Information and Decision Making Systems
for the Effective Management of
Cross-Scale Environmental Problems:
A Theoretical Concept Paper
by
David W. Cash
Susanne C. Moser
Prepared for the workshop
Local Response to Global Change: Strategies of Information Transfer
and Decision Making for Cross-Scale Environmental Risks
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
January 29-30, 1998
Draft: August 17, 1998
This study is based on research supported by the Global Environmental Assessment Project at Harvard University’s Belfer
Center for Science and the International Affairs and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. The GEA
Project is supported by grants from the Department of Energy’s National Institute for Global Environmental Change
through the Great Plains Regional Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Award No. LWT 62-123-06518), the
National Science Foundation (Award No. SRB-9521910), the Department of Energy (Award No. DE-FG02-955ER62122),
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of
Global Change at Carnegie Mellon University. Financial support does not constitute an endorsement by any of the
funding agencies of the views expressed in this paper.
Information and Decision Making Systems for the Effective Management
of Cross-Scale Environmental Problems
Abstract
This paper provides the beginnings of a theoretical framework for analyzing how information and
decision making systems can effectively be structured to address cross-scale environmental
management problems. While a number of different fields have addressed the issue of why scale
matters, few have explored, either theoretically or empirically, the unique questions associated with
cross-scales interactions. Cross-scale interactions are those in which events or phenomena at one
level of scale influences events at other levels. We therefore ask how the multi-scale nature of a
problem influences responses to environmental risks, with particular focus on how information and
decision making systems can be more effectively structured. In asking this question we begin in
Section 1 with a set of illustrations that show why cross scale dynamics matter for environmental
management. In Section 2 we survey a range of literatures that address issues of scale,
information, and decision making. Section 3 synthesizes our findings, and Section 4 poses research
questions and directions for further work.
1. Introduction: Why Cross-Scale Dynamics Matter
Environmental policy and management fail for many reasons. Among them is the lack
of attention paid to the special challenges posed by cross-scale interactions in
environmental systems, and to how information and decision systems could be designed to
best assist management regimes in solving the problems that arise from them. The cases
below illustrate such phenomena for three types of policy failures: “perverse” failures,
which exacerbate the problem the policy was designed to remedy; “displacing” failures
which, while addressing the original problem, create a new and unanticipated problem; and
“ineffectual” failures which do little or nothing to address the problem.
Case 1: The Clean Air Act of 1970 - perverse pollution control
The Clean Air Act of 1970 (CAA) was designed to address the problem of
regional and local air pollution, with the federal government ultimately assigning
implementation of the legislation to the newly created Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA). The EPA, in turn, delegated the locus of responsibility of
mitigation to relatively small air quality attainment zones. While much of the
implementation of the CAA was flawed, one particular problem was that
legislators and agency officials failed to anticipate how the policy decisions being
made at the federal or regional level would influence decision making at state and
local levels. The EPA, for example, produced incentives for states and
municipalities to encourage the construction of taller smokestacks and the use of
older, “dirtier” power plants. In addition, the Act provided little integration of
emissions release and emissions transport information between attainment zones
and across federal, state, and local levels. These conditions led to an increase in the
production and transport of exactly those pollutants which contributed to the kinds
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.1
of regional pollution that the CAA was attempting to control (Ackerman and
Hassler 1981).
Case 2: The side effects of flood control projects - displaced problems
Since before World War II, federal policy has directed the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers to create large-scale coastal and riverine projects to provide amenities
such as hydroelectric power, water for irrigation, and protection from floods.
While effectively executing much of its mandate, decision making by the Corps
ignored how addressing the large-scale concern of flooding would influence local,
individual decision making, and how it would effect other competing national
interests like wetlands preservation and biodiversity conservation (Stavins and
Jaffe 1990; Faber 1996)1. In an analysis of flood policy in the Mississippi flood
plain, for example, Stavins (1990) claimed that “[b]y affecting relative economic
returns, public infrastructure investments can induce major changes in private land
use. We find that 30 percent of forested wetland depletion in the Mississippi
Valley has resulted from private decisions induced by federal flood-control
projects, despite explicit federal policy to preserve wetlands.” (Stavins and Jaffe
1990, p. 337)
Case 3: ENSO Forecasting - ineffectual use of information
In 1991, increasing scientific sophistication allowed earlier and more accurate
forecasting information of an impending ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation)
event. While the American and international meteorological community and
international aid providers took responsibility for producing ENSO forecasts, no
responsibility was allocated to assuring that potential users of the information at a
variety of different scales (from national governments to local farmers) were
engaged with the assessment process or that information effectively flowed from
the international to the local level. For example, recent research from the National
Center for Atmospheric Research, which examined responses to an ENSO-related
drought in southern Africa concluded that “[a]lthough ENSO information,
including a forecast, was ‘out there’ throughout most of 1991, few decision
makers within the SADC [Southern African Development Community2] region had
access to this information. At the time of the drought, there was no formal
structure or process in place for disseminating ENSO information. Few
organizations within the region received ENSO information and none sought
it….In general, we find ENSO information did not play a significant role in the
national, regional, and international responses to the 1991/92 Southern African
drought” (Glantz, Betsill et al. 1997).
While these cases are exemplars of many environmental and natural resource policies,
these kinds of policy failures are not restricted to the arenas of environmental and resource
1
2
Faber (1996) and others also argued that these policies have resulted in perverse failures as well, as wetland loss
resulting from flood control projects can lead to greater flooding impacts.
At the time of the 1991/92 drought, there were ten members: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique,
Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.2
management. Indeed, they are widely observed in other fields such as: development policy
(e.g., counterproductive effects of foreign aid programs (Bates 1981; Sahn 1994);
extension policy (e.g., failure to link technical knowledge to the prospective user
community (Bell, Clark et al. 1994)); and domestic and international fiscal policy (Persson
and Tabellini 1994). There are myriad proximate and ultimate causes of these policy
failures, including being oblivious to political interests, outright corruption, poorly aligned
incentives, gross misunderstanding of the causes of the problems, etc. While some of
these factors operated in the three cases mentioned above, one particular management
failure was common to all three - existing information and decision making systems in
place to support the management of these problems were inadequate for dealing with the
cross-scale nature of the problems.
The central premise of our argument is that systematic attention to cross-scale
relationships can and should improve environmental policy and decision making. Of all
the aspects of management that are important in addressing cross-scale environmental
problems we intend to focus on just one area:: the role that information and decision
making institutions and processes do and can play in supporting the effective management
of cross-scale environmental problems.
