Polycentric governance systems can promote conflict as overlapping units contest their authorities, roles, and interests, but also provide venues that mitigate conflict. Conflict can lead to learning and institutional adaptation that enhance the functioning of polycentric systems, but conflict can also become entrenched and impede adaptation. Understanding the nature of conflictual interactions in polycentric systems and how those systems provide conflict resolution is critical to understanding performance. This chapter examines conflict and conflict resolution in two polycentric systems that govern hydraulic fracturing and shale development across two US states: Colorado and New York. It examines the extent that conflicts have been resolved and whether learning or adaptation of the governance systems occurred. The chapter considers how the authority, information, and resources of the actors explain incentives for conflict and conflict resolution within the polycentric systems. We observe differences in the conflict interaction patterns, as well as in the performance of polycentric governance in these two settings.

How can communities, associations, governments, and other organizations work better together? This chapter looks at putting polycentricity into practice for improving governance, focusing on collective action among autonomous decision centres in contexts of cooperation, competition, conflict resolution, and social learning. Practising polycentric governance may involve assessing and appreciating the ways in which a situation is already polycentric and might be improved; applying principles and mechanisms to craft specific institutional arrangements for polycentric governance; and facilitating the emergence of polycentric governance, including co-creation of more inclusive networks, common knowledge, and 'power with'.

Governing complexity tends to produce complex governance. This book has aimed to provide a conceptual and empirical analysis of polycentric governance that can help carry detailed research on the determinants, change and performance of polycentric arrangements into a future research program as well as new fields of application. The chapter reviews the main points of the preceding chapters.

This chapter addresses the challenges of establishing and sustaining governance arrangements conducive to environmental citizenship. The significance of this concern is illustrated by Australian experiences with governance arrangements seeking to promote citizenship among rural landholders in natural resources conservation. The chapter draws from Vincent Ostrom's thinking about polycentric governance, who drew from de Tocqueville. Ostrom identified ‘the way people think and relate to one another’ (corresponding with the meta-constitutional level of analysis in the Institutional Analysis and Development framework) as vital for governance that is capable of promoting citizenship, and the citizenship required to sustain polycentric governance. Progress in empirical investigation of relationships between polycentric governance and environmental citizenship is reviewed. One relationship of this kind is illustrated by policy reform in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin.

This chapter compares insights from our empirical cases of three kinds of interactions: cooperation, conflict and conflict resolution, and competition. The elements of authority, information, and resources affected incentives and interactions differently. Focusing on interactions as a unit of analysis points to a variety of performance criteria that may be appropriate. These criteria for assessing outcomes and processes cannot all be optimized at once, as trade-offs are evident, and different types of interaction are likely to entail different performance combinations. In our case studies, no performance criterion scored high across all cases, and no case performed well across all performance criteria.

Constitution-making involves a 'Faustian bargain' in which individuals and smaller communities give up some of their autonomy for the sake of the benefits brought by larger-scale societies. Transitioning from small-scale quasi-egalitarian societies towards a complex, but more hierarchical, political system makes possible collective action and the provision of public goods at much larger scales, including defence, establishing larger common markets, and basic infrastructure. After introducing the concept of the 'Faustian' bargain, the chapter explains how constitutive rules create such bargains. We turn to the role of monitoring, conflict resolution, and sanctioning as means of building commitments to constitutions, providing for stability and flexibility. The chapter illustrates these relationships using two cases of constitution-making: the multi-level governance of New York City watersheds, and post-conflict situations in which leaders of different ethnic groups come to agreement.

The delivery of public goods often spurs competition between different authorities. Competition for scarce natural resources also triggers the creation of multiple decision-making centres as different actors seek venues where they can exert authority. Competition takes multiple forms and is linked with cooperation and conflict resolution to shape the rules governing resource users' interactions. We compare the evolution and performance of market-based water reallocation, and associated institutional reforms, in two polycentric water governance arrangements: the Ebro Basin of NE Spain and the US portion of the Columbia Basin. The chapter examines how authority structures, information and capacity influence competitive interactions within and across constitutional, collective choice, and operational levels of action. Polycentric governance arrangements vary in their distribution and coordination of authority, which shapes competition and performance. The comparison reveals trade-offs between efficiency and other performance criteria; efforts to facilitate efficient water reallocation may limit accountability and representation, and vice-versa.

Cooperation is an important way that decision centres interact in a polycentric governance system. Cooperation in governance has been studied by numerous scholars in the field of 'collaboration', although such scholarship seldom explicitly sets it within the framework of polycentricity. Cooperation involves multiple decision centres working across boundaries to pursue shared goals, and it is especially prevalent for addressing complex socio-ecological systems. This chapter examines cooperation in the Puget Sound basin, USA, for ecosystem restoration. This chapter describes how authority, information, and resources affected cooperation in formation of the Puget Sound Partnership and related Local Integrating Organizations, development of ecosystem recovery plans, and implementation of ecosystem recovery projects. It assesses polycentric governance performance in terms of outcomes and processes. The Puget Sound ecosystem restoration efforts exhibit relatively high levels of coherence, representation, and adaptability; relatively low levels of efficiency and accountability; and mixed results on efficacy and network building.