Browsing by Author "Bruns, Bryan"

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Aiding Adaptive Co-management in Irrigation
(2008) Bruns, Bryan
"Shared governance of water flows and infrastructure poses a critical challenge for institutional design by water users and state agencies. Programs for participatory irrigation management (PIM) and irrigation management transfer (IMT) are often insufficient to achieve equitable water distribution and adequate infrastructure maintenance. If future responses to local and global challenges such as water scarcity and agricultural transformation only repeat past approaches, then they are likely to result in familiar frustrations and disappointments. Insights into potential solutions can be derived from understanding irrigation waterscapes as complex adaptive systems and from analysis of Samaritan's dilemmas and other social dilemmas affecting aid. "While participatory design and construction have often proved possible and devolution has been feasible under some conditions, continuing cooperation between water users and state agencies is essential to the performance of many irrigation systems. Many systems remain trapped in vicious cycles of deferred maintenance, degradation, poor performance, and inefficient rehabilitation. Perverse incentives discourage timely maintenance and local resource mobilization. Experiences from PIM and IMT programs illustrate some of the difficulties of deliberate social engineering, and suggest the need to focus on improving institutions for joint problem-solving in water distribution and infrastructure maintenance. "Irrigation waterscapes are complex systems, perturbed by variable river flows, rainfall, and gate adjustments. As emphasized in recent work on irrigation modernization, current design doctrines and management methods are often inadequate to deal with unpredictable dynamics and deliver reliable services. Tail-end problems are not simply symptoms of social struggles, but also of the difficulty of adjusting management of complex systems amidst constantly changing conditions. Strategies for improving performance require recognition of technical constraints together with open exploration of how modified structures and rules influence management. "Game theory models such as Samaritan's dilemmas clarify the need to carefully design aid programs so they will encourage rather than discourage local efforts. A polycentric governance perspective helps identify ways to make better use of available institutional capacity. Better analysis and design of cost-sharing rules for irrigation system repair and improvement can align incentives and make commitments more credible. Shifting external investments from single-shot rehabilitation to progressive improvement aids adaptive problem-solving in irrigation co-management."
Atlas of 2x2 Games: Transforming Conflict and Cooperation
(2015) Bruns, Bryan
"In social dilemmas and other strategic situations, the outcome of each person's choice depends on what the other decides. Payoff structures may lead to win-win results, or to tragic failure when individual incentives clash with cooperation that could benefit both. Prisoner's Dilemma, Chicken, Stag Hunt, and other two-person two-move (2x2) games form the foundation for analysis of cooperation and conflict in game theory and its application in economics, political science, ecology, evolutionary biology, and other fields. Changes in payoffs can turn one game into another, for example swaps in the highest payoffs turn Prisoner's Dilemma into a Stag Hunt. Robinson and Goforth showed how a topology of payoff swaps elegantly arranges 2x2 games into a periodic table, organized in a natural order according to swap neighbors, alignment of best outcomes, symmetry, number of dominant strategies and equilibria, and other properties. This atlas further visualizes the the topology of 2x2 games, displaying relationships between games and pathways for transforming strategic situations. The diagrams in this atlas: show how payoff swaps transform games and so open opportunities to achieve different outcomes, mapping the adjacent possible for institutional design; display the diversity of 2x2 games, the variety of strategic situations where the outcome of each person's action depends on what the other decides, the range of possible incentive structures where two people have two interdependent choices; illustrate how interests may be aligned, opposed, or mixed, combinations of incentives and externalities when payoff patterns induce help or harm, kindness or cruelty; present enhanced visualizations of the periodic table of 2x2 games, including payoff families, game graphs and payoff values, simpler games with ties, and the structure of bands, hotspots, and pipes; reveal robustness or sensitivity in how changes in payoffs shift equilibrium outcomes; indicate likely frequencies of different kinds of games, if payoffs occur randomly; and specify names for games, a binomial nomenclature that forms part of a convenient framework for identifying and naming the complete set of all 2x2 ordinal games. The periodic table of 2x2 games is organized around the symmetric 2x2 games on a diagonal axis, showing the twelve strict ordinal games where each person has four distinctly ranked payoffs. Payoff patterns from symmetric games combine to form asymmetric games, and so provide a convenient basis for naming games. Neighboring games are linked by swaps in adjoining payoffs. The games with ties lie between the strict symmetric games, linked by half-swaps that make or break ties, as illustrated by additional diagrams. Normalized versions of games with real or ratio value payoffs also map onto the periodic table of 2x2 games. As a tool for researchers, students, and anyone interested in game theory and understanding behavior in social situations, this atlas offers a visual introduction to the diversity of 2x2 games, illustrating the relationships among elementary models of strategic interaction, and mapping pathways for transforming conflict into cooperation."
