the relative merits of command-and-control regulations, incentive mechanisms, and privatization as solutions to collective-action problems? There are several strategies for alleviating collective-action problems. As Garrett Hardin observed in his famous analysis of the tragedy of the commons, one approach centers on the idea of privatization. The basic argument for privatization is simple. If one actor (an individual or a corporation or even a government) were in
5
a position to make synoptic decisions encompassing a resource (in our case, a fish stock), that actor would be able to limit the use of the resource in the interests of achieving sustainability or, for that matter, any other objective of interest, such as economic efficiency or the protection of what we have come to think of as ecosystem services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). But the act of privatizing a resource is itself a matter of introducing a governance system, and this solution is often impractical, normatively unacceptable or both. Other relevant approaches to governance in such situations feature what are generally called command-and-control regulations and incentive systems. Regulation in this sense is a matter of introducing requirements or prohibitions that are mandatory in the sense that subjects are called upon to adhere to the relevant prescriptions. Mandating the use of certain gear types or imposing requirements regarding the minimum size of legal fish are regulatory measures of this type often used in the realm of fisheries management. Fishers in such situations are free to decide whether to fish or to abandon the fishery. But those who decide to fish must comply with the regulations or run the risks associated with engaging in illegal activities. An alternative approach to solving collective-action problems, which has become increasingly influential in recent decades, is generally described in terms of the use of incentive mechanisms. Under such systems, actors are free to make their own choices. But those responsible for governance can adjust the rules to influence the costs and benefits associated with those choices. A widely discussed example involves the imposition of costs on emissions of greenhouse gases. Emitters may decide for themselves whether to continue with business as usual, to introduce more efficient technology, or to go out of business. But they are required to pay for permits to cover all remaining emissions or to pay taxes on their emissions. In the realm of fisheries management, incentive systems involve mechanisms designed to limit harvests by driving up the costs to those who are active in the fishery. At all levels of social organization, strategies featuring incentive mechanisms are highly controversial among those who are concerned with fisheries management (Young, Webster et al., 2018). But let us suppose that a strategy aimed at influencing incentives seems attractive with regard to a particular fishery and move on to the next branch point in the diagnostic tree. 3.6. Query 6: What are the advantages and disadvantages of incentive mechanisms featuring individual transferable quotas, permits, fees, or other procedures designed to channel the activities of fishers? Incentive systems may take any of a variety of forms. A lively controversy in the realm of climate change, for example, takes the form of a debate between those who favor placing a cap on the number of permits available and then allowing emitters to buy and sell permits based on their own cost-benefit calculations and those who favor imposing a tax on all emissions of greenhouse gases. In the case of fisheries, there is a major controversy regarding both the effectiveness and the unintended side effects of mechanisms featuring the establishment and allocation of quotas. In the form of individual transferable quotas (ITQs), such arrangements involve creating an authoritative procedure for setting quotas, devising some mechanism to allocate the quotas initially among interested parties, and then allowing owners of quotas to fish their quotas, sell their quotas, or (in some cases) rent their quotas to others for some period of time. An alternative system features the creation and allocation of permits (normally) entitling the holder to engage in a specific fishery, using a particular type of gear and operating in a spatially delimited area. In some cases, permits may be bought and sold, although there are often restrictions designed to prevent a
6
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
single owner from acquiring a large proportion of the total number of permits. Yet another system that is simpler, though not necessarily preferable, involves the use of fees (or less likely subsidies) to influence the behavior of fishers. By raising fees in such forms as landing fees, those responsible for governance can drive up the costs of doing business. In extreme cases, the result can amount to closure of a fishery requiring rebuilding before sustainable harvests are possible. Sustained analysis may well turn up other types of incentive mechanisms. An important observation in this connection is that each of these types of incentive mechanisms has numerous variants and that the achievement of sustainable harvests depends on getting the match between the socioecological setting and the relevant arrangements right even at this advanced stage in the diagnostic tree. Take the case of fishing permits as an example (Young, 1982). It is necessary, at the outset, to determine how many permits to issue for a given fishery and how to allocate them initially among those interested in participating in the fishery. But there are numerous additional questions that arise even after these initial issues have been resolved. Some systems require an owner to fish his permit, a provision designed to prevent fish processors from exercising undue influence by controlling large numbers of permits or to prohibit wealthy individuals from investing in permits and becoming absentee owners. Another question concerns the permissibility of using fishing permits as collateral in seeking loans, and the rules regarding forfeiture in cases where they are used as collateral. Then, too, there is the question of how to assess the value of permits in the event that divorces require property settlements or the settlement of estates requires the division of assets among heirs. And the list goes on. The point of this example is not to argue for or against the creation of fishing permits, much less the use of incentive mechanisms more generally in this realm. Rather, the take home message is that there are many options even at this advanced stage in the development of a diagnostic tree and that choices in this realm regularly provoke intense controversy among advocates of the various options. In short, getting the details right is a matter of great importance not only in terms of biophysical matters like sustainability but also in terms of sensitive matters of equity or fairness. The diagnostic process reaches closure when there are no remaining branch points to analyze. But as the example of fisheries management suggests, several points of clarification are helpful in this connection. If we follow the branch of fishing permits, for instance, there may be value in identifying another branch point featuring different types of permit systems. The fisheries example also indicates that there are likely to be cases in which it is helpful to analyze more than one branch emanating from a specific branch point. What this means is that constructing diagnostic trees to facilitate the analysis of specific needs for governance requires judgment; it is not a cut-and-dried process. 4. Discussion To most of those who think about such matters, the term diagnosis brings to mind efforts on the part of doctors and other medical professionals to determine the causes of illnesses and ways to cure them. In the typical case, a patient experiencing symptoms that are puzzling or difficult to understand seeks the advice of a doctor who is asked to determine the source of the problem and to prescribe some treatment that will restore the health of the patient. Of course, the advent of modern medicine and the development of sophisticated medical technology has given rise to highly complex diagnostic procedures. Still, the basic process remains the same; diagnosis is about locating the underlying cause of an illness in order to arrive at an informed judgment about the relative merits of
available approaches to treatment. There are obvious similarities between the practice of medical diagnostics and the diagnostic procedures that constitute the central focus of this article. As in the case of illness, institutional diagnosis ordinarily comes into play when an issue arises (e.g. fish stocks are declining) that the relevant actors are not able to address effectively through individual initiatives. This is what triggers awareness of a need for governance. Naturally, it is important to understand the biophysical and socioeconomic sources of the problem. But the emphasis in the practice of institutional diagnostics falls on efforts to think systematically about the relative merits of strategies for steering the behavior of human actors. The central idea underlying the development of diagnostic trees is that it helps to proceed in a stepwise fashion as a means of avoiding premature or simplistic prescriptions. To continue with the case of fisheries management, it would be premature to assume that a rule-based strategy makes sense without considering the relevance of goal-based strategies, much less to argue for a particular incentive system before considering whether alternative ways to address collective-action problems are preferable. While there is no doubt that institutional diagnosis and medical diagnosis have common elements, the important observation here is that institutional diagnostics is first and foremost a procedure for engaging in systematic and sustained efforts to design governance systems that are effective in addressing the concerns articulated by those who have identified a need for governance and placed it on the policy agenda. Some find it tempting to think that institutional diagnosis can provide guidance to those responsible for negotiating actual language to be incorporated in the texts of agreements (ranging from informal codes of conduct to domestic legislation and on to international instruments) spelling out the provisions of governance systems. But it is important to understand that diagnostic processes have a limited capacity to contribute to the language of specific provisions, even though such processes may shape strategic choices underlying the negotiations. The choice between a rule-based system or a goal-based system, for example, will have fundamental implications for the negotiation of the provisions of an agreement (Kanie et al., 2017). In more specific terms, once a decision is made that there is a need to solve a collective-action problem, the character of the ensuing negotiations will depend on whether the parties choose to establish command-and-control regulations or to devise some system of incentive mechanisms. What this means is that diagnostic processes can play an important role in determining the underlying structure of the negotiations that produce the text of an agreement. But this leaves considerable room for negotiators to make important choices regarding both the superstructure of the agreement (e.g. the choice between permits and taxes as mechanisms for controlling emissions) and the language employed in describing the features of a governance system dealing with a specific need for governance (e.g. the specific language used in establishing a regional fisheries management organization). To avoid costly misunderstandings about the role of institutional diagnostics, it is also important to draw a clear distinction between institutional design and regime formation. The diagnostic process centers on an analysis of the likely results associated with architectural choices on the assumption that the members of the relevant group eventually select a specific option and take the steps necessary to implement it faithfully. In this sense, it is an analytic process rather than a political process. Regime formation, by contrast, is a political process in which actors who have distinct and often competing interests endeavor to exercise influence in the course of institutional bargaining in order to produce agreements that reflect their own preferences to the maximum degree possible (Young, 1994).
