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Transaction Costs and the Perceived Effectiveness of Complex Institutional Systems
Author(s) -
Lubell Mark,
Mewhirter Jack M.,
Berardo Ramiro,
Scholz John T.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/puar.12622
Subject(s) - transaction cost , politics , collective action , corporate governance , database transaction , watershed , function (biology) , business , sociology , economics , public economics , political science , microeconomics , law , finance , computer science , programming language , machine learning , evolutionary biology , biology
Abstract This article studies factors affecting how policy actors perceive the effectiveness of political institutions involved in complex water governance systems. The ecology of games framework argues that participants are more likely to perceive institutions as effective when the benefits of solving collective action problems outweigh the transaction costs of developing political contracts within these institutions. The authors hypothesize that transaction costs are a function of conflict, type of participation, political knowledge, scientific knowledge, and actor resources. Survey results suggest that the importance of these different sources of transaction costs varies across study sites in the Tampa Bay watershed in Florida, the Sacramento–San Joaquin River delta in California, and the Paraná River delta in Argentina. Based on the observed differences, some initial ideas are sketched about the evolution of complex governance systems from fairly simple and informal rules and networks to well‐established tapestries of many formal institutions .