Changing Commons: Diversity, Dynamics, and Design in the Elementary Landscape of 2x2 Games
(2013) Bruns, Bryan
"Game theory concepts of cooperation and conflict in strategic interactions underlie much thinking about how people act in commons, often modeled in terms of a few fundamental social dilemmas. Payoff patterns from Prisoners Dilemma, Chicken, and the rest of the symmetric 2x2 games combine to form an array of asymmetric games, revealing the diversity of possible incentive structures in even the simplest social situations. Changes in payoffs can switch the ranking of outcomes, transforming one game into another, pathways through which the potential for cooperation and conflict in commons may change. The Robinson-Goforth topology of 2x2 games shows how games are linked by swaps in adjoining payoffs, mapping the diversity of social situations and visualizing how they might be transformed, moving dynamically within a design space. In this elementary landscape of cooperation and conflict, simpler games with ties lie between the strict ordinal games with four differently ranked payoffs, as do normalized versions of all 2x2 games with ratio or real value payoffs. This diversity of models enriches the tools for understanding institutional diversity and dynamics in collective action, including situations such as Jekyll-Hyde Type games, the High Dilemma game between Prisoners Dilemma and Stag Hunt, and the archetypal Avatamsaka game of interdependence. Deliberate crafting of rules to regulate boundaries, resource use, cost-sharing, monitoring, and sanctions, can shift expected payoffs, changing the incentive structures faced by commoners managing shared resources, such as farmers governing the mobile flows and physical infrastructure of irrigation systems. The diversity of 2x2 games and their elegant array of relationships offer insights into how incentive structures in commons may change and may be changed."
Co-creating Water Commons: Civics, Environmentality, and 'Power With'
(2015) Bruns, Bryan
"In Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, and other parts of India, the Foundation for Ecological Security is working with communities to develop better institutions for managing surface and groundwater. Sketch mapping, participatory hydrological monitoring, experimental games, crop-water budgeting, watershed conservation, and other activities develop shared knowledge of water resources, as citizens consider and carry out improvements. Habitations, containing dozens to hundreds of households, organize to work together, based on universal membership, within nested contexts of larger landscapes and social networks. From a practitioner's perspective, this paper explores ways of facilitating the co-creation of citizenship in water commons."
Common Pools and Common Knowledge: Coordination, Assurance, and Shared Strategies in Community Groundwater Governance
(2014) Bruns, Bryan
"Innovative approaches to creating shared knowledge about groundwater and irrigated agriculture can contribute to more productive and sustainable resource management. This study looks at the role of knowledge commons in institutional design for a recently-begun project on water commons, drawing on analysis of experience from previous projects in Andhra Pradesh and other parts of India. Groundwater governance can be made more feasible by shifting the focus from controlling withdrawals from wells to informing choices about which crops to grow. Participatory hydrological monitoring of rainfall and well water levels and discussion of community crop-water budgeting estimates, based on pooled information about farmers’ plans, can play a key role, not just in improving information but in changing understanding of the resource, values, and options for its management, changes in 'environmentality.' Satellite remote sensing of rainfall and evapotranspiration can be combined with local knowledge to support decisions for local water management. The role of formal monitoring may be important initially, but sustainability may depend on changing local knowledge and informal practice, without necessarily requiring perpetuation of formal measurement. Coordination and assurance game models show how successful collective action can occur based only on shared strategies coming from the creation of knowledge, without necessarily requiring norms that prescribe what should be done, or rules with enforced sanctions. This study illustrates how an innovative information-based strategy for creating local common knowledge could lead to successful collective action, where top-down regulation has failed, while also showing lessons about how local regulation might further enhance equity and sustainability. It shows the potential for improving the production of knowledge as a local public good, and situations in which shared strategies based on common knowledge could be sufficient to improve management of a water commons."