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
In the absence of a dominant actor, institutional bargaining will produce an agreement encompassing a mosaic of features that are difficult to map directly onto any coherent blueprint or institutional design. What is more, the influence of politics continues right into the stage of implementation and administration. As many observers have noted, the rules in use regarding any given governance system commonly differ e sometimes fundamentally e from the rules on paper or the rules as articulated in the terms of formal agreements. Given the character of these political processes, what can we say about the role of institutional design? There can be no expectation that actual regimes will follow the logic of carefully crafted blueprints in any straightforward way. Still, institutional design matters (Mitchell, 1994). As current discussions of the differences between rule-based systems and goal-based systems make clear, ideas do make their way into the discourse of politics, and political processes are sensitive to shifts in epistemic perspectives, even when the dissemination of ideas is slow and the results are imperfect (Haas and Stevens, 2017). It follows that it would be a mistake to limit our thinking about institutional diagnostics to the results arising in efforts to fulfill needs for governance in specific cases. 5. Conclusion This article suggests a way to enhance the usefulness of institutional diagnostics by developing a diagnostic practice that separates institutional design into a number of stages and proceeds to consider the merits of options in a stepwise process. It is important to understand that this does not mean the practice can be routinized, so that it becomes a skill that any intelligent practitioner can learn to use effectively and efficiently. As those who have thought about diagnostic practices in fields like health care have observed, there is both room for creativity in this realm and a clear and present danger of arriving at erroneous conclusions (Gawande, 2002). Those with a gift for diagnosis can and often do produce particularly insightful and useful results, especially in cases where the issues are complex and the options are numerous. This means that it is appropriate to approach the results of any institutional diagnosis critically. But it does not mean that these products are of no value. Good diagnoses not only help to clarify the basic issues at stake; they also draw our attention to important options that might otherwise have been overlooked or ignored. This means that diagnostic exercises can provide an opportunity for members of the Earth System Governance research community to engage in a mutually beneficial dialogue with practitioners responsible for creating and administering specific governance systems. Conflict of interest The author declares no conflict of interest. References Agrawal, Arun, 2002. Common resources and institutional sustainability. In: Ostrom, Elinor, et al. (Eds.), The Drama of the Commons. National Academies Press, Washington, DC, pp. 47e85. Baden, John A., Noonan, Douglas S., 1998. Managing the Commons. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Bazin, Herve, 2000. The Eradication of Smallpox. Elsevier, Dordrecht. Berkes, Fikret, Folke, Carl (Eds.), 1998. Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Biermann, Frank, 2014. Earth System Governance: World Politics in the Anthropocene. MIT Press, Cambridge. Biermann, Frank, et al., 2009. Earth System Science: People, Places, and the Planet. IHDP Report No. 20, Bonn: International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. Biermann, Frank, Pattberg, Philipp (Eds.), 2012. Global Environmental Governance
7
Reconsidered. MIT Press, Cambridge. Breitmeier, Helmut, Oran, R., Young, and Michael Zürn, 2006. Analyzing International Environmental Regimes: from Case Study to Database. MIT Press, Cambridge. Clark, Colin W., 2006. The Worldwide Crisis in Fisheries: Economic Models and Human Behavior. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Coase, Ronald, 1960. The problem of social cost. J. Law Econ. 3, 1e44. Cox, Michael, 2011. Advancing the diagnostic analysis of environmental problems. Int. J. Commons 5, 346e363. Cox, Michael, et al., 2010. A review of design principles for community-based natural resource, management. Ecol. Soc. 15 art. 4. Cox, Michael, et al., 2015. A diagnostic procedure for applying the social-ecological systems framework to diverse cases. Ecol. Soc. 20, 32. Cox, Michael, et al., 2016. Synthesizing theories of natural resource management and governance. Glob. Environ. Chang. 39, 45e56. Dryzek, John S., Pickering, Jonathan, 2019. The Politics of the Anthropocene. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Duit, Andreas, Victor, Galaz, 2008. Governance and complexity e emerging issues for governance theory. In: Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions, vol. 21, pp. 311e335. Earth System Governance Project, 2018. Earth System Governance: Science and Implementation Plan of the Earth System Governance Project. Earth System Governance Project, Utrecht. Fenner, F., et al., 1988. Smallpox and Eradication, Smallpox and its Eradication. Geneva: World Health Organization. Folke, Carl, et al., 1998. The Problem of Fit between Ecosystems and Institutions. IHDP Working Paper No. 2, Bonn, Germany: International Human Dimensions Programme. Galaz, Victor, et al., 2008. The problem of fit among biophysical systems, environmental and resource regimes, and broader governance systems: insights and emerging challenges. In: Young, O.R., King, L., Schroeder, H. (Eds.), Institutions and Environmental Change. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 147e186. Galaz, Victor, 2014. Global Environmental Governance, Technology and Politics: the Anthropocene Gap. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. Gawande, Atul, 2002. Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. Metropolitan Books, New York. Haas, Peter, Keohane, Robert, Levy, Marc, 1993. Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Environmental Protection. MIT Press, Cambridge. Haas, Peter, Stevens, Casey, 2017. Ideas, beliefs, and policy linkages: lessons from food, water, and energy policies. In: Kanie, Norichika, Biermann, Frank (Eds.), Govwerning through Goals. MIT Press, Cambridge, 137-164 9n. Hardin, Garrett, 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162, 1243e1248. IHDP 1999/2005, reportInstitutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) Science Plan. Reports No. 9 and 16. Bonn: IHDP. Kanie, Norichika, et al., 2017. Introduction: global governance through goal setting. In: Kanie, Norichika, Biermann, Frank (Eds.), Governing through Goals. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 1e27. Kanie, Norichika, Biermann, Frank (Eds.), 2017. Governing through Goals: Sustainable Development Goals as Governance Innovation. MIT Press, Cambridge. Kingsford, Carl, Salzberg, Steven L., 2008. What are decision trees? Nat. Biotechnol. 28, 1011e1013. Krasner, Stephen D. (Ed.), 1983. International Regimes. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Lenton, Timothy, et al., 2008. Tipping elements in the earth's climate system. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105, 1786e1793. Ludwig, D., Hilborn, R., Walters, C., 1993. Uncertainty, resource exploitation and conservation: lessons from history. Science 260 (17), 36. Mahon, Robert, et al., 2015. Transboundary Waters Assessment Programme Assessment of Governance Arrangements for the Ocean: Areas beyond National Jurisdiction. UNESCO, Paris. Miles, Edward L., et al., 2002. Environmental Regime Effectiveness: Confronting Theory with Evidence. MIT Press, Cambridge. