Operationalising adaptive governance: a research agenda

Adaptive governance was first identified as the institutional framework that promotes emergence of self-organised management to sustain common pool resources. Adaptive governance, along with other forms of emergent governance, has gained traction as a potential approach to govern complex systems undergoing change. Nevertheless, this emergent ad hoc, distributed, often informal governance involving private actors, raises concerns with its pace and legitimacy. A facilitative role for government to speed emergence of adaptive governance and steer it toward the public good is critical, but work remains to identify when and how government should pursue this role; the degree of government involvement in relation to the type of problem; and the role of science in this more distributed governance. This chapter identifies an interdisciplinary research agenda by unpacking these areas of inquiry and exploring the research methods that may lead to a deeper understanding of the role of government in adaptive governance.