While many causes of policy failure, and inversely, factors which lead to policy
success, have long histories of investigation and analysis, how the cross-scale dynamics of
environmental problems matter in the policy process has been relatively understudied
(Gunderson, Holling et al. 1995). When scale has been addressed, it has been in isolated
disciplines, primarily in the natural sciences and geography, and little attention has focused
on the dynamics of cross-scale interactions. Moreover, despite the importance of recent
research on the role of communication and information in the response to environmental
risks, little effort has been made to understand how the assessment of scientific and
technical information which is gathered, constructed, and produced at one scale interacts
with decision making and risk management strategies at other levels of scale. In addition,
there is little understanding of how policies and decisions at one scale constrain or provide
opportunities at other scales. Rarely has there been an attempt to synthesize concepts
from existing fields into an understanding of how to integrate information and decision
systems across different levels of scale in order to more effectively support environmental
management.
Given the theoretically uncharted nature of information and decision making in the
context of cross-scale problems, there is a significant need for setting some theoretical
guideposts to focus our attention. This paper is an effort to propose such guideposts and
thus to inform our research of information and decision making systems for cross-scale
environmental risks. The resulting framework will allow us to move beyond the anecdotes
of the three cases presented above, toward a more systematic understanding of how crossscale issues matter.
The remainder of this paper consists of a road map of diverse literatures which can act
as building blocks of our framework (Section 2). These literatures provide a wide range
of valuable contributions, yet our analysis of them is quite specific - teasing from them the
insights of how information and decision systems can be designed to aid in the cross-scale
integration of environmental management. Section 3 provides a synthesis of the insights
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.3
mined from these literatures, and finally, in Section 4 we offer an outline of research a
research agenda that emerges from this synthesis.
2. Theoretical Lenses on Cross-Scale Linkages
As mentioned above, no single body of literature fully integrates how cross-scale
linkages and dynamics affect the design of information and decision making systems.
Several fields, however, provide theoretical lenses through which the analysis of crossscale dynamics can be approached. In this section we discuss five bundles of theoretical
perspectives: hierarchy theory and complex systems; human geography; adaptive
assessment and management; institutions and common pool resources; and environmental
federalism.3
Hierarchy theory and complex systems
The central idea of hierarchy theory is that a phenomenon at any level or
scale of interest is the synergistic result of the dynamics among components
at the next lower level of scale and simultaneously constrained or controlled
by the dynamics of components at the next higher level of scale. Hierarchy
theory is interested in the interactions among these different levels, and
offers several points of entry to study cross-scale interactions.
Hierarchy theory presents a perspective on complex systems that facilitates their
ordered examination by disaggregating them into interacting processes and structures at
different levels of scale (Salthe 1985, p. 17). Its roots are in general systems theory, and it
borrows from complexity and chaos theories (Simon 1962; Allen and Starr 1982; O'Neill
1988), and according to Ahl and Allen (1996, p.28) also from philosophy and psychology.
The central idea is that a phenomenon at any level or scale of interest is the synergistic
result of the faster dynamics of components at the next lower level of scale and is
simultaneously constrained or controlled by the slower dynamics of components at the
next higher level of scale (Simon 1962; Pattee 1973; O'Neill 1988). “Level of scale” can
imply any specific geographic or temporal scale, but also -- and sometimes simultaneously
-- levels of organization, levels of observation, or levels of explanation (Ahl and Allen
1996 p. 30). Any given level of scale is defined or bounded by the fact that the interactions
at this scale are more frequent and relevant to an understanding of the phenomenon of
interest than those between scales. Crucially, hierarchy theory is interested in the
interactions among these different levels, hence our interest in it for the purpose of
addressing cross-scale management problems through appropriate information and
decision making systems.
3
Obviously, there are many other theoretical traditions which could inform our analysis such as network theory,
information theory, discourse theory, organization theory, industrial organization, and participatory theory. In
addition, there is a wide variety of professional empirical literatures in areas such as business organization and
management, medicine, military intelligence, and agricultural and manufacturing extension that also addresses many
of the issues in which we are interested. We leave the contributions of these fields to later exploration.
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.4
The phenomena of interest are coherent functional units bounded by intense and
frequent interactions among its constituting components (Urban, O'Neill et al. 1987).
These functional units commonly match characteristic spatial and temporal scales. For
example, if the system of interest is a forest gap of a few meters to a few tens of meters
and whose successional stages last on the order of a few years, the dynamics of interest
within this gap are determined by the faster, seasonal and daily interactions of species
whereas the surrounding forest and physical conditions set the larger, and more slowly
changing biotic and abiotic constraints (species available for colonization, microclimate,
soil fertility, etc.) for the gap. It is also within the context of the larger forest system that
gaps take on ecological significance. A second example taken from the social sciences is
the functional unit of the state with its powers, responsibilities, governing institutions, or,
even more specifically, a state law or program. State-level programs are constrained and in
some ways controlled by or embedded in the larger, functionally higher federal institutions
and legal framework, and they constrain to some significant extent the functionally lower
governing bodies and actions of sub-state regions, counties, local communities, and their
citizens. It is those communities and citizens, however, that give the state legitimacy, and
that make the state function in the way it does. It would take the effort of a majority of the
citizens of this and many other states (via their political representatives) to change a
federal statute, much less one of the fundamental, constitutional provisions, hence the
notion of slower processes at higher levels of scale and faster interactions at lower, smaller
levels of scale. The connection between one level and the next is made by state variables
that matter at both levels (O'Neill 1988). (See the section below, Environmental
federalism for a more in-depth treatment of this subject.)
These examples illustrate the many uses to which hierarchy theory can be and has been
put. It has been applied primarily in ecology (Society for Human Ecology 1992; Holling
1994; Levin 1997; Levin, Grenfell et al. 1997), geomorphology and landscape ecology
(Urban, O'Neill et al. 1987), but also to discussions of, sustainable development and
resource management (Giampietro 1994; Levin, Grenfell et al. 1997; Wiens 1997),
adaptive management (Gunderson, Holling et al. 1995), and the study of global change
(Rosswall, Woodmansee et al. 1988). It also has been linked with Holling’s four-partite
dynamics of ecosystems (Holling 1995), notions of fractal geometry, and percolation
theory (Keitt, Urban et al. 1997) which explicitly examines the degree and manner of
connectivity in complex systems.