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, DC. Mitchell, Ronald B., 1994. Regime design matters: intentional oil pollution and treaty compliance. Int. Organ. 48, 425e458. Olson Jr., Mancur, 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Ostrom, Elinor, 1990. Governing the Commons: the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Ostrom, Elinor, 2007. A diagnostic approach to going beyond panaceas. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104, 15181e15187. Ostrom, Elinor, Cox, Michael, 2010. Moving beyond panaceas: a multi-tiered diagnostic approach for social- ecological analysis. Environ. Conserv. 37, 451e463. Ostrom, Elinor, et al. (Eds.), 2002. The Drama of the Commons. National Academies Press, Washington, DC. Pauly, Daniel, et al., 2002. Towards sustainability in world fisheries. Nature 418, 689e695. Rapoport, Anatol, Albert, M., Chammah, 1965. Prisoner's Dilemma. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Sachs, Jeffrey, 2015. The Age of Sustainable Development. Columbia University Press, New York. Schelling, Thomas C., 1978. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. Yale University Press, New Haven. Singer, Peter, 2009. Animal Liberation: the Definitive Classic of the Animal
8
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
Movement. Harper, New York. Steffen, Will, et al., 2004. Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet under Pressure. Springer, Heidelberg. Webster, D.G., 2015. Beyond the Tragedy in Global Fisheries. MIT Press, Cambridge. Wilson, James, 2006. Matching social and ecological systems in complex ocean fisheries. Ecol. Soc. 11, 9. Worm, Boris, et al., 2009. Rebuilding global fisheries. Science 325, 578e585. Young, Oran R., 1982. Fishing by permit: restricted common property in practice. Ocean Dev. Int. Law 13, 121e170. Young, Oran R., 1994. International Governance: Protecting the Environment in a Stateless Society. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Young, Oran R., 1999. Governance in World Affairs. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Young, Oran R., 2002. The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interlay, and Scale. MIT Press, Cambridge. Young, Oran R., 2008. Building regimes for socioecologcal systems: institutional
diagnostics. In: Young, O.R., King, L., Schroeder, H. (Eds.), Institutions and Environmental Change. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 115e144. Young, Oran R., 2017. Governing Complex Systems: Social Capital for the Anthropocene. MIT Press, Cambridge. Young, Oran R., et al., 2015. Institutionalized governance processes: comparing environmental problem solving in China and the United States. Glob. Environ. Chang. 31, 163e173. Young, Oran R., Webster, D.G., et al., 2018. Moving beyond panaceas in fisheries governance. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 115, 9065e9073. Young, Oran R., King, Leslie A., Schroeder, Heike (Eds.), 2008. Institutions and Environmental Change: Principal Findings, Applications, and Research Frontiers. MIT Press, Cambridge. Zaelke, Durwood, et al. (Eds.), 2005. Making Law Work: Environmental Compliance and Sustainable Development, Vol. 2. Cameron May, London.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Earth System Governance journal homepage: www.journals.elsevier.com/earth-system-governance
Research article
Constructing diagnostic trees: A stepwise approach to institutional design Oran R. Young Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 30 October 2018 Received in revised form 1 February 2019 Accepted 6 February 2019 Available online 22 February 2019
The idea of institutional diagnostics has sparked considerable interest over the last twenty years, especially among those seeking to assess how architectural choices can affect the performance of institutions established to address environmental issues. But so far, this appealing idea has not developed into a practice that is useful in making choices regarding the architecture of regimes addressing needs for governance arising at various levels of social organization. I argue that this is attributable to a dramatic expansion in the range of concerns we now include in thinking about needs for governance and how to respond to them. Diagnosis cannot deal with the full range of these concerns in one step. To make diagnostic procedures useful, we must proceed in stages, identifying the basic nature of a need for governance and then proceeding in a stepwise fashion to identify and evaluate institutional options. I introduce the idea of a diagnostic tree as a tool to guide this process and explore its usefulness in a generalized account of key issues arising in the realm of fisheries management. I conclude with a discussion of points to bear in mind in any effort to use this tool to sort out the complexities of institutional design in a variety of real-world settings. © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Keywords: Architecture Diagnosis Diagnostic tree Governance Governance system
1. Introduction Over the last twenty years, the idea of institutional diagnostics has sparked considerable interest, especially among those seeking to understand the role that choices among architectural options play in determining the effectiveness of environmental regimes (Mitchell, 1994; Young 2002, 2008; Ostrom, 2007; Ostrom and Cox, 2010; Cox, 2011; Cox et al. 2015, 2016; Young, Webster et al., 2018). The source of this interest is easy to identify. It is rooted in the familiar aphorism that form follows function when it comes to the design and implementation of institutions created to address needs for governance arising in settings ranging from smallscale social systems to international society. As the Science Plan developed in the 1990s to guide the longterm research project on the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change puts it, “the effectiveness of social institutions is a function of the match between the characteristics of the institutions themselves and the characteristics of the biogeophysical [and socioeconomic] systems with which they interact” (IHDP, 1999/2005, 57). The resultant “problem of fit” has become an ongoing topic of interest to
E-mail address: [email protected].
researchers interested in environmental governance, emerging in the words of the initial Science Plan of the Earth System Governance Project as the “first analytical problem” concerned with the “architecture of earth system governance” (Biermann et al., 2009, 5; see also Berkes and Folke, 1998; Folke et al., 1998; Wilson, 2006; Galaz et al., 2008; Young, Webster et al., 2018). In this setting, the term diagnosis refers to the development and deployment of procedures that are helpful in identifying key features of needs for governance on a case-by-case basis and especially in evaluating architectural options in order to ensure a good match between a need for governance and the institutional response selected (Young, 2008). Yet, as often happens with concepts that achieve popularity in the social sciences, the idea of institutional diagnostics has not provided a basis for the development of a robust theory of institutional design, much less an operational practice that is useful to those engaged in crafting the provisions of regimes to address specific needs for governance under real-world conditions. Undoubtedly, this is attributable at least in part to the usual problems of developing operational indicators that plague most efforts to produce cumulative knowledge in the social sciences. In a more fundamental sense, however, I argue that the difficulties confronting efforts to develop a practice of institutional diagnostics
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2019.02.001 2589-8116/© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ).