Community-Based Principles for Negotiating Water Rights: Some Conjectures on Assumptions and Priorities
(2005) Bruns, Bryan
"Increasing policy support for community-based natural resources management and institutional redesign has been followed by questioning of the feasibility, risks, and results of such approaches. The application of participatory approaches for improving basin-scale water governance would benefit from reconsideration in light of critical analysis of community-based natural resources management and institutional design principles for common-property resource management. Problems of pervasive politics and contextual contingency indicate the need for revising assumptions and expectations. A community perspective on the application of institutional design principles suggests distinct priorities from current policies for improving basin water allocation. Measures to support community involvement in basin water governance, such as legislation reform, legal empowerment, networking, advocacy, participatory planning, technical advice, and facilitation, may be more effective if fitted to community priorities in negotiating rights to water."
Design Patterns for Customizing Irrigation Governance
(2011) Bruns, Bryan
"How can experience with good solutions for institutional design be shared in ways that help customize governance for diverse situations? In their pattern language for architecture and regional planning, Christopher Alexander and colleagues identified patterns, primarily based on successful vernacular architectures, which could be selectively combined and customized to fit particular situations. Similarly, institutional design patterns could be helpful in creating and adapting governance for commons. A semantic mediawiki could offer a useful platform for sharing design patterns, and collaborating to identify and develop design patterns, as part of the semantic web. Elinor Ostrom’s design principles for commons, and principles for irrigation governance identified by Trawick illustrate design patterns useful for customizing irrigation governance."
Diagnosing Social Dilemmas
(2019) Bruns, Bryan
"Prisoner's Dilemma is only one of several possible social dilemmas where individual incentives can lead away from cooperation that would make everyone better off. Two-person two-move (2x2) games provide elementary models of the social dilemmas that have played a central role in thinking about problems of collective action. Diagnosing which kind of social dilemma may be present is important since different incentive structures pose different challenges for collective action and may require different solutions. This paper uses the Robinson-Goforth topology of payoff swaps in 2x2 games to analyze the diversity of social dilemmas; identify key questions that can distinguish between different problems of collective action even in the presence of limited information about outcomes; and discuss implications for diagnosis and potential solutions. A diagnostic flow chart provides key questions for distinguishing between social dilemmas."
Exchange Visits as a Learning and Networking Tool: Part 1. Practical Notes. Part 2. Principles and Paradigms
(2002) Bruns, Bryan
"Exchange visits can be a useful tool, but deserve careful preparation in order to make them effective and avoid wasting the time of visitors and hosts. Part One of this paper explores practical issues in planning and conducting exchange visits, while Part Two looks at the values, principles and paradigms of peer-to-peer learning and sharing that can be enhanced through exchange visits. "The first section of Part One runs through basic questions of whether an exchange visit is the best choice, and identifying who should go where, when, and what they should do. The next section points out ways to make visits more effective through good preparation, well-planned hosting, translation, facilitation and evaluation. The following section discusses some nuts-and-bolts considerations of funding, food, using time in vehicles effectively, travel documents, accommodation and sources of further information about exchange visits. Boxes in Part 1 highlight issues of rural development tourism, pilot project mirages, diversity in learning styles, planning for results, an example of exchange visits for micro-enterprise development and a summary checklist for preparing exchange visits. "Part Two begins by discussing how exchange visits can enable peer-to-peer interaction, as one means of promoting participatory processes that empower people to improve their own lives. Visits can foster mutual learning, not only of explicit verbalized ideas, but also tacit knowledge embedded in practice. Visits can help forge and strengthen networks linking people with shared concerns and ideas. Planning for exchange visits needs to recognize limitations, constraints and the conditions needed to foster genuine exchange. Preparation for successful visits requires attention not only to practical logistics but also to the principles and paradigms underlying participatory development, in order to use exchange visits effectively as tools for learning and networking."
