Polycentricity of urban watershed governance: Towards a methodological approach
本文构建了一个多中心性指数，用于衡量社会-生态系统治理中行动者关系的秩序程度，并以美国中格兰德河流域为例，发现其治理以单中心为主但含有多中心元素。
This paper makes an initial contribution towards building a polycentricity index to account for the governing of social–ecological systems. It develops three indices and an overall index, using an approach based on network science, to measure the extent to which actors develop ordered relationships to address scale mismatches in urban water governance. These indices are discussed with respect to the overarching system of rules governing actors’ decisions within the Middle Rio Grande (MRG) urban watershed. The analysis and discussions herein suggest that the governance of the MRG is a predominantly monocentric governing system with elements of polycentricity. They also suggest that polycentricity in governing the MRG urban water commons could primarily be about the politics of power and resource distribution as actors reconfigure their positionalities and align themselves and their interests strategically. The paper concludes with a succinct discussion about how quantitative measures of an overarching system of rules could be incorporated into future indices.