Paper Info
Title
The emergence of attractors under multi-level institutional designs: agent-based modeling of intergovernmental decision making for funding transportation projects.
Abstract
Multi-level institutional designs with distributed power and authority arrangements among federal, state, regional, and local government agencies could lead to the emergence of differential patterns of socioeconomic and infrastructure development pathways in complex social–ecological systems. Both exogenous drivers and endogenous processes in social–ecological systems can lead to changes in the number of “basins of attraction,” changes in the positions of the basins within the state space, and changes in the positions of the thresholds between basins. In an effort to advance the theory and practice of the governance of policy systems, this study addresses a narrower empirical question: how do intergovernmental institutional rules set by federal, state, and regional government agencies generate and sustain basins of attraction in funding infrastructure projects? A pattern-oriented, agent-based model (ABM) of an intergovernmental network has been developed to simulate real-world transportation policy implementation processes across the federal, the state of Vermont, regional, and local governments for prioritizing transportation projects. The ABM simulates baseline and alternative intergovernmental institutional rule structures and assesses their impacts on financial investment flows. The ABM was calibrated with data from multiple focus groups, individual interviews, and analysis of federal, state, and regional scale transportation projects and programs. The results from experimental simulations are presented to test system-wide effects of alternative multi-level institutional designs, in particular different power and authority arrangements between state and regional governments, on the emergence of roadway project prioritization patterns and funding allocations across regions and towns.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