Facilitating Self-governance: Possibilism and Pluralism in Citizen Co-creation
(2015) Bruns, Bryan
"This paper explores opportunities to facilitate the development of self-governance within feasible pathways for institutional change. Self-governance happens when people have the power to make decisions, on their own or in partnership with other organizations. Possibilism emphasizes the need to search for and create feasible reforms, exploring the 'adjacent possible' space of what may be achieved. Co-creating institutions involves trying to communicate about and accommodate diverse values. Frequently used methods for supporting self-governance include community organizing by facilitators; rapid appraisal techniques; workshop processes; cost-sharing and other subsidies; information; and enabling legal authority and dispute resolution mechanisms. Supporting self-governance requires going beyond critique to explore practical pathways, engaging with the diversity of values and value systems as citizens of co-evolving communities co-create their worlds."
From Practice to Policy: Agency and NGO in Indonesia's Programme to Turn Over Small Irrigation Systems to Farmers
(1992) Bruns, Bryan; Soelaiman, Irchamni
"The Indonesian programme to turn over small irrigation systems to water user associations (WUAs) shows how an NGO can go beyond being an intermediary between government and farmers, and instead help a government agency change its standard operating procedures in order to recognise and enhance the role farmers can play in irrigation management. An Indonesian NGO was involved in formulating and implementing turnover activities. The Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education and Information (LP3ES) was founded in 1971 by a group of activist Indonesian intellectuals. Their concerns were widespread poverty, lack of attention to basic rights and the dearth of institutions active in social and economic development. The birth of LP3ES coincided with the government's first five-year plan, which relied on a centralised, technocratic and top-down approach to development."
From Tragedy to Win-Win Transforming Social Dilemmas in Commons
(2014) Bruns, Bryan
"Prisoner’s Dilemma, Chicken, and Stag Hunt games provide elementary two-person models of social dilemma situations that can be at the heart of a tragedy of the commons, where individual incentives discourage cooperation that could be better for everyone. Looking at the outcomes of mutual cooperation or mutual defection helps distinguish between different social dilemmas, which pose different challenges for crafting governance solutions. Changes that switch the ranking of different outcomes can transform Prisoner’s Dilemma into a Stag Hunt and then into a fully-aligned game of Concord/No Conflict; similarly, Chicken can be turned into Concord. The Robinson-Goforth topology of payoff swaps in 2x2 games maps potential transformations in social dilemmas and other 2x2 games, offering insights into pathways and mechanisms for turning tragedy into cooperation. The potential transformations in social dilemmas help understand opportunities for “changing the game,” crafting governance to improve collective action in commons and turning social dilemmas into win-win cooperation."
How to Turn Over Irrigation Systems to Farmers? Questions and Decisions in Indonesia
(1995) Bruns, Bryan; Atmanto, Sudar Dwi
"The Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education and Information (LP3ES) helped the Indonesian Department of Public Works (DPW) to develop and institutionalise methods for turning small irrigation systems over to water user associations. A series of earlier pilot studies had explored ways to improve local participation in design, construction and management of irrigation systems. For turnover, LP3ES trained irrigation staff who worked directly with farmers, trained trainers, provided consultants to assist provincial irrigation service officials in institutionalising new procedures and took part in national working groups which drafted regulations and manuals. Conditions for collaboration in institutional innovation included a willingness to compromise, funding linkages between the agency and NGO, building mutual trust and educated opportunism."
