IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1910.11337.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Coalition-structured governance improves cooperation to provide public goods

Author

Listed:
  • V'itor V. Vasconcelos
  • Phillip M. Hannam
  • Simon A. Levin
  • Jorge M. Pacheco

Abstract

While the benefits of common and public goods are shared, they tend to be scarce when contributions are provided voluntarily. Failure to cooperate in the provision or preservation of these goods is fundamental to sustainability challenges, ranging from local fisheries to global climate change. In the real world, such cooperative dilemmas occur in multiple interactions with complex strategic interests and frequently without full information. We argue that voluntary cooperation enabled across multiple coalitions (akin to polycentricity) not only facilitates greater generation of non-excludable public goods, but may also allow evolution toward a more cooperative, stable, and inclusive approach to governance. Contrary to any previous study, we show that these merits of multi-coalition governance are far more general than the singular examples occurring in the literature, and are robust under diverse conditions of excludability, congestability of the non-excludable public good, and arbitrary shapes of the return-to-contribution function. We first confirm the intuition that a single coalition without enforcement and with players pursuing their self-interest without knowledge of returns to contribution is prone to cooperative failure. Next, we demonstrate that the same pessimistic model but with a multi-coalition structure of governance experiences relatively higher cooperation by enabling recognition of marginal gains of cooperation in the game at stake. In the absence of enforcement, public-goods regimes that evolve through a proliferation of voluntary cooperative forums can maintain and increase cooperation more successfully than singular, inclusive regimes.

Suggested Citation

  • V'itor V. Vasconcelos & Phillip M. Hannam & Simon A. Levin & Jorge M. Pacheco, 2019. "Coalition-structured governance improves cooperation to provide public goods," Papers 1910.11337, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1910.11337
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.11337
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Downs, George W. & Rocke, David M. & Barsoom, Peter N., 1996. "Is the good news about compliance good news about cooperation?," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(3), pages 379-406, July.
    2. Ostrom,Elinor, 2015. "Governing the Commons," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107569782, October.
    3. Carraro, Carlo & Siniscalco, Domenico, 1993. "Strategies for the international protection of the environment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 309-328, October.
    4. Daniel H. Cole, 2015. "Advantages of a polycentric approach to climate change policy," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(2), pages 114-118, February.
    5. Jb Wiener & Rb Stewart & Jk Hammitt & Jc Hourcade, 2006. "Madison and climate change policy," Post-Print hal-00716779, HAL.
    6. Francisco C. Santos & Marta D. Santos & Jorge M. Pacheco, 2008. "Social diversity promotes the emergence of cooperation in public goods games," Nature, Nature, vol. 454(7201), pages 213-216, July.
    7. Phillip M. Hannam & Vítor V. Vasconcelos & Simon A. Levin & Jorge M. Pacheco, 2017. "Incomplete cooperation and co-benefits: deepening climate cooperation with a proliferation of small agreements," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 65-79, September.
    8. Stine Aakre & Steffen Kallbekken & Rita Van Dingenen & David G. Victor, 2018. "Incentives for small clubs of Arctic countries to limit black carbon and methane emissions," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 8(1), pages 85-90, January.
    9. Richard Stewart & Michael Oppenheimer & Bryce Rudyk, 2013. "A new strategy for global climate protection," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 120(1), pages 1-12, September.
    10. Vítor V. Vasconcelos & Francisco C. Santos & Jorge M. Pacheco, 2013. "A bottom-up institutional approach to cooperative governance of risky commons," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 3(9), pages 797-801, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John F. Raffensperger, 2020. "A price on warming with a supply chain directed market," Papers 2003.05114, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2021.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert Falkner, 2015. "A minilateral solution for global climate change? On bargaining efficiency, club benefits and international legitimacy," GRI Working Papers 197, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    2. Vadim A. Karatayev & V'itor V. Vasconcelos & Anne-Sophie Lafuite & Simon A. Levin & Chris T. Bauch & Madhur Anand, 2020. "A well-timed switch from local to global agreements accelerates climate change mitigation," Papers 2007.13238, arXiv.org.
    3. Phillip M. Hannam & Vítor V. Vasconcelos & Simon A. Levin & Jorge M. Pacheco, 2017. "Incomplete cooperation and co-benefits: deepening climate cooperation with a proliferation of small agreements," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 65-79, September.
    4. Xiaojie Chen & Attila Szolnoki, 2018. "Punishment and inspection for governing the commons in a feedback-evolving game," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(7), pages 1-15, July.
    5. Guo, H. & Jia, D. & Sendiña-Nadal, I. & Zhang, M. & Wang, Z. & Li, X. & Alfaro-Bittner, K. & Moreno, Y. & Boccaletti, S., 2021. "Evolutionary games on simplicial complexes," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    6. Alfredo Sirkis & J.C Hourcade & Dipak Dasgupta & Rogério Studart & Kevin Gallagher & B Perrissin-Fabert & José Eli da Veiga & Etienne Espagne & Michele Stua & Michel Aglietta, 2015. "Moving the trillions a debate on positive pricing of mitigation actions," Post-Print hal-01692638, HAL.
    7. Richard B. Stewart & Michael Oppenheimer & Bryce Rudyk, 2017. "Building blocks: a strategy for near-term action within the new global climate framework," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 1-13, September.
    8. Valentina Bosetti & Melanie Heugues & Alessandro Tavoni, 2017. "Luring others into climate action: coalition formation games with threshold and spillover effects," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(2), pages 410-431.
    9. Sigit Perdana & Rod Tyers, 2020. "Global Climate Change Mitigation: Strategic Incentives," The Energy Journal, , vol. 41(3), pages 183-206, May.
    10. Achim Hagen & Klaus Eisenack, 2015. "International Environmental Agreements with Asymmetric Countries: Climate Clubs vs. Global Cooperation," Working Papers 2015.58, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    11. Alessandro Tavoni & Simon Levin, 2014. "Managing the climate commons at the nexus of ecology, behaviour and economics," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 4(12), pages 1057-1063, December.
    12. Scott Barrett & Robert Stavins, 2003. "Increasing Participation and Compliance in International Climate Change Agreements," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 3(4), pages 349-376, December.
    13. Alain-Désiré Nimubona & Ahmet Ozkardas & Jean-Christophe Pereau, 2023. "Negotiations over the Provision of Multiple Ecosystem Services," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 84(2), pages 475-506, February.
    14. Jessica F. Green, 2017. "The strength of weakness: pseudo-clubs in the climate regime," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 41-52, September.
    15. Johannes Urpelainen, 2010. "Enforcing international environmental cooperation: Technological standards can help," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 475-496, December.
    16. David McEvoy & John Stranlund, 2009. "Self-enforcing International Environmental Agreements with Costly Monitoring for Compliance," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 42(4), pages 491-508, April.
    17. Mielke, Jahel & Steudle, Gesine A., 2018. "Green Investment and Coordination Failure: An Investors' Perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 88-95.
    18. David M. McEvoy & John K. Stranlund, 2006. "Enforcing ‘Self-Enforcing’ International Environmental Agreements," Working Papers 2006-6, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Resource Economics.
    19. David McEvoy, 2013. "Enforcing compliance with international environmental agreements using a deposit-refund system," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 481-496, November.
    20. Achim Hagen & Klaus Eisenack, 2019. "Climate Clubs Versus Single Coalitions: The Ambition Of International Environmental Agreements," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 10(03), pages 1-19, August.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1910.11337. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.