One of the most interesting areas of research is detecting those critical junctures
(bifurcation points) in the dynamics of complex systems where the processes at lower
levels become disturbed to such an extent that systems at higher levels become unstable
and can collapse (O'Neill 1988). A related intriguing research area is determining the
critical distances between components of a complex system that still allow the proper
functioning of the system by maintaining essential connections (Keitt, Urban et al. 1997).
Applied to the design of cross-scale information and decision systems, these questions
imply a search for the critical density of information exchange nodes, and for the
conditions at lower levels of scale that allow for the type of information exchange
necessary for effective decision making.
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Human geography and cross-scale issues
For the contemporary human geographer, all social processes, i.e., all
human interactions with other humans or with the built and natural
environment, are inherently spatial. These socio-spatial processes occur at
and affect all different levels of scale from the local to the global. Indeed,
scale and the processes that cross and connect scales are simultaneously
the tools, the stage, and the objects of inquiry of geographic research.
One might expect thus to find a thorough theoretical treatment of crossscale structures and processes which could be borrowed for the design of
cross-scale information and decision systems to address global
environmental risks. The search for such a theoretical apparatus,
however, remains unsatisfying although a review of seminal human
geographic works and recent debates yields illuminating, provocative,
and seemingly forgotten ideas.
Each of the major thematic streams of human geography (after Agnew, Livingstone et
al. 1996) is interested in the connections across space. The stream most interested in the
spatial distribution of human phenomena and how they come about (involving concepts
like region, place, and locality) strongly emphasizes horizontal connections, i.e., linkages
within one level of scale (Hartshorne 1939; Tuan 1974; Soja 1985; Urry 1987; Cooke
1989; Cox and Mair 1989; Duncan 1989; Sayer 1991; Couclelis 1992). A second thematic
stream which focuses on the social and economic linkages and differences between various
parts of the worlds (examined, for example, through spatial analysis and time-geography
influential in mid-20th century) are more frequently concerned with vertical (global-tolocal) connections (Nystuen 1963; Haggett 1975; Pred 1977; Hägerstrand 1982; Thrift
1985; Johnston 1997). And finally, that stream in human geography which studies the
relationship between society and nature through human/cultural ecological and political
economic/ecological approaches attempts a more systemic, integrative (i.e., within and
across scale) perspective (Sauer 1925; White 1945; Glacken 1967; Butzer 1980; Blaikie
1985; Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Meyer 1992). Too often, however, geographers
remain silent on what actually connects phenomena at different levels (Smith 1985; Soja
1985), or they retreat into debates over what defines and bounds any one level of scale
(Kimble 1951), or they remain frustratingly general and abstract regarding the connecting,
constructing, and transforming processes like markets, flows, trade, information
exchanges, and authority transfers (Pred 1977). It is nevertheless possible to recall and
distill some of the pertinent ideas from these bodies of geographic work.
Among the older, much criticized, and since seemingly forgotten ideas on cross-scale
socio-spatial processes are those of Haggett who synthesized such processes and their
resulting spatial manifestation in a coherent system of ‘nodal regions,’ i.e., open systems
that evolve successively from accidental movements into networks with nodes into
hierarchies of nested surfaces or planes across which information and innovations move by
way of diffusion (reviewed, including its critics, by Johnston (1997)). An equally forgotten
approach is that of Hägerstrand (1982) whose work on diffusion of innovations and
especially time-geography are relevant to this discussion. Hägerstrand and his colleagues
DRAFT January 20, 1998
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conceptualized the behavior or lifelines of individual actors as affected or directed by three
basic constraints: capability, coupling, and authority (Pred 1977; Thrift 1977; Hägerstrand
1982). These determine an individual’s path, projects, and the situations in which projects
can be carried out (dioramas). Leftist and especially postmodern thinkers have criticized
the relative lack of attention to the issue of authority constraints and power relationships –
a valid point that must be addressed when looking at information and knowledge transfer
and decision making across different levels of scale which often coincide with different
degrees and foci of authority (Giddens 1984).
A third complex of interrelated ideas and recent theoretical developments within
human geography culminated in, but was not restricted to, the so-called ‘locality debate’
(Urry 1987; Cooke 1989; Cox and Mair 1989; Duncan 1989; Sayer 1991). This debate
hinged on what ‘locality’ meant, how locality is bound, how it is connected to supra-local
processes, and whether it has any causal power to affect cross-spatial processes. The most
relevant and interesting ideas that emerged from this debate include Cooke’s (1989)
description of local networks of power created as a necessary protection against the
overarching powers of the state and the global economy, and as a bridge to connect plural
interests at the local scale. Soja (1991) and Smith (1985) helped older geographic coreperiphery ideas to resurface, but this time in the new framework of nested hierarchies
around a powerful center affecting processes at different levels of scale (the connections
between them they recognized as being barely understood as yet). Urry (1987) and Thrift
(1985) contributed an understanding of spatial configurations as enabling people to
overcome space (distance as obstacle) and as changing the spatial constraints upon the
distribution of knowledge. Duncan and Savage (1989) claimed, echoing similar
developments in other fields that in order to understand what happens at one level of
scale, one needed to consider adjacent levels and the socio-political context within which
actors at any given level function. And yet more recently, influenced by postmodern
thought and emerging from empirical work on economic restructuring and technological
change (Dicken 1997; Smith 1997; Wackermann 1997), geographers discuss seemingly
countervailing processes of interest for questions of information flow: on the one hand the
apparent lessening of the significance of hierarchy in socio-spatial interactions (‘the global
village’) through the evolution of major nodes or specialist centers embedded in
economically, technologically, scientifically, and increasingly administratively integrated
‘learning regions’ (Florida 1995). Change emanates no longer from just one core to a
development-poor periphery, but from any of these specialist centers or regions. With this
lessening of hierarchies comes the relative equalization or homogenization of “surfaces,”
yet, on the other hand, also the starker inequities in the access and privilege to effectively
participate in these networks, and a postmodern heightening of differences which may act
as barriers to integration, communication, and cooperation (Soja 1985; Urry 1987; Cooke
1989; Florida 1995; Mann 1996; Johnston 1997).