Metaphors and Methods for Institutional Synthesis
(2009) Bruns, Bryan
"In the design space between blueprint panaceas and spontaneous order, what scope is there for deliberate institutional artisanship to apply ideas from institutional analysis and design (IAD) and related social science? "This paper briefly surveys approaches to improving institutional design, focusing on applications for irrigated waterscapes and other contexts of institutional diversity. Concepts such as building, balancing, aligning, crafting, fitting, adapting, improvising, and navigating institutions identify assumptions and opportunities for influencing changes in collective action. Analysis suggests what may be necessary, favorable, vulnerable, feasible, or ideal, but better strategies are needed to foster the synthesis of diverse institutions that are not just workable, but good. The range of approaches available may include not only offering examples, enforcement, funding, technical diagnosis, and facilitation processes, but also expanding options, switching starting points, challenging assumptions, asking about design principles, and appreciative inquiry. Examples from irrigation in northeast Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia illustrate challenges and opportunities for improving institutional artisanship."
Nanotechnology and the Commons: Implications of Open Source Abundance in Millennial Quasi-Commons
(2000) Bruns, Bryan
"Considering the implications of nanotechnology helps explore the prospects for common property institutions. Open source approaches to developing computer software create new commons in shared intellectual property. Applying open source principles to the development of nanotechnology and biotechnology might accelerate the growth of freely available knowledge. Increasing resource reuse and abundance may shift the balance between private benefits and broader interests in ways that favor the creation of commons. Users of shared spaces that are formally public or private property already assert increasing roles in governance, constituting quasi-commons. Longer lifetimes may encourage the crafting of new commons on a millennial time scale. Nanotechnology opens interesting opportunities for constituting new commons."
Negotiating Access and Rights: A Case Study of Disputes over Rights to an Irrigation Water Source in Nepal
(Draft, 1997) Pradhan, Rajendra; Pradhan, Ujjwal; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth; Bruns, Bryan
"Nepal has a long history of irrigation but until the middle of this century direct involvement of the Nepalese state in irrigation management and development was limited except when it benefitted the ruling elite. Although the state did construct or finance the construction or repairs of irrigation systems and managed or supervised the management of some systems, its main contribution to irrigation development was by means of laws and regulations which encouraged and sometimes forced local elites and ordinary farmers, usually tenants, to construct and operate irrigation systems. Legal tradition and weak administration made it possible and necessary for the irrigators to construct and manage their irrigation systems with little interference from state agencies."
Negotiating Water Rights in Contexts of Legal Pluralism: Priorities for Research and Action
(1998) Bruns, Bryan; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth
"Strengthening negotiated approaches to water allocation is a priority for research and action. Institutional reforms should be grounded in an understanding of the complexity of how water allocation is practiced at the local level in contexts of legal pluralism. Water resource projects need to be capable of explicitly renegotiating rights among old and new users. Formalizing water tenure should be studied and developed as only one of several relevant approaches for improving water allocation institutions. More effective institutions are needed for enabling stakeholders to participate in basin water governance. Farmers and rural communities require defensible access to water as a crucial asset for their livelihoods. Alternatives to water expropriation need to be developed which can equitably and efficiently respond to the challenges of intersectoral reallocation. Action research should help develop appropriate institutional innovations for negotiating water rights in these contexts."
Practicing Polycentric Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2019) Bruns, Bryan; Thiel, Andreas; Blomquist, William A.; Garrick, Dustin E.
"How can communities, associations, governments, and other organizations work better together? Principles for practicing polycentric governance include organizing at multiple scales, embracing self-governance, customizing solutions, and learning together. Communities working together to govern surface and groundwater commons in Rajasthan, India offer an example of challenges and opportunities for developing polycentric governance, as do various strategies to improve basin governance. Putting polycentric governance into practice can start with assessing how stakeholders are already interconnected and appreciative exploration of how they might improve their interactions. Institutional artisans can apply principles and mechanisms to craft overarching rules and other specific arrangements for polycentric governance. Polycentric governance can be facilitated by convening discussions among stakeholders, sharing knowledge, and empowering self-organized mutual adjustment."
