hidden
Image Database Export Citations

Menu:

Persistent Problems of Polycentric Governance as a Tool for Improving UK Energy System Governance

Show simple item record

dc.contributor.author Melville, Emilia
dc.date.accessioned 2018-03-01T20:46:23Z
dc.date.available 2018-03-01T20:46:23Z
dc.date.issued 2017 en_US
dc.identifier.uri https://hdl.handle.net/10535/10366
dc.description.abstract "The problems and opportunities of transition to sustainable energy systems constitute one of the primary challenges in governance for sustainable development in general and for decarbonisation and climate policy in particular. Drawing on the work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom and their collaborators on common-pool resource management and polycentric governance, researchers in the field have been calling recently for systematic attention to be paid to polycentric governance of energy systems (see for example Goldthau, 2014). This paper makes a contribution to this research agenda by examining the extent to which the UK’s electricity infrastructure and associated governance system can be characterised as polycentric, and the ways in which it exhibits common problems of polycentric governance. This study finds that the UK electricity system exhibits some, but not all, of the characteristics proposed by McGinnis (2016), building on V. Ostrom’s (1972) framework, and could therefore be seen as proto-polycentric. There are multiple centres of decision making, but some are more powerful than others. There are overlapping jurisdictions in some cases, such as the supply market, and non-overlapping ones in others, such as the monopoly distribution networks. There is some mutual adjustment, but in many cases actors are bound by rules set by higher authorities, rather than more independent and equal relationships. Institutional relationships are in some ways dynamic, but the creation of new institutional arrangements is constrained by the rules. The outcomes of emergent order and scale economies are limited." en_US
dc.language English en_US
dc.subject governance en_US
dc.title Persistent Problems of Polycentric Governance as a Tool for Improving UK Energy System Governance en_US
dc.type Conference Paper en_US
dc.type.published unpublished en_US
dc.type.methodology Case Study en_US
dc.coverage.region Europe en_US
dc.subject.sector Social Organization en_US
dc.identifier.citationconference Practicing the Commons: Self-Governance, Cooperation and Institutional Change en_US
dc.identifier.citationconfdates 10-14 July en_US
dc.identifier.citationconfloc Utrecht, the Netherlands en_US


Files in this item

Files Size Format View

There are no files associated with this item.

This item appears in the following document type(s)

Show simple item record