Can Subnational Networks of Action Situations Inform Climate Policies? A Review of Case Studies on Mitigation and Adaptation

Action situations are those moments where individual or collective decisions are made that lead to collective outcomes. Debates on how to approach sustainability challenges frequently ponder around voters’ and consumers’ choices. But any person also decides on allocating labour time, is taking decisions within organisations, is usually a passive or active member of a community, or is part of communications and activities in social networks. Sustainability is only one concern and evaluative criterion for outcomes. The going concerns are numerous, as are the action situations that we are part of. And several of those constitute a network of interdependent situations. This contribution addresses the question of whether and how the analysis of action situation networks provides actionable knowledge in the sense of identifying transformative agency and leverage points for climate policies. I answer this question by reviewing case studies that have analysed action situation networks related to subnational climate change adaptation and mitigation and the corresponding conclusions that can be derived from these analyses. This review considers only published cases which are explicitly framed as studies of Networks of Action Situations (NAS), but also relates to work on the Ecology of Games (EoG) concept and the Management and Transition Framework (MTF). The NAS approach has only recently evolved through actor-centred institutional analyses and builds on actor- and transaction-centred frameworks of action situations. Therefore, NAS inherits the general structure of these frameworks, which help to select suitable theories and methods. Empirical applications have a wide range, covering development cooperation and fishing, water–energy–food nexus research, related value chain analyses, telecoupled land systems, bioenergy and energy infrastructure governance, and water governance. All empirical analyses differ considerably in their use of methods and theories, ranging from qualitative to quantitative and formal game-theoretic model building. This diversity is facilitated by the underlying framework tradition. All have a set of physical, informational, institutional and actor linkage types in common. The case studies demonstrate that it is frequently not a single situation, such as a legislation or price internalization, but rather a combination of polycentric situations that need to be addressed to enable mitigation and adaptation. The notion of polycentricity points at systems of connected, but partially or largely independent situations that follow and govern a common concern. Although the general claim for collaborative governance across situations is similar, the cases differ considerably in their policy conclusions concerning transformational interventions for adaptation and mitigation. Further conceptualization and empirical research are necessary to test how the NAS ontology can profit from other network conceptualizations and how multi-level network analysis could provide a suitable quantitative method.