Putting Polycentric Governance into Practice
(2017) Bruns, Bryan
[A later version of this paper is available on the DLC at http://hdl.handle.net/10535/10693] "How can organizations cooperate? This chapter looks at practical implications of polycentricity for improving governance, focusing on opportunities for organizing collective action among multiple autonomous organizations. Putting polycentricity into practice may involve assessing the extent to which a situation is already polycentric, analyzing institutional options and feasible pathways for change, and crafting institutional arrangements for polycentric governance. Key activities include convening stakeholders, sharing information and experience, and creating or improving institutions that facilitate cooperation and help resolve conflicts, as well as developing enabling legal frameworks that facilitate self-organization and autonomous cooperation."
Reconstituting Water Rights: Pathways for Polycentric Praxis [slides]
(2006) Bruns, Bryan
"Presentation overview: - Problems in water governance - Making rights - Constitutional questions - Reconstituting water rights - Options for polycentric praxis - For additional detail, see paper"
Reconstituting Water Rights: Pathways for Polycentric Praxis
(2006) Bruns, Bryan
"Contemporary conflicts about water markets, vulnerability of rural rights to water, river basin organizations, privatization of water utilities, and water as a human right concern not only specific revisions to water policies, laws, and regulations, but disputes about how rules will be made. They raise questions about who takes part, the scope of rulemaking, concepts for framing discourse, decision procedures, and the authority of multiple institutions engaged in revising and enforcing rules regulating water resources. The difficulty of resolving such 'constitutional-level' issues explains some of the polarization, misunderstanding, and frustration apparent in efforts to reform water governance. Increased application of polycentric principles could open more pathways for solving collective action problems and expand options for the survival, creation, and transformation of common property in water."
Sharing Power - Insights from Archetypal Games
(2024) Bruns, Bryan
"Vincent and Elinor Ostrom both wrestled with the problems posed by institutions that give rulers power over others, the authority to coerce, and the dangers of the 'Faustian bargain' underlying asymmetric power in governance. This paper applies simple game theory models of archetypal (social/strategic/action) situations of interdependence to examine diversity in power and in the institutions that may empower and constrain rulers and other social actors, including reciprocal power over, coordinated power with, capabilities for freedom, benevolent authority, unilateral taking, zero-sum contestation, and threats of resistance. The diversity of power in archetypal games offers insights for crafting and caring for institutions that share power. Highlights • Making ties simplifies payoff matrices to derive archetypal games. Archetypal games show diversity in models of how power may be distributed, including joint power-with in coordination; independent power-to; reciprocal (exchange) power-over; unilateral power-over to help, benefit, or deprive; and contested-power in cyclic conflict. • Archetypal game models offer examples for thinking about the options and limitations for sharing power, including enhancing co-creation in power-with, strengthening capabilities for autonomous power-to, and restraining power-over, such as through norms, morality, care, wisdom, and distributed checks-and-balances. • Breaking ties in archetypal games generates lineages of games with more complexity and more collective action problems for achieving equity, efficiency, and stability. Coordination of power-with confronts rivalry and distrust, mutual power-over becomes vulnerable to temptation and distrust, and the disadvantages of asymmetric power-to may lead to negotiation and transformation."
Social Engineering or Participatory Problem-solving? A Practitioner’s Perspective on Opportunities for Irrigation Co-management
(2008) Bruns, Bryan
"Bureaucratic programs for involving water users in irrigation governance are challenged by inherent conflicts, contradictions, and asymmetries of power and knowledge. Government aspirations for acquiescence or devolution falter in the face of complexity, contestation, and interdependence. Idealized narratives of orderly irrigation clash with the messy bricolage of practice. Nevertheless, participatory programs may open meaningful opportunities for negotiation, cooperation, and polycentric governance. Drawing on examples from Aceh, Java, Bali, and broader international experience, this paper examines tensions, lessons, and opportunities for adaptive co-management in irrigation."