Clearly, some of the older ideas presented above have undergone heavy critique and
reworking into the more recent understanding of socio-spatial processes and linkages. This
reconceptualization continues in part because of new theoretical approaches, and in part
because the objects of study are changing as well. Both past and recent geography focus
our attention, however, on the cross-scale networks that link people, institutions, places,
and regions through political, economic, technological and socio-cultural forces, and on
DRAFT January 20, 1998
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the various constraints that processes at one level of scale exert on another. More recent
geographic work adds notions of resistance, inequality, the socio-political context in which
actors operate, and also, the declining importance of hierarchies, or – in other words – the
leveling of the playing field, the implications of which have yet to be explored for
information and decision systems.
Adaptive assessment and management
Adaptive assessment and management of environmental risks and natural
resources is deeply rooted in ecological systems and hierarchy theory.
Consequently, the theory clearly recognizes the cross-scale nature of
management issues, but remains rather silent on how to pragmatically
address it. More importantly, adaptive management is more explicit on the
importance of committed multi-stakeholder communication and
information flow, on the creation of an integrated information and decision
system, and on the design of management approaches as a participatory,
iterative, learning-oriented and trust-building social process.
Over the last two decades, theories of adaptive management have been proposed as a
potentially powerful framework of dynamically linking science and policy for addressing multifaceted environmental problems. The central notion of this perspective is that for
environmental risks characterized by long time horizons, high levels of uncertainty, and
stochasticity, effective policy should be based on adaptive and flexible, (i.e., explicitly
learning-oriented) experimentation. Grounded in such varied theoretical arenas as ecology,
hierarchy theory, decision theory and optimal control theory, adaptive management stresses
the importance of incorporating uncertainty and surprise in modeling and decision making,
using explicit policy experimentation to test effective management strategies, providing fora
for multi-stakeholder involvement in the assessment and management process, and, most
important for the purposes of this paper, developing a nuanced understanding of how
phenomena at different temporal and spatial scales interact in natural and human systems
(Holling 1978; Walters 1986; Lee 1993; Gunderson, Holling et al. 1995).
The theoretical conception underlying the understanding of interaction across scale is that
of a nested hierarchy, and draws primarily from theories of ecosystem dynamics (for a more
detailed exploration of hierarchy theory see the Hierarchy theory and complex systems section
above).
Despite this theoretical footing in ecology, proponents of the adaptive management
approach posit that human systems like governments, business firms, or academic institutions
share similar attributes of hierarchically nested and processes (Simon 1962). The challenge
for management regimes to avoid policy pathologies arises because natural as well as human
systems “proceed at [their] own pace and in [their] own space, and that creates extraordinary
conflicts when ecosystems, institutions, and societies function on scales that are extremely
mismatched. If the scale of all three becomes more congruent, it is likely that the inevitable
bursts of human learning can proceed with less conflict and more creativity.” (Holling 1995,
p.73).
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Some empirical testing of this approach has occurred and proven promising in the context
of several instances of natural resource management (e.g., for forests, fisheries, estuaries, etc.
- Lee 1993; Rabe and Zimmerman 1995; Ermoliev, Klaassen et al. 1996; National Research
Council 1996). Overall, however, empirical reports on these experiences have not fully
addressed cross-scale dynamics or the scale mismatch issue. Instead, adaptive assessment and
management emphasizes three important structural design and process questions that are
immediately relevant to our focus on information and decision systems.
The first of these highlights the importance of information flow and communication:
committed, continuous, bi-directional, and cross-scale, involving scientists and other
specialists, policy-makers, and ideally a wide range of stakeholders (Chance and Draper 1996;
O'Hara 1996; O'Riordan and Ward 1997).
The second important proposition from the adaptive management approach is the
emphasis on designing integrated information provision/creation and decision-making systems.
To the extent that open, transparent, non-coercive information flow, mutual learning and
respect for different approaches, perspectives, needs, and stakes contribute to the building of
trustworthy relationships and mutual understanding, decision making may proceed toward
more satisfactory, acceptable, consensual, and ultimately more effective and efficient
management strategies (Kasperson, Golding et al. 1997; O'Riordan and Ward 1997).
Finally, and related to the previous point, is that adaptive management is essentially a
participatory, iterative social process that involves representatives from different scientific
disciplines, from policy-making and management, and from different levels of scale. This
structural and procedural design results precisely from the recognition that natural and societal
processes operate at various levels of scale and produce phenomena that can affect all scales
(Beanlands and Duinker 1983; Lee 1993; Lee 1995; O'Riordan and Ward 1997). Adaptive
management tries to tap into existing social networks and to put in place missing links and
fora where such representatives can come together (Holling 1978; O'Riordan 1997).
Institutions and common pool resources
Drawing from a wide range of fields such as game theory, social capital
theory, and public choice theory, institutional analysis of the management
of common pool resources provides several insights into cross-scale
dynamics. First, in order to understand the opportunities and constraints
faced by communities facing common pool resource problems it is necessary
to examine the “nested” relationships of governance structures or
institutions at different levels of scale (i.e., the set of externally prescribed
rules under which they operate). Second, institutions at different levels of
scale might have comparative advantages in producing and supplying
certain types of information. Thus, exploiting these comparative
advantages can reduce information and monitoring costs.
One specific area of research which has shed light on decision making processes for
natural resource management investigates common pool resources (CPRs) - resources
which are subtractable (as opposed to a pure public good where appropriation by one user
DRAFT January 20, 1998
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does not diminish the amount that can be appropriated by another user), whose
appropriation affects the rate of renewal of the resources (if it is a renewable resource,
such as fish), and whose access is difficult to limit (Oakerson 1992). While initial
exploration produced theoretically innovative ways of exploring commons problems like the “tragedy of the commons”, “prisoners’ dilemma” or collective action problems
(Olson 1971; Hardin 1982) - they lacked a robust treatment of the role that institutions
can play in common pool situations. More recent theory building and empirical research
draw not only on traditional game theory, but on a variety of different theoretical
traditions such as bounded rationality, social capital, decision theory, political economy,
and public choice theory to provide a more complex and dynamic framework of analysis
(Ostrom 1990; Bromley 1992; Ostrom, Gardner et al. 1994). While these developments
provide a rich store of insights into decision making about common pool natural
resources, we limit our attention only to those contributions which can sharpen our focus
on cross-scale issues and information and decision systems.
