The effect of actor and forum heterogeneity on perceptions of performance in polycentric governance systems.

A key focus of polycentric governance theory is the existence and performance of interdependent policy forums in which actors participate, deliberate and make collective decisions about a certain policy issue. This depiction is useful but overlooks heterogeneity in actors and forums and its impact on forum and actor performance. Policy actors vary in terms of the organizations they belong to, the issues they care about, and their involvement in the system. Forums have different sizes and take place at different geographic scales. Moreover, not all policy forums in a polycentric system are deliberative: some forums focus on knowledge dissemination, others on allocation of resources or implementation. This paper analyses the effects of actor and forum heterogeneity on actor performance in a polycentric governance system using social network analysis and regression methods. It focuses on the empirical case of the governance of adaptation to sea level rise in the San Francisco Bay Area, using original data from a web-based survey (N=400 actors, 55 forums) carried out in 2018. Our key hypotheses are that actors perceive better own performance (measured as the impact that participation has on that actor’s goals) when they meet the same actors across different types of forums, and better forum performance when they take part in forums attended by actors similar to themselves.