2
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
that is helpful in guiding thinking about the creation of regimes to meet specific needs for governance stem from more basic considerations relating to our thinking about governance as a social function involving the development of steering mechanisms. In a nutshell, my argument is that what began as a fairly straightforward effort to devise regulatory measures to solve collective-action problems has mushroomed into a much broader examination of the multiple roles that various types of institutions play in addressing a diverse collection of societal concerns (Krasner, 1983; Haas et al., 1993; Miles et al., 2002; Breitmeier et al., 2006; Young et al., 2008; Biermann et al., 2009; Biermann and Pattberg, 2012; Biermann, 2014; Earth System Governance Project, 2018). It is not feasible to apply diagnostic procedures to this broad landscape of governance issues in a single step. To make diagnostic procedures useful, we must start by identifying the general character of needs for governance associated with an issue domain and then proceed stepwise to consider institutional options, starting with first-order concerns and moving toward more specific concerns one step at a time. In the body of this article, I suggest a way forward that responds to the research community's broadened perspective on needs for governance and how to meet them by introducing what I call a diagnostic tree as a tool to guide the assessment of institutional options on a stepwise basis. Section 2 introduces the logic of stepwise assessment. It describes the development of a diagnostic tree as a tool allowing the analyst to break the diagnostic process into a number of well-defined stages on the understanding that the option selected at each branch point of a diagnostic tree provides guidance regarding the range of issues to be considered at the next stage. Section 3 turns to issues arising in the realm of fisheries management to develop a generalized demonstration of the use of this tool to address specific needs for governance. Section 4 takes up several issues that are important both in clarifying what is distinctive about this approach to institutional diagnostics and in seeking to make the transition from generalized applications to the construction of diagnostic trees to address the complexities arising in real situations involving institutional design. The argument of this article is preliminary; it is far too early to arrive at any conclusions regarding the merits of this tool as a means of evaluating institutional options in real situations. But the analysis does suggest a way forward in the effort to make institutional diagnostics useful as a procedure for assessing architectural options systematically in a variety of settings. 2. Diagnostic trees: the logic of stepwise assessment Contemporary thinking about governance began with a focus on the challenge of addressing situations involving collective-action problems or, to use Thomas Schelling's evocative terminology, situations in which there is a tension between micromotives and macrobehavior (Schelling, 1978). Drawing on game-theoretic ideas such as the prisoner's dilemma (Rapoport and Chammah, 1965), analyses of the logic of collective action (Olson, 1965), and socioecological insights relating to the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968; Baden and Noonan, 1998), analysts considered various ways to achieve cooperative outcomes under conditions in which the members of a group experience incentives to defect from cooperative efforts in order to pursue their individual interests. Governance in such settings is fundamentally a matter of devising arrangements that can steer the behavior of group members in such a way that everyone ends up better off than would be the case in the absence of cooperation (Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal, 2002). From this relatively well-defined point of departure, studies of governance treated as a social function involving societal steering have proliferated to address an expanding range of concerns. We
have examined needs for governance dealing with issues featuring social costs and value conflicts in addition to the original focus on collective-action problems (Coase, 1960; Singer, 2009). We have added procedural, programmatic, and generative tasks to the original emphasis on regulative tasks (Young, 1999). We have introduced an important distinction between rule-based governance systems and goal-based governance systems (Kanie and Biermann, 2017). Overarching these considerations, we have begun to address the insight that institutional arrangements designed to handle specific needs for governance are affected by the increasingly complex settings in which they operate (Steffen et al., 2004; Duit and Galaz, 2008; Lenton et al., 2008; Galaz, 2014; Young, 2017; Dryzek and Pickering, 2019). Under the circumstances, what began as a relatively focused matter of evaluating procedures for curbing the incentives of individual group members to defect in collective-action situations has burgeoned into a much larger enterprise involving a wide range of needs for governance coupled with a growing menu of options for responding to specific needs. This poses a fundamental challenge for those interested in making institutional diagnostics useful as a tool for evaluating architectural options. Where should we begin, and how should we proceed under these conditions? The initial step, I argue, is to formulate a description of the issue that has triggered an awareness that a steering mechanism is or may be needed to achieve some collectively desirable outcome or to avoid some collectively undesirable development. As in the case of diagnosis in other realms, triggering events normally give rise to an interest in diagnostic processes. When diagnosis is in order, it is important to avoid introducing ideas at the outset (e.g. prisoner's dilemma or tragedy of the commons) that presuppose conclusions about the nature of the need for governance associated with the issue or about the relative merits of institutional responses. A simple description of the issue will suffice at this stage. For example, the issue may be a matter of managing fisheries sustainably, protecting the climate system, regulating commercial shipping, or maintaining biological diversity. Once formulated, this characterization can serve as the base or point of departure for the construction of what I call a diagnostic tree (see Fig. 1). The next step is to formulate a series of focused queries that make it possible to structure thinking in a stepwise fashion, starting with broad considerations and moving to more specific matters depending upon the answers provided to each of the preceding queries. Each query directs attention to a branch point in the tree. The answer in each case determines which of the branches available at that point to follow. Following a response to an initial query about the character of the issue, for example, we might proceed by
Fig. 1. An abstract diagonstic tree.
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
asking whether it is reasonable to expect that an informal social practice will emerge that can serve as an effective steering mechanism. If the answer to this query is affirmative, there is no need to pursue the issue further. If the answer is negative, on the other hand, we need to proceed along the branch of the tree dealing with what I will call intentional regimes. This sets the stage for launching the next query. This query might focus on whether the intentional regime needed to address the issue may take the form of a rulebased governance system or a goal-based system. The answer to this query will tell us which branch of the diagnostic tree to follow next. We can repeat this procedure one step at a time until we arrive at a conclusion that is sufficiently well-defined to provide the basis for a concrete response to the original issue triggering a need for governance. Several points of clarification regarding this procedure require emphasis at the outset. The development of a diagnostic tree dealing with a particular need for governance is not a mechanical process. There may be more than one way to characterize the issue itself. What is more, there is nothing automatic about the identification of a diagnostic tree's branch points. There is considerable room for creativity in this regard; thoughtful analysts may arrive at different ways of identifying the individual branches of a diagnostic tree. It is important to recognize, under the circumstances, that the development of this approach to institutional diagnostics leaves ample scope for innovative thinking in the design of governance systems. This may seem disappointing to those in search of more routinized procedures. Yet this feature of the process does not differentiate institutional diagnostics from the diagnostic procedures practitioners develop in other complex settings such as medical diagnostics (Gawande, 2002). Diagnostic trees bear some resemblance to what many analysts think of as decision trees (Kingsford and Salzberg, 2008). Like decision trees, they start from some more-or-less well-defined point of departure and proceed by identifying a number of branch points featuring two or more options. Yet it would be a mistake to overemphasize the similarity between decision trees and diagnostic trees. The typical decision tree has a relatively focused point of departure (e.g. how to invest a sum of money, which school to attend, where to go on vacation). Diagnostic trees, on the other hand, deal with the development of steering mechanisms to address issues that are less well-defined and that commonly involve higher orders of uncertainty regarding the consequences associated with individual branches. There is some presumption as well that the decisionmaker (whether an individual or a collective entity) is in a position to select and implement whatever option an analysis of the decision tree finds preferable. By contrast, there is no presumption that a single or unified decisionmaker will be in a position to adopt an option emerging from the development of a diagnostic tree, much less to implement this choice in a manner that remains faithful to the design. In the normal situation, the formation of governance systems involves more or less protracted negotiations among actors whose interests are by no means identical. Perhaps most important, the logic of stepwise assessment calls for moving from branch point to branch point, setting aside further consideration of those branches not selected at individual branch points. Whereas a decision tree may feature calculations of likely outcomes associated with all its branches, a diagnostic tree provides a way of moving from one branch point to another in a manner that leads toward a clearcut outcome regarding the preferred response to a need for governance.