First, an explicit component of institutional analysis of CPRs is to acknowledge that
what happens at one scale can provide institutional constraints or opportunities at other
scales. “[A]ppropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and
governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises… Establishing
rules at one level, without rules at the other levels, will produce an incomplete system that
may not endure over the long run...” (Ostrom 1990, pp. 101-102). These “rules” are
defined broadly and provide the context within which local actors make decisions and play
the “game.” For example, the “game” that is played by resource appropriators at a local
level may be governed by “rules” that are developed, imposed, implemented, and enforced
by external authorities at a different level of scale (e.g., a federal agency). These “rules”
can take the form of many different kinds of arrangements external to the actual
appropriation community and result in a complex set of multi-scale relationships. Such
external arrangements can include “establishing the capability of the community of users to
engage in local collective choice” and to establish monitoring and sanctioning activities,
making the community “substantially dependent on external decision makers for the
legislation and enforcement of operational rules,” providing third-party authorities (such
as courts) to resolve disputes between appropriators, or creating “market arrangement
external to the commons…establishing economic parameters within which management of
the commons can be undertaken” (Oakerson 1992, pp. 48-49).
Another shortcoming of earlier theories of CPRs which relied on prisoners’ dilemmatype games, was an insensitivity to how flows of information could change equilibrium
outcomes (Ostrom 1990). By relaxing restrictive assumptions about communication and
information, recent work has focused on the conditions under which communication can
aid in overcoming commons dilemmas.4 Theories of social capital, for example, suggest
the importance of communication in building trust and thus establishing an environment
amenable to compromise, consensus, and mutually advantageous decision making
(Putnam, Leonardi et al. 1993; Fountain 1998). Thus, cross-scale dynamics take on
theoretical importance in the challenge of building social capital across different levels of
4
Note the similarity to theories of international organization in which supra-national institutions can provide a variety
of information services that enhance monitoring, sanctioning, and change preferences, etc....(Krasner 1983; Haas,
Keohane et al. 1994; Krasner 1994; Young 1994; Keohane and Levy 1996)
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.10
scale. For example, in addition to providing a structure of rules within which local
decision makers operate, authorities at higher levels of scale can also provide “institutional
arrangements that encourage communication among individuals facing similar problems.”
(Ostrom 1990, p.210). This can result in improved communication and monitoring within
CPRs, and in improved transfer of institutional knowledge between CPRs. In addition,
perhaps because of the physical attributes of the CPR, or the technical difficulties
associated with understanding them, economies of scale might be realized in information
production. Large-scale central agencies might be better suited than smaller scale
counterparts to engage in the scientific research, monitoring, and dissemination efforts
necessary for effective management. Alternatively, higher scale institutions might not have
the local expertise and intimate knowledge necessary to effectively understand the
structure and function of resource use. These last two points illuminate the possible
benefits gained from a coordinated approach that combines the local knowledge at small
scales with the scientific, technical, and integrative advantages at larger scales. In effect,
integration across scales (e.g., between local, state, and federal agencies) may help to
reduce information and transactions costs, allowing CPR appropriators to construct selfimposed regulatory management schemes with informational support from higher levels of
scale.
Environmental federalism
At what scale of government should decision making reside? This is the core
question that defines the study of federalism, and it is the subject of the
dynamic constitutional tensions which characterize the polity of federated
states. Theories of environmental federalism elucidate conditions under
which responsibility should be vested at different levels of government.
Application of such theories is extraordinarily complex and, in practice,
there is little consensus in answering this central question in the
environmental arena. Environmental federalism does however suggest the
importance of coordination and integration of decision making across scale,
regardless of where ultimate authority lies.
A fundamental question which has permeated political discourse in federated countries
such as the United States, Mexico, Switzerland, India, and Australia has been at what level
of government - federal, state, or local - does appropriate authority for decision making
reside?5 It is obvious from this question that scale is a significant object of theoretical
interest, and research in democratic theory has focused on issues of appropriate unit size,
scale and representative legitimacy, and capacity of different sized units to address
different kinds of issues (Dahl 1989). Not only does scale per se matter in these
discourses, but cross-scale issues are central as well: actions that occur at one level of
5
The question of federalism has also been addressed in the context of multi-nation bodies of governance such as the
European Union, and international treaties such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. While this paper
focuses on the national and subnational information and decision systems, collaborative research with other
members of Harvard’s Global Environmental Assessment Project will explore these issues in the context of
international systems of governance.
DRAFT January 20, 1998
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government (i.e., legislative, regulatory, monitoring, or information production) influence
the suite of actions available to decision makers at other levels of government. While
issues of federalism pervade a wide range of policy topics, such as health care, welfare and
education, the complexities of environmental management provide particular challenges
which have spawned growing normative and positive analyses of environmental federalism
(see Percival 1995; Holland, Morton et al. 1996 for reviews).
Political science, economic theory, political economy, and legal scholarship have
provided a variety of theoretical lenses through which to examine questions of federalism
in the context of environmental decision making. All, however, begin with a presumption
of local control for environmental management, with the locus of control shifting to higher
levels of scale under certain conditions: 1) The existence of transjurisdictional
externalities. Both legal and economic theory highlight the existence of externalities as a
fundamental justification for more central (higher level) control of environmental
protection (Esty 1996; Congressional Budget Office 1997). For example, “if some of the
cost-bearers or beneficiaries of an environmental action fall outside the borders of the
regulating jurisdiction, their interests in the policy outcome may not be taken into
account.” (Esty 1996, p.587). Absent a supra-juridictional authority to provide
environmental protection in this case (and absent the conditions that allow for Coasian
bargaining - no transactions costs, small number of parties, perfect information, and no
income effects), efficient provision of environmental protection will not occur. This class
of problems covers a wide range of both environmental and natural resource issues such as
commons problems, pollution, and public good provisions (Light and Wodraska 1990;
Congressional Budget Office 1997). 2) Risks are shared by multiple jurisdictions. For
these types of risks, coordinated management across jurisdictions at the same level and
across different levels, can be prohibitively costly without the facilitating role of a central
authority (Rabe and Zimmerman 1995; Kincaid 1996). This is particularly relevant with
the challenges posed by local technical incapacity for information production (e.g.,
scientific research), central inability to monitor local conditions and the challenges of
coordinating information flow across jurisdictions, both horizontally and vertically. 3)
Race to the bottom effects. The standard political economy argument for this effect is that
“interjurisdictional competition for economic growth drives regulation to its lowest
common denominator” (Kincaid 1996). This “race to the bottom” can be avoided by
allocating control of the issue to a more centralized agency which is “above” the
competition for local economic growth (Esty 1996). Recent economic and legal analyses
have questioned both the theoretical and empirical validity of the race to the bottom
hypothesis (Revesz 1997).