Transforming Climate Dilemmas from Tragedy to Cooperation
(Cambridge University Press, 2021) Bruns, Bryan; Foster, Sheila; Swiney, Chrystie
"Climate change has often been analyzed as a tragedy of the commons, a social dilemma where cooperation could make everyone better off but incentives induce individuals, businesses, and nations to keep on emitting greenhouse gasses. However, the simple game theory model of tragedy of the commons, Prisoner’s Dilemma, is just one of many possible models for climate conflict and cooperation. The topology of payoff swaps in 2x2 games shows relationships between games, including their potential transformations. Changes in the ranking of outcomes can transform Prisoner’s Dilemma into a Stag Hunt with the potential for win-win cooperation or Chicken with a shared fear of catastrophe, and then create convergent incentives that yield the best for both in Concord. Models of climate negotiations about whether to abate or pollute can be compactly displayed in a table based on how payoffs from symmetric games combine to form asymmetric games. Maps for transforming climate dilemmas reveal symmetric and asymmetric pathways to climate cooperation through fear of catastrophe, or assuring cooperation that is best for both, or adjusting incentives even if a polluter always want to avoid abating while the other pollutes. Maps for transforming climate games show the diversity of climate dilemmas and potential pathways to cooperation."
Transmuting Samaritan's Dilemmas in Irrigation Aid: An Application of the Topology of 2x2 Ordinal Games
(2010) Bruns, Bryan
"Aid risks discouraging or 'crowding out' local effort in commons such as irrigation systems, posing problems for international development programs, including attempts to promote participatory irrigation management (PIM) and irrigation management transfer (IMT). James Buchanan used game theory models to analyze structures of payoffs and preferences that create what he named Samaritan’s Dilemmas. The topology of 2x2 ordinal games developed by Robinson and Goforth offers a useful tool for examining the relationship between Samaritan’s Dilemmas and other problems of collective action, and the potential for institutional solutions through changing payoffs. In the case of irrigation aid, switches in payoffs that realign incentives to favor joint investments, and thereby transmute Samaritan's Dilemma into a Win-win Commons game, show the potential for counter-intuitive solutions through increased attention to co-management and joint investment in commons."
Transmuting Social Dilemmas into Win-win Games: Payoff Families in the Topology of 2x2 Ordinal Games
(2010) Bruns, Bryan
"The Robinson-Goforth topology of 2x2 ordinal games offers a useful tool for understanding the potential to transform social dilemmas into win-win games. The topology maps how 2x2 ordinal games are linked by swaps in adjoining payoff ranks, including intensively-studied symmetric games, such as Prisoner’s Dilemma, Chicken, Battles of the Sexes, and Stag Hunts, and the less-studied but much more numerous asymmetric games. Transmutations between ordinal games could result from new information, unilateral action, or deliberate redesign of governance institutions. The topology can be used in analyzing the robustness or instability of game outcomes, and the relative ease or difficulty of realigning incentives to improve outcomes. To help apply the topology for institutional analysis and design, this paper identifies additional families of games, based on Nash Equilibrium payoffs, including Second Best, Biased, and Unfair games, and subfamilies of Tragic, Samaritan, Self-serving, and Harmonious games. Visualization methods are used to display payoff families in a modified version of the periodic table of the strict ordinal 2x2 games."
Water Commons and Information Commons: Combining Local Knowledge and Remote Sensing to Support Community Groundwater Governance
(2014) Bruns, Bryan
"Participatory hydrological monitoring has played a crucial role in the development of local groundwater governance in Andhra Pradesh, India and elsewhere. However, this is labor intensive and may be unsustainable, while remote sensing can potentially provide better information, at lower cost. From a practitioner's perspective, this paper explores issues involved in designing a new program to promote the development of water commons, working with a non- government organization with substantial experience and strengths in supporting community-led natural resource management, and in geographic information systems. Focusing on combining local knowledge and remote sensing information to support community water management, the paper examines lessons from previous watershed conservation activities, issues involved in understanding water flows and stocks, and the challenges of helping communities develop common property institutions."