stepwise analysis in thinking about how to respond to needs for governance, it offers little guidance regarding how to construct diagnostic trees and use them to come to grips with specific issues involving needs for steering mechanisms. The next step, then, is to consider the procedure involved in constructing a diagnostic tree to address a familiar issue domain featuring prominent needs for governance. Of course, no two issues are alike. Diagnostic trees will assume distinctive forms depending upon major features of the issues at stake. But a worked example will help to elucidate what is involved in translating the concept of a diagnostic tree from an abstract idea to an applied practice. In this section, I consider issues of governance arising in the realm of fisheries management. While the discussion remains conceptual rather than empirical, it should suffice to convey a sense of what is entailed in launching a series of diagnostic queries, starting with a query about the issue giving rise to a need for governance and moving on from there (see Fig. 2).
3.1. Query 1: What is the issue? In the domain of fisheries management, the core concern centers on the problem of sustainability. In the typical case, the goal is to achieve sustained yields, harvesting as many fish from a stock as possible on a yearly basis without jeopardizing the future of the stock. Of course, things are never as simple as this formulation suggests when it comes to real-world situations. Fisheries biologists often disagree regarding how much of a stock can be harvested without impairing the productivity of the stock itself (Ludwig et al., 1993; Pauly et al., 2002; Worm et al., 2009). Moreover, the answer to this question is apt to be sensitive to the effects of a variety of conditions, including interactions with other species, the influence of pollutants or contaminants, and changing water temperature or increasing acidification arising from forces like climate change. Nevertheless, the core concern is to limit the activities of appropriators in a manner that allows for sustainable harvests over the course of time (Webster, 2015). In the typical case, the issue of fisheries management includes
3. A conceptual application: fisheries management So far, my characterization of diagnostic trees has been highly abstract. While this may suffice to convey a sense of the role of
3
Fig. 2. A diagonstic tree for fisheries management.
4
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
considerations that extend beyond sustainability. Among the most important of these are pursuing efficiency, securing the welfare of fishing communities, and protecting the larger ecosystems in which fish stocks are embedded. Maximizing the economic yield from a fishery is not the same as maximizing the sustainable yield. There are many cases in which fisheries have too many fishers and too much gear to produce efficient results. Similarly, the operation of fisheries may generate serious impacts on coastal communities or surrounding ecosystems. The loss of jobs when smallscale fishers are eliminated and the damage that trawling operations cause to sensitive benthic ecosystems constitute familiar cases in point. That said, however, fisheries management provides a familiar example of a need for governance (Clark, 2006; Mahon et al., 2015; Webster, 2015). Without making an extended effort to parse the issue into its constituent elements, we can proceed from this point of departure to address the next query. 3.2. Query 2: Will an informal social practice suffice to meet the need? The identification of a clearcut need for governance does not lead automatically to the conclusion that it will be necessary to launch a conscious effort to create a governance system to provide the necessary steering mechanism. Those who think about governance, especially in settings involving governance without government, know that informal social practices can and often do evolve over time to handle the social function of steering. Nowhere is this response to needs for governance more relevant than in the case of fisheries management. As research on smallscale traditional societies has shown, governance systems may arise through informal processes that do not require conscious intervention on the part of specific actors or agents possessing the authority to deal with matters of governance. Those who have studied such systems in depth have sought to identify conditions likely to produce successful results. Perhaps the most prominent example is the effort of Elinor Ostrom who distilled a series of what she describes as design principles dealing with matters like community-defined rules, accountability of monitors, ease of enforcement, graduated sanctions, and so forth (Ostrom, 1990; Ostrom et al, 2002; Cox et al., 2010). Nevertheless, there are many situations in which informal social practices will not suffice to address issues of fisheries management. When the arrangements are not embedded in a social setting featuring a strong sense of community, informal steering mechanisms are unlikely to arise, much less suffice to regulate behavior effectively. When fisheries transcend political boundaries, such arrangements are seldom effective. When the relevant biophysical systems or social systems are subject to rapid and especially nonlinear changes, the slow pace at which informal practices typically develop will constitute a problem. When fisheries interact with other human activities (e.g. shipping, oil or gas development), informal practices arising among fishers cannot address the complexities associated with these interactions. In short, while the idea of governance through the operation of informal social practices is attractive in much the same way that the idea of the invisible hand is attractive in thinking about relations among producers and consumers, there are many situations in which we cannot depend on the emergence of this form of governance to address issues of fisheries management. This produces a distinct branch point in the diagnostic tree. If we conclude that an informal social practice will suffice to provide the necessary steering in the case in hand, the exercise in institutional diagnostics can stop at this point. If, on the other hand, we conclude that a consciously created governance system or what I will call an intentional regime is necessary to address the issue at hand, we can move on to the next stage in the diagnostic process.