The above conditions provide guidance for the allocation of authority, though there is
still little theoretical and practical consensus on interpretation of these kinds of guideposts.
For example, in the U.S. there are glaring inconsistencies in the judicial system regarding
the appropriate allocation of authority for the management of a wide range of
environmental and natural resource issues: “The courts have not applied a consistent set of
federalism principles in environmental regulation cases.” (Wise and O'Leary 1997, p. 158).
It is equally true, however, that this guidance suggests little in terms of effective
approaches of implementing environmental policy in the context of federalist structures,
even if the appropriate level of responsibility is selected. In the context of the U.S., the
DRAFT January 20, 1998
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Congress uses three intergovernmental strategies: 1) cooperative - federally approved
plans are implemented by state and local authorities, with some degree of discretion; 2)
conjoint - precise federal standards are implemented by state and local authorities, with
limited discretion and the threat of federal implementation resulting from inadequate
regulation; and 3) national - federal plans and standards implemented by federal agencies
(Kincaid 1996).
Both the theoretical conditions under which more centralized control is indicated, and
the three U.S. strategies of implementation, highlight the importance of cross-scale
interactions in federated systems. Actions which cause externalities at local levels call for
higher levels of government to intervene. Regulatory policies at higher levels of
government are designed to constrain actions at lower levels, yet they may also provide
opportunities (e.g., through federal funding or political backing, or information provision)
which were not available or feasible previously. This cross-scale political and regulatory
intervention, however, demands that policies are appropriate for the level of scale at which
they apply. Hence, coordination across scale (and across governments and agencies at the
same level) in both decision making and information transfer is both critical and poses
unique challenges (Kincaid 1996; Patton 1996; National Governors' Association 1997).
3. A Cautious Synthesis
Trying to find the golden thread of cross-scale theorizing that runs through as diverse
a range of fields in the natural and social sciences as we discussed above, is an ambitious
task at least. Even more so, it harbors the dangers of oversimplification, misinterpretation,
misapplication, and inappropriate linkages between various components. These dangers
ought to be recognized at the outset of setting the first few guideposts for an integrative
framework.
The review above suggests a number of areas in which the different bodies of theory
obviously overlap. Quite likely, these overlaps are in part to be explained by crossdisciplinary fertilization as individual disciplines do not evolve in a paradigmatic vacuum.
In part, these overlaps may indicate convergence resulting from genuine systemic
similarities that physical, ecological, and social phenomena share. It is tempting thus to
conclude that certain concepts apply across scales, across locales, across disciplines, and
across levels of examination. We are certainly not the first to call to caution that such a
conclusion may be overly optimistic at best and outright wrong at worst, but we raise
these warning flags here again to prevent the latter.
First, there is the danger of the ecological fallacy, that is, applying the same laws,
regularities, and relationships between variables when moving from one scale to another.
It is far from established and frequently incorrect to assume that a collective of individuals
acts in the same way as individuals on their own, that the whole is just the sum of its parts.
Second, there is the hazard of committing the geographic fallacy, that is, generalizing
across space. For example, the cross-scale dynamics of an ecosystem in one place may
not be the same as those in another place because it is nearly impossible to account for all
boundary conditions. Or, what cross-scale cooperation happens in one state government
may not be feasible in another even if both belong to the same overarching federal system.
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.13
Clearly, these two types of fallacies can be avoided by careful research design, through
empirical testing of causal hypotheses between different pairs of scale levels and between
different places, and by careful interpretation of the results. The third danger is that of the
systemic or ontological fallacy, that is, drawing parallels between phenomena about their
ultimate nature that are addressed by different fields, with different theories and different
methods, but that resemble each other only at a superficial level. Even the same
terminology used in different disciplines may mean rather different things. This is a danger
accompanying all cross- and interdisciplinary work and can only be resolved by
interdisciplinary peer review. And finally, there is the possibility of the epistemic fallacy,
that is, consistently associating particular degrees of abstraction, theory-ladenness, or
contextuality with particular levels of geographic or temporal scale. For example, to
equate the abstract, general, and theoretical with the global and the concrete, contingent,
and empirical only with the other end of the spectrum, the local level of scale, would be
committing this type of fallacy. It deprives the local of all theoretical content and denies
the global even the slightest degree of haphazard contingency.
These calls to caution notwithstanding, our review reveals several common themes
which will serve here as our nodes of synthesis. At this stage, we consider them as no
more than guideposts for developing a better understanding of how information and
decision making can be improved to address the particular challenges that cross-scale
environmental problems pose to management.
The first and most obvious common theme that all the above approaches discuss or
use is that of hierarchy, of nested events, organizations, or cycles which operate on
different spatial and temporal scales. These scales of organization really do exist in natural,
social, and management systems (that is, they are not mere social constructs and more
than heuristics): they form rather “naturally” for reasons of efficiency, cost-effectiveness,
specialization, and so on. The central implication of this view of “scale” is that, in general,
interactions within one level of scale are more frequent and important than interactions
among different levels of scale, which is precisely what helps us define and distinguish
them. From this view follows also that we imply some sort of “friction” or impediment to
move from scale to scale.
Common environmental management experience tells us that effective management of
certain environmental systems can often be carried out through approaches that ignore
cross-scale interactions and concentrate instead on the strong interactions within scale.
This, indeed, is where most of our management experience resides. The management of
indoor radon or the clean-up of a pond polluted by the release of toxic sludge from an
adjacent factory can be dealt with quite efficiently and effectively at a single level of scale.
This management experience makes it seductive to stay at a single level of scale and to
regard adjacent levels of scales simply as boundary conditions, regardless of the nature of
the problem to be managed.
Many kinds of environmental management problems, however, especially those that
fall under the rubric of “global change”, involve significant cross-scale relationships and
these must be addressed if the management is to be effective. We base this argument on a
second major insight gleaned from Section 2, namely that cross-scale interactions, if
occurring less frequently, are nonetheless crucial to the functioning and behavior of entire
systems or of components of subsystems at various scales. Ignoring or misdiagnosing such
DRAFT January 20, 1998
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cross-scale interactions frequently leads to surprise and policy failure. Despite the complex
nature of these interactions, we can draw a number of generalizations about how crossscale interactions in the managed system can contribute to policy failure:
•
Disregarding the dynamics at a higher level of scale (relative to the level or system of
interest), which serve as constraints on the system, can contribute to policy failure.