Water Rights in the State of Nature: The Dynamic Emergence of Common Expectations in an Indonesian Settlement
(Vistaar and Intermediate Technology Publications, 1997) Vermillion, Douglas L.; Bruns, Bryan; Meinzen-Dick, Ruth
"This study examines how a socially recognized and predictable pattern of water rights and allocation emerged from a process of trial and error with water allocation and negotiations in a resettlement area in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Balinese farmers in two newly developed irrigation systems recognized that the traditional rule of water allocation that divides water proportionately to area served was a simplistic first approximation. "Through inter-personal exchanges a set of socially-recognized criteria emerged to justify certain farmers in taking more than proportional amounts of water, 'borrowing water,' in response to diversity among fields in soils, access to secondary water supplies, distance from the headworks and other factors. A decision tree model uses field observations of water distribution over two seasons to assess criteria used for modifying distribution. Such criteria constituted a second approximation for more equitable water allocation among farmers."
Water Tenure Reform: Developing an Extended Ladder of Participation
(2003) Bruns, Bryan
"Analysis of participation raises issues not only about how much citizens are engaged in government decisions, but also how much government is engaged in decisions made by citizens and their organizations. Many current policies seek to increase participation in water resources governance, but face questions about the extent to which institutional reforms, such as participatory irrigation management, irrigation management transfer, and integrated water resources management, actually shift power and influence in decisionmaking. Building on Arnstein's "ladder of citizen participation" and subsequent literature on ladders, spectrums and other typologies of participatory governance and co-management, this paper synthesizes an extended scale of participation covering engagement in government decisions, joint decisions, and empowerment to support self-governance and decentralized decisionmaking."
Water Tenure Reform: Developing an Extended Ladder of Participation [slides]
(2003) Bruns, Bryan
"Overview: - Ladders, spectrum and other typologies of participation - An extended ladder of participation - Applications to irrigation management and basin governance -- Participation scales should extend beyond public engagement in government decisions to include a range of options for empowering autonomous decisions by citizens and their organizations."
Water User Associations and Collective Action in Irrigation and Drainage
(2023) Bruns, Bryan
"This article discusses what water user associations can do, factors that affect various forms of local collective action in irrigation and drainage, and how water user associations (WUAs) might help respond to local and global challenges and opportunities. Major themes include co-management of irrigation by communities and states, the diversity of water governance institutions, and the resilience of local cooperation in managing water to grow food. The article begins by looking at the long history of cooperation in irrigation, presents institutional design patterns in long-enduring local irrigation communities, points to the prevalence of co-production and co-management by states and communities, examines lessons from efforts to develop WUAs in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, and highlights current challenges and opportunities for WUAs. The end of the article provides references and recommended readings."
Working with Institutional Artisans-presentation (no pix)
(2010) Bruns, Bryan
QUESTION: How to work with institutional artisans in adapting commons? MOTIVATION: Can commons live with Leviathan? If no panaceas, then what? Are there ways to expand autonomy? VISIONS: Norgaard: Co-evolving communities; Ellerman: Helping self-help; V. Ostrom: Citizens solving problems ROLES: Citizen, Peer, Partner, Adviser, Consultant, Official, Teacher, Researcher-Author CONCLUSIONS: Work with citizens solving problems; A vision of citizen problem-solving in co-evolving communities could help social scientist think through roles for working effectively with institutional artisans in adapting governance of commons to solve their problems
Working with Institutional Artisans: Re-envisioning Practitioner Participation in Commons Governance
(2010) Bruns, Bryan
"How can or should applied social scientists work with communities seeking to govern shared resources? Concepts of co-evolving discursive communities, helping self-help, and citizen problem-solving offer ways of envisioning work with institutional artisans. Respectful engagement in institutional artisanship may require balancing roles as consultant, teacher, official, or researcher, and thinking through the implications of relationships as peer, partner, advisor, and citizen. Rethinking roles and visions can make social scientists more effective in working with citizens of co-evolving communities in adapting governance of commons."