3.3. Query 3: What are the relative merits of rule-based vs. goalbased governance strategies? Mainstream thinking about governance, at least among those concerned with environmental issues, is regulative in character. That is, it assumes the key to steering is the introduction of rules in the form of prohibitions and requirements that apply to the behavior of members of the relevant group. If the challenge is to prevent excessive harvesting of fish, the proper response is to prohibit harvesting during certain seasons or at certain places, to mandate the use of specified gear types, to require fishers to be in possession of a valid permit, or to introduce other measures of a similar nature. Once the rules are in place, the focus shifts to the processes involved in moving them from paper to practice, including the articulation of the rules in the form of operational regulations, the development of effective compliance mechanisms, and the establishment of procedures to render authoritative interpretations in cases where there are disputes regarding the application of the rules to specific fact patterns. Taken together, these measures are often characterized in terms of the concept of the rule of law (Zaelke et al., 2005). Yet this is not the only strategy available to those responsible for coming to terms with needs for governance. An alternative, which has received increasing attention in recent years, takes the form of goal-based governance (Sachs, 2015; Kanie and Biermann, 2017). The essential idea here is to set a well-defined social goal, to prioritize efforts to fulfill this goal over other activities, to allocate resources to the pursuit of the goal, and to launch a campaign aimed at meeting the goal over a specified period of time. The concerted and ultimately successful effort spearheaded by the World Health Organization to eradicate smallpox during the 1960e1970s constitutes a prominent example (Fenner et al., 1988; Bazin, 2000). But similar strategies featuring goal-based governance are common at other levels of social organization. Whereas rule-based systems are well-adapted to steering behavior in situations involving ongoing activities, goal-based systems are attractive in cases where there is reason to believe that a focused campaign can solve a problem once and for all. There is a political dimension to the choice between rule-based and goal-based governance systems that is worth noting. Whereas most western systems are founded on a commitment to the rule of law, other systems (e.g. the contemporary Chinese system) operate through top-down procedures for setting and prioritizing goals coupled with related procedures for mobilizing concerted efforts to fulfill them (Young et al., 2015). From a broader perspective, however, there is much to be said for including both rule-based systems and goal-based systems in the toolkit we use to address needs for governance on the understanding that the choice of one system or the other or some hybrid arrangement should be made on a caseby-case basis. Given the fact that fisheries management requires steering that continues on an indefinite basis, there is a good case for adopting a rule-based strategy in this issue area, though it may make sense to adopt goal-based measures on a temporary basis in cases where analysts conclude it is essential to impose a moratorium on harvesting in order to rebuild stocks before reopening them to commercial harvesting. Following this logic, we can proceed along the rule-based branch of the diagnostic tree and move to the next query. 3.4. Query 4: For purposes of formulating rules, should we treat the issue as a collective-action problem, an externality, or a value conflict? The next step in developing a rule-based governance system is to identify the sources or roots of the behavior that requires
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
regulation to meet a need for governance. In the classic case of collective-action problems, all members of the group stand to gain from the introduction of effective prohibitions or requirements. The trick in such cases is to provide assurance to individual members of the group that compliance on their part will not be exploited by others hoping to violate rules while others comply. But this is not the only target of regulatory arrangements. Externalities involve unintended (and often unforeseen) side effects of behavior motivated by a desire to pursue other goals. Although it is important to note that some externalities are positive in the sense that their impacts are beneficial, most attention among those interested in environmental issues understandably focuses on cases where the unintended side effects are harmful to others. Ronald Coase pointed out long ago that the relevant parties may be able to negotiate agreements on their own that can internalize these effects (Coase, 1960). But there are many cases in which this response is either ineffective or likely to produce inequitable results. Under these conditions, there is a convincing case for the introduction of regulatory arrangements designed to limit side effects or to require those responsible for them to compensate victims. Still other regulatory arrangements deal with value conflicts in which there is no prospect that unregulated interactions can resolve the relevant differences. A prominent example involves the idea that animals (e.g. whales, seals, bears) have rights of their own that humans are obligated to respect (Singer, 2009). Whereas harvesters may be receptive to the introduction of rules needed to ensure sustainable yields from the relevant stocks, advocates of animal rights are likely to oppose all deliberate killing of individual animals. In the typical case, battles regarding such value conflicts are apt to take the form of arguments over proposals to introduce rules banning or sharply restricting the harvest of the relevant animals (e.g. great whales or polar bears). The core concern regarding sustainable fisheries is normally a matter of solving collective-action problems. When fish are treated as a common pool resource, unregulated harvesters will experience incentives to continue catching fish until the tragedy of the commons sets in. It is understandable, then, that much attention focuses on the development of regulatory arrangements aimed at solving this problem, a fact that makes it reasonable to move on to the next branch point in the diagnostic tree. Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that fisheries management may require efforts to address externalities and even value conflicts in addition to solving collective-action problems. Harvesting fish can produce unintended side effects that may prove highly destructive to encompassing ecosystems. The classic example involves the destructive impact of trawling on benthic communities. Value conflicts arise when others value fish for reasons that have nothing to do with their value as sources of food. A case in point involves removals of important species from coral reefs that detract from the value of the reefs to those wishing to visit pristine and aweinspiring natural environments. Even as we move on to consider ways to solve collective-action problems, therefore, it is appropriate to observe that it would be a mistake to ignore or lose track of these other branches emanating from this branch point of the diagnostic tree in thinking about fisheries management. 3.5. Query 5: What are the relative merits of command-and-control regulations, incentive mechanisms, and privatization as solutions to collective-action problems? There are several strategies for alleviating collective-action problems. As Garrett Hardin observed in his famous analysis of the tragedy of the commons, one approach centers on the idea of privatization. The basic argument for privatization is simple. If one actor (an individual or a corporation or even a government) were in
5
a position to make synoptic decisions encompassing a resource (in our case, a fish stock), that actor would be able to limit the use of the resource in the interests of achieving sustainability or, for that matter, any other objective of interest, such as economic efficiency or the protection of what we have come to think of as ecosystem services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). But the act of privatizing a resource is itself a matter of introducing a governance system, and this solution is often impractical, normatively unacceptable or both. Other relevant approaches to governance in such situations feature what are generally called command-and-control regulations and incentive systems. Regulation in this sense is a matter of introducing requirements or prohibitions that are mandatory in the sense that subjects are called upon to adhere to the relevant prescriptions. Mandating the use of certain gear types or imposing requirements regarding the minimum size of legal fish are regulatory measures of this type often used in the realm of fisheries management. Fishers in such situations are free to decide whether to fish or to abandon the fishery. But those who decide to fish must comply with the regulations or run the risks associated with engaging in illegal activities. An alternative approach to solving collective-action problems, which has become increasingly influential in recent decades, is generally described in terms of the use of incentive mechanisms. Under such systems, actors are free to make their own choices. But those responsible for governance can adjust the rules to influence the costs and benefits associated with those choices. A widely discussed example involves the imposition of costs on emissions of greenhouse gases. Emitters may decide for themselves whether to continue with business as usual, to introduce more efficient technology, or to go out of business. But they are required to pay for permits to cover all remaining emissions or to pay taxes on their emissions. In the realm of fisheries management, incentive systems involve mechanisms designed to limit harvests by driving up the costs to those who are active in the fishery. At all levels of social organization, strategies featuring incentive mechanisms are highly controversial among those who are concerned with fisheries management (Young, Webster et al., 2018). But let us suppose that a strategy aimed