For example, regional climate and climate change determine local groundwater
recharge rates and water availability of an aquifer. Management systems regulating
solely the withdrawal of water by individuals do not take the limits imposed by the
climate and larger ground and surface water system into account.
•
Disturbing the dynamics of sub-systems at a lower level of scale, the parts of which
make up the system of interest, can also lead to policy failure. For example, the
delicate balance of flooding, sedimentation, and organic growth produces coastal
wetlands which function as habitat, water purifier, flood protection, and recreation
area. Structural flood control measures impede the continued formation and inland
movement of coastal wetlands which would allow them to naturally adapt to a rise in
sea level.
•
Allowing, supporting, or disregarding chronic disturbances of sub-system (lower
level) dynamics which exhaust a system’s resilience may lead to a threshold beyond
which the system collapses. For example, the overharvesting of fish below a minimum
population that can reproduce and thus sustain itself will lead to the total collapse of
this marine resource.
Presumably, there are many ways in which the management of environmental systems
might be improved to address important cross-scale relationships of the kind described
above and in the policy failure examples given at the beginning of this paper. The one on
which we focus our attention is the design of appropriate information and decision systems
that integrate across scale. How exactly can information and decision systems that
integrate across scale help in the management of cross-scale environmental problems? This
is the central question that we will aim to answer in our empirical research. The
institutional and management approaches reviewed in Section 2 suggest a number of
answers to pursue in this research:
•
Coordination: Information and decision systems that integrate across scales facilitate
coordinated action on behalf of “commons”-like problems, of problems that affect
several jurisdictions, or that cause externalities to areas distant from the source.
•
Effectiveness/efficiency: Across-scale integrating information and decision systems can
bank on the comparative advantage that actors or institutions at any one level of scale
may have in producing, providing, or disseminating a particular kind of information or
knowledge, or in their capacity to act (make decisions) most appropriately and readily
on a problem. For example, at the international or national level, greatest capacities
(financial resources, scientific brain power, human resources, computer facilities) may
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.15
exist to model climate change impacts and to simulate different large-scale policy
response options, yet they need to be connected with and translated into the
knowledge of the legality and feasibility of laws and regulations that exist or can be
created at the national/federal and state level. In this regard, systems at a higher level
of scale may not only impose constraints on lower levels, but with their greater
capacities also offer opportunities that would not be realizable at a lower level of scale.
The most appropriate implementation of the generated model results, policy options,
and regulations can still not be guaranteed, however, without connecting to the
intimate knowledge of local environmental, economic, political, institutional, and
socio-cultural conditions.
•
Removal of barriers and impediments: The flip side of greater coordination and of
employing the comparative advantage of any given level of scale is the reduction or
elimination of hurdles created by regulation, wrongly placed incentives, and mutual
ignorance of needs, stakes, capacities, and limits. To name but a few common
examples, certain federal policies may constrain or undermine “good” behavior at
lower levels of scale; the availability of funds for a particular level of jurisdiction may
not match with the boundaries of the management problem; or the provision of
information may prove meaningless because potential information users either do not
have access to the information or do not know how to interpret and use it.
•
Legitimacy: Information and decision systems that integrate across scale tap into,
maintain, and/or create an actively engaged, civicly oriented, and well educated
citizenry at all levels of scale. This active engagement, in turn, legitimizes action and
the institutional arrangements set up to carry them out. It thus functions as an
important asset for effective and efficient governance in democratic societies (Putnam,
Leonardi et al. 1993; Kasperson, Golding et al. 1997).
Another insight gained from the review of the various theoretical approaches discussed
in Section 2 is that there are barriers to building information and decision making systems
that integrate across scales. Among the sources of “friction” inhibiting such integration we
can identify the following:
•
Missing links and missed opportunities: It is quite possible that many unused,
inexpensive, yet easily realizable opportunities exist to link actors and institutions at
and within various levels of scale. These currently missing links may act as barriers to
useful information flow, and need to be revived, discovered, or mobilized.
•
Lack of technical and institutional capacity: At any given level of scale, the needed
technical, economic, or institutional capacity may be missing to produce, process, or
disseminate information and knowledge, to connect with other information providers,
users, and decision makers, or to make adequate decisions because of a lack in legal
authority.
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.16
•
Incompatibility of perspectives and “languages:” The differences among scientific,
managerial, and lay and/or local types of knowledge, ways of conceptualizing
problems, and the respective languages in which they are conveyed may impede
mutual understanding, the ability to interpret information, and to use it appropriately in
decision making. For example, it is no small challenge to tell a farmer what the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change learned and to translate these global
scientific findings into locally and individually imaginable and relevant facts. It is
equally difficult to ask a coastal manager to “take projections of global sea-level rise
into account” in their local setback requirements. Language and knowledge barriers
may also be heightened by the differing degrees of power with which they are invested
culturally.
•
Lack of trust, social capital, and a sense of disenfranchisement: The essence or
outcome of building, and building on, social capital is that constituents involved in
policy formulation, decision making, and implementation begin to have a stake in the
outcome of their “project.” Being heard and taken seriously, being actively involved in
open, transparent discourse, seeing one’s perspectives and knowledges employed and
used, builds trust among the various actors engaged in information and decision
making networks. “[P]ublic discourse needs to be continuous and ongoing and not, as
often happens, occur only sporadically or episodically. For discourses to be
continuous, citizens require not only the opportunities but the means and resources to
acquire and evaluate information. Finally, people must be empowered to enter into
decisions and to see the results actually implemented” (Kasperson, Golding et al.
1997, p. 12, emphasis added). The resulting trust, as Putnam (1993, p.171) explains,
lubricates cooperation and cooperation breeds trust. The absence of trust-building
discourses is likely to inhibit the interest in or use of information originating from
certain sources. Arguably, trust, social capital, and a real sense of empowerment, are
not specific as lubricants for cross-scale interactions. They do take on a special crossscale relevance, however, when individuals in and outside of government or
management institutions feel unmotivated to engage in environmental matters, when
they are disenfranchised from their representatives at higher levels of scale, when they
perceive their engagement not to make any difference because others with more power
decide over their heads anyway, or when they expect representatives from other levels
of scale to take the initiative on certain environmental matters.
Our empirical research may uncover further barriers to the development of information
and decision systems that integrate across scale. It should also reveal the relative
importance of these barriers under different circumstances. Understanding these barriers,
and the crucial functions they inhibit, will lead to the identification of characteristics of
information and decision systems that are effective in linking across scales (and hence
which promote a more effective management of cross-scale phenomena), as well as the
identification of pathologies that inhibit such performance.
4. Research Directions
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.17
The synthesis presented in the previous section presented a number of guideposts that
are critical for gaining a better understanding of how information and decision
systems can more effectively support the management of cross-scale environmental
problems. They call for close examination of processes at each level of scale and between
scales, and suggest a research agenda which focuses on the following questions:
•
What cross-scale interactions pose the greatest challenges to contemporary
management of environmental problems? Can we create a typology of such
interactions that will help identify appropriate information and decision systems?
•
How are information and decision systems currently and potentially linked across
global, national, and local levels which address cross-scale environmental problems?
•
How do "good" information and decision making systems help with the management
of such cross-scale problems? How do "bad" ones hinder it? What is the difference in
the systems?
•
What are the barriers or pitfalls that keep information and decision systems from
effectively addressing cross-scale environmental problems?
•
What can be done to break down the barriers, or avoid the pitfalls?
Going a step further, our synthesis also suggests a number of propositions about how
information and decision systems can be structured to effectively support the management
of cross-scale environmental problems. Eventually, these propositions may lead to
broader generalizations about environmental management and about the design of specific
information and decision systems. As a note of caution, however, we should emphasize
one theme which runs throughout the various literatures we have reviewed: the kinds of
environmental problems in which we have an interest are extraordinarily context-specific.
Institutions, history, legal frameworks, and culture will vary greatly from locale to locale,
from problem to problem, and the cross-scale interactions that define and provide
opportunities and constraints will vary as well. Thus, our propositions are not recipes for
specific management, but broad categories of strategies that might cut across different
situations and contexts. In addition, these differences speak to the importance of a
research approach that is comparative along several dimensions. Comparing, for example,
how different information and decision systems have addressed similar environmental
management problems will help identify the conditions under which certain management
strategies effectively deal with the cross-scale nature of environmental problems. This
comparison will highlight the institutional, political, and social variables which can best
explain effective cross-scale management. Comparisons across different environmental
problems will also be critical in identifying the challenges posed by specific managed
systems. What are the specific cross-scale interactions, for example, in the human and
natural systems that present particular barriers or pitfalls for specific management systems?
While we acknowledge this context-specific nature of management problems, our
synthesis suggests a number of general propositions. As we conduct our research into
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.18
specific cross-scale problems we expect to find that effective information and decision
systems support management institutions and processes which:
•
coordinate decision making across different levels of scale;
•
coordinate information systems across different levels of scale;
•
integrate decision making and information functions across different levels of scale;
and
•
exploit comparative advantages in information and decision making capabilities at
different levels of scale.6
Though we expect these propositions to be supported by field research (and to be
further refined and sharpened), we also expect to construct a deeper understanding of
what “coordinating decision making”, “coordinating information systems”, and
“integrating decision making and information functions” across different levels of scale
means.
One environmental problem which we find to be particularly rich for addressing these
kinds of issues is human-induced climate change. The natural system is complex, multidimensional and is characterized by cross-scale dynamics. There are, for example,
numerous interactions between biological, chemical, and geological systems. Human
interactions with the system are equally multi-faceted and span the ranges of temporal and
spatial scales. The management system that has been developing over the last ten years is
also one that is suited for the kind of cross-scale analysis we propose. Recent action has
focused on international-level negotiations and decisions, yet these decisions will
invariably have impacts that cross many levels of scale and provide opportunities or
constraints. In addition, international negotiations are influenced by the actions, decisions,
and information produced at lower levels of scale. Moreover, regardless of action on the
international level, actors at lower levels of scale are already developing interest in the
potential impacts and adaptation responses. It is becoming increasingly clear that without
cognizance of cross-scale dynamics and the role that information and decision systems
play in such dynamics, efforts to address climate change will be frustrated. Thus, we plan
to undertake a research project which analyzes decision making and information systems
in response to potential global climate change.
Understanding the importance of comparative research in this kind of endeavor, our
research is structured to compare management strategies for climate change in two
different managed systems: the agriculture sector and the coastal zone. As part of this
analysis, we will also conduct comparative analyses of different cross-scale management
strategies within these systems: a comparison of water management across three states in
the Great Plains (Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas); and a comparison of Maine and Hawaii’s
coastal zone management systems. By structuring our research this way - using cross6
Note that our arguments for cross-scale integrated environmental management may describe but a special case of
the more general argument that whenever cross-scale dynamics are important, effective governance depends on
cross-scale integration, and that information and decision making systems can be useful vehicles to achieve this
integration. This however, awaits a more broadly defined research agenda.
DRAFT January 20, 1998
p.19
issue and cross-state comparisons - we are able to test a number of our propositions. For
example, Nebraska, Texas, and Kansas have three different institutional systems (which
can be thought of as different hypotheses for effective management) for addressing similar
water resource problems. These different institutional systems vary, for example, in the
degree to which they integrate information and decision systems across different levels of
scale. Thus, we might be able to test the notion that greater integration of this type will
lead to more effective management. Likewise, Maine and Hawaii have two different
institutional structures for addressing cross-scale coastal zone management. For example,
the two states differ in the degree to which information systems are coordinated across
different levels of scale, from the local to the federal levels. This comparison might
elucidate the role that coordination of information systems plays in managing the coastal
zone (See accompanying Research Protocol for more detailed description of this project.)
Finally, by comparing agriculture and coastal zone systems, we hope to gain insights into
the conditions under which different environmental problems require different
management strategies.
The overarching goal for this kind of research is to address the question that opened
this paper - how can information and decision making systems be effectively structured to
address cross-scale environmental management problems? Within this broad goal,
however, we identify three specific objectives. First, this research should help contribute
to theories from which we constructed our synthesis. For each of the five bundles of
theories explored in Section 2, an added perspective on cross-scale dynamics could be
enriching. Second, we hope this research will further our task of integrative theorybuilding, begun here with the exposition of theoretical guideposts. Refining propositions
and empirically testing hypotheses will serve to move beyond these guideposts to a more
analytically useful framework for systematically investigating information and decision
systems for cross-scale environmental problems. Finally, our research in this arena should
contribute to pragmatically solving environmental problems characterized by cross-scale
interactions - in the case described above, by understanding what produces effective
information and decision systems for addressing climate change, and discovering ways to
integrate that understanding into management systems.
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