at influencing incentives seems attractive with regard to a particular fishery and move on to the next branch point in the diagnostic tree. 3.6. Query 6: What are the advantages and disadvantages of incentive mechanisms featuring individual transferable quotas, permits, fees, or other procedures designed to channel the activities of fishers? Incentive systems may take any of a variety of forms. A lively controversy in the realm of climate change, for example, takes the form of a debate between those who favor placing a cap on the number of permits available and then allowing emitters to buy and sell permits based on their own cost-benefit calculations and those who favor imposing a tax on all emissions of greenhouse gases. In the case of fisheries, there is a major controversy regarding both the effectiveness and the unintended side effects of mechanisms featuring the establishment and allocation of quotas. In the form of individual transferable quotas (ITQs), such arrangements involve creating an authoritative procedure for setting quotas, devising some mechanism to allocate the quotas initially among interested parties, and then allowing owners of quotas to fish their quotas, sell their quotas, or (in some cases) rent their quotas to others for some period of time. An alternative system features the creation and allocation of permits (normally) entitling the holder to engage in a specific fishery, using a particular type of gear and operating in a spatially delimited area. In some cases, permits may be bought and sold, although there are often restrictions designed to prevent a
6
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
single owner from acquiring a large proportion of the total number of permits. Yet another system that is simpler, though not necessarily preferable, involves the use of fees (or less likely subsidies) to influence the behavior of fishers. By raising fees in such forms as landing fees, those responsible for governance can drive up the costs of doing business. In extreme cases, the result can amount to closure of a fishery requiring rebuilding before sustainable harvests are possible. Sustained analysis may well turn up other types of incentive mechanisms. An important observation in this connection is that each of these types of incentive mechanisms has numerous variants and that the achievement of sustainable harvests depends on getting the match between the socioecological setting and the relevant arrangements right even at this advanced stage in the diagnostic tree. Take the case of fishing permits as an example (Young, 1982). It is necessary, at the outset, to determine how many permits to issue for a given fishery and how to allocate them initially among those interested in participating in the fishery. But there are numerous additional questions that arise even after these initial issues have been resolved. Some systems require an owner to fish his permit, a provision designed to prevent fish processors from exercising undue influence by controlling large numbers of permits or to prohibit wealthy individuals from investing in permits and becoming absentee owners. Another question concerns the permissibility of using fishing permits as collateral in seeking loans, and the rules regarding forfeiture in cases where they are used as collateral. Then, too, there is the question of how to assess the value of permits in the event that divorces require property settlements or the settlement of estates requires the division of assets among heirs. And the list goes on. The point of this example is not to argue for or against the creation of fishing permits, much less the use of incentive mechanisms more generally in this realm. Rather, the take home message is that there are many options even at this advanced stage in the development of a diagnostic tree and that choices in this realm regularly provoke intense controversy among advocates of the various options. In short, getting the details right is a matter of great importance not only in terms of biophysical matters like sustainability but also in terms of sensitive matters of equity or fairness. The diagnostic process reaches closure when there are no remaining branch points to analyze. But as the example of fisheries management suggests, several points of clarification are helpful in this connection. If we follow the branch of fishing permits, for instance, there may be value in identifying another branch point featuring different types of permit systems. The fisheries example also indicates that there are likely to be cases in which it is helpful to analyze more than one branch emanating from a specific branch point. What this means is that constructing diagnostic trees to facilitate the analysis of specific needs for governance requires judgment; it is not a cut-and-dried process. 4. Discussion To most of those who think about such matters, the term diagnosis brings to mind efforts on the part of doctors and other medical professionals to determine the causes of illnesses and ways to cure them. In the typical case, a patient experiencing symptoms that are puzzling or difficult to understand seeks the advice of a doctor who is asked to determine the source of the problem and to prescribe some treatment that will restore the health of the patient. Of course, the advent of modern medicine and the development of sophisticated medical technology has given rise to highly complex diagnostic procedures. Still, the basic process remains the same; diagnosis is about locating the underlying cause of an illness in order to arrive at an informed judgment about the relative merits of
available approaches to treatment. There are obvious similarities between the practice of medical diagnostics and the diagnostic procedures that constitute the central focus of this article. As in the case of illness, institutional diagnosis ordinarily comes into play when an issue arises (e.g. fish stocks are declining) that the relevant actors are not able to address effectively through individual initiatives. This is what triggers awareness of a need for governance. Naturally, it is important to understand the biophysical and socioeconomic sources of the problem. But the emphasis in the practice of institutional diagnostics falls on efforts to think systematically about the relative merits of strategies for steering the behavior of human actors. The central idea underlying the development of diagnostic trees is that it helps to proceed in a stepwise fashion as a means of avoiding premature or simplistic prescriptions. To continue with the case of fisheries management, it would be premature to assume that a rule-based strategy makes sense without considering the relevance of goal-based strategies, much less to argue for a particular incentive system before considering whether alternative ways to address collective-action problems are preferable. While there is no doubt that institutional diagnosis and medical diagnosis have common elements, the important observation here is that institutional diagnostics is first and foremost a procedure for engaging in systematic and sustained efforts to design governance systems that are effective in addressing the concerns articulated by those who have identified a need for governance and placed it on the policy agenda. Some find it tempting to think that institutional diagnosis can provide guidance to those responsible for negotiating actual language to be incorporated in the texts of agreements (ranging from informal codes of conduct to domestic legislation and on to international instruments) spelling out the provisions of governance systems. But it is important to understand that diagnostic processes have a limited capacity to contribute to the language of specific provisions, even though such processes may shape strategic choices underlying the negotiations. The choice between a rule-based system or a goal-based system, for example, will have fundamental implications for the negotiation of the provisions of an agreement (Kanie et al., 2017). In more specific terms, once a decision is made that there is a need to solve a collective-action problem, the character of the ensuing negotiations will depend on whether the parties choose to establish command-and-control regulations or to devise some system of incentive mechanisms. What this means is that diagnostic processes can play an important role in determining the underlying structure of the negotiations that produce the text of an agreement. But this leaves considerable room for negotiators to make important choices regarding both the superstructure of the agreement (e.g. the choice between permits and taxes as mechanisms for controlling emissions) and the language employed in describing the features of a governance system dealing with a specific need for governance (e.g. the specific language used in establishing a regional fisheries management organization). To avoid costly misunderstandings about the role of institutional diagnostics, it is also important to draw a clear distinction between institutional design and regime formation. The diagnostic process centers on an analysis of the likely results associated with architectural choices on the assumption that the members of the relevant group eventually select a specific option and take the steps necessary to implement it faithfully. In this sense, it is an analytic process rather than a political process. Regime formation, by contrast, is a political process in which actors who have distinct and often competing interests endeavor to exercise influence in the course of institutional bargaining in order to produce agreements that reflect their own preferences to the maximum degree possible (Young, 1994).
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
In the absence of a dominant actor, institutional bargaining will produce an agreement encompassing a mosaic of features that are difficult to map directly onto any coherent blueprint or institutional design. What is more, the influence of politics continues right into the stage of implementation and administration. As many observers have noted, the rules in use regarding any given governance system commonly differ e sometimes fundamentally e from the rules on paper or the rules as articulated in the terms of formal agreements. Given the character of these political processes, what can we say about the role of institutional design? There can be no expectation that actual regimes will follow the logic of carefully crafted blueprints in any straightforward way. Still, institutional design matters (Mitchell, 1994). As current discussions of the differences between rule-based systems and goal-based systems make clear, ideas do make their way into the discourse of politics, and political processes are sensitive to shifts in epistemic perspectives, even when the dissemination of ideas is slow and the results are imperfect (Haas and Stevens, 2017). It follows that it would be a mistake to limit our thinking about institutional diagnostics to the results arising in efforts to fulfill needs for governance in specific cases. 5. Conclusion This article suggests a way to enhance the usefulness of institutional diagnostics by developing a diagnostic practice that separates institutional design into a number of stages and proceeds to consider the merits of options in a stepwise process. It is important to understand that this does not mean the practice can be routinized, so that it becomes a skill that any intelligent practitioner can learn to use effectively and efficiently. As those who have thought about diagnostic practices in fields like health care have observed, there is both room for creativity in this realm and a clear and present danger of arriving at erroneous conclusions (Gawande, 2002). Those with a gift for diagnosis can and often do produce particularly insightful and useful results, especially in cases where the issues are complex and the options are numerous. This means that it is appropriate to approach the results of any institutional diagnosis critically. But it does not mean that these products are of no value. Good diagnoses not only help to clarify the basic issues at stake; they also draw our attention to important options that might otherwise have been overlooked or ignored. This means that diagnostic exercises can provide an opportunity for members of the Earth System Governance research community to engage in a mutually beneficial dialogue with practitioners responsible for creating and administering specific governance systems. Conflict of interest The author declares no conflict of interest. References Agrawal, Arun, 2002. Common resources and institutional sustainability. In: Ostrom, Elinor, et al. (Eds.), The Drama of the Commons. National Academies Press, Washington, DC, pp. 47e85. Baden, John A., Noonan, Douglas S., 1998. Managing the Commons. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Bazin, Herve, 2000. The Eradication of Smallpox. Elsevier, Dordrecht. Berkes, Fikret, Folke, Carl (Eds.), 1998. Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Biermann, Frank, 2014. Earth System Governance: World Politics in the Anthropocene. MIT Press, Cambridge. Biermann, Frank, et al., 2009. Earth System Science: People, Places, and the Planet. IHDP Report No. 20, Bonn: International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. Biermann, Frank, Pattberg, Philipp (Eds.), 2012. Global Environmental Governance
7
Reconsidered. MIT Press, Cambridge. Breitmeier, Helmut, Oran, R., Young, and Michael Zürn, 2006. Analyzing International Environmental Regimes: from Case Study to Database. MIT Press, Cambridge. Clark, Colin W., 2006. The Worldwide Crisis in Fisheries: Economic Models and Human Behavior. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Coase, Ronald, 1960. The problem of social cost. J. Law Econ. 3, 1e44. Cox, Michael, 2011. Advancing the diagnostic analysis of environmental problems. Int. J. Commons 5, 346e363. Cox, Michael, et al., 2010. A review of design principles for community-based natural resource, management. Ecol. Soc. 15 art. 4. Cox, Michael, et al., 2015. A diagnostic procedure for applying the social-ecological systems framework to diverse cases. Ecol. Soc. 20, 32. Cox, Michael, et al., 2016. Synthesizing theories of natural resource management and governance. Glob. Environ. Chang. 39, 45e56. Dryzek, John S., Pickering, Jonathan, 2019. The Politics of the Anthropocene. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Duit, Andreas, Victor, Galaz, 2008. Governance and complexity e emerging issues for governance theory. In: Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions, vol. 21, pp. 311e335. Earth System Governance Project, 2018. Earth System Governance: Science and Implementation Plan of the Earth System Governance Project. Earth System Governance Project, Utrecht. Fenner, F., et al., 1988. Smallpox and Eradication, Smallpox and its Eradication. Geneva: World Health Organization. Folke, Carl, et al., 1998. The Problem of Fit between Ecosystems and Institutions. IHDP Working Paper No. 2, Bonn, Germany: International Human Dimensions Programme. Galaz, Victor, et al., 2008. The problem of fit among biophysical systems, environmental and resource regimes, and broader governance systems: insights and emerging challenges. In: Young, O.R., King, L., Schroeder, H. (Eds.), Institutions and Environmental Change. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 147e186. Galaz, Victor, 2014. Global Environmental Governance, Technology and Politics: the Anthropocene Gap. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK. Gawande, Atul, 2002. Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. Metropolitan Books, New York. Haas, Peter, Keohane, Robert, Levy, Marc, 1993. Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Environmental Protection. MIT Press, Cambridge. Haas, Peter, Stevens, Casey, 2017. Ideas, beliefs, and policy linkages: lessons from food, water, and energy policies. In: Kanie, Norichika, Biermann, Frank (Eds.), Govwerning through Goals. MIT Press, Cambridge, 137-164 9n. Hardin, Garrett, 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162, 1243e1248. IHDP 1999/2005, reportInstitutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) Science Plan. Reports No. 9 and 16. Bonn: IHDP. Kanie, Norichika, et al., 2017. Introduction: global governance through goal setting. In: Kanie, Norichika, Biermann, Frank (Eds.), Governing through Goals. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 1e27. Kanie, Norichika, Biermann, Frank (Eds.), 2017. Governing through Goals: Sustainable Development Goals as Governance Innovation. MIT Press, Cambridge. Kingsford, Carl, Salzberg, Steven L., 2008. What are decision trees? Nat. Biotechnol. 28, 1011e1013. Krasner, Stephen D. (Ed.), 1983. International Regimes. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Lenton, Timothy, et al., 2008. Tipping elements in the earth's climate system. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105, 1786e1793. Ludwig, D., Hilborn, R., Walters, C., 1993. Uncertainty, resource exploitation and conservation: lessons from history. Science 260 (17), 36. Mahon, Robert, et al., 2015. Transboundary Waters Assessment Programme Assessment of Governance Arrangements for the Ocean: Areas beyond National Jurisdiction. UNESCO, Paris. Miles, Edward L., et al., 2002. Environmental Regime Effectiveness: Confronting Theory with Evidence. MIT Press, Cambridge. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, DC. Mitchell, Ronald B., 1994. Regime design matters: intentional oil pollution and treaty compliance. Int. Organ. 48, 425e458. Olson Jr., Mancur, 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Ostrom, Elinor, 1990. Governing the Commons: the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Ostrom, Elinor, 2007. A diagnostic approach to going beyond panaceas. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104, 15181e15187. Ostrom, Elinor, Cox, Michael, 2010. Moving beyond panaceas: a multi-tiered diagnostic approach for social- ecological analysis. Environ. Conserv. 37, 451e463. Ostrom, Elinor, et al. (Eds.), 2002. The Drama of the Commons. National Academies Press, Washington, DC. Pauly, Daniel, et al., 2002. Towards sustainability in world fisheries. Nature 418, 689e695. Rapoport, Anatol, Albert, M., Chammah, 1965. Prisoner's Dilemma. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Sachs, Jeffrey, 2015. The Age of Sustainable Development. Columbia University Press, New York. Schelling, Thomas C., 1978. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. Yale University Press, New Haven. Singer, Peter, 2009. Animal Liberation: the Definitive Classic of the Animal
8
O.R. Young / Earth System Governance 1 (2019) 100002
Movement. Harper, New York. Steffen, Will, et al., 2004. Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet under Pressure. Springer, Heidelberg. Webster, D.G., 2015. Beyond the Tragedy in Global Fisheries. MIT Press, Cambridge. Wilson, James, 2006. Matching social and ecological systems in complex ocean fisheries. Ecol. Soc. 11, 9. Worm, Boris, et al., 2009. Rebuilding global fisheries. Science 325, 578e585. Young, Oran R., 1982. Fishing by permit: restricted common property in practice. Ocean Dev. Int. Law 13, 121e170. Young, Oran R., 1994. International Governance: Protecting the Environment in a Stateless Society. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Young, Oran R., 1999. Governance in World Affairs. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Young, Oran R., 2002. The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interlay, and Scale. MIT Press, Cambridge. Young, Oran R., 2008. Building regimes for socioecologcal systems: institutional
diagnostics. In: Young, O.R., King, L., Schroeder, H. (Eds.), Institutions and Environmental Change. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 115e144. Young, Oran R., 2017. Governing Complex Systems: Social Capital for the Anthropocene. MIT Press, Cambridge. Young, Oran R., et al., 2015. Institutionalized governance processes: comparing environmental problem solving in China and the United States. Glob. Environ. Chang. 31, 163e173. Young, Oran R., Webster, D.G., et al., 2018. Moving beyond panaceas in fisheries governance. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 115, 9065e9073. Young, Oran R., King, Leslie A., Schroeder, Heike (Eds.), 2008. Institutions and Environmental Change: Principal Findings, Applications, and Research Frontiers. MIT Press, Cambridge. Zaelke, Durwood, et al. (Eds.), 2005. Making Law Work: Environmental Compliance and Sustainable Development, Vol. 2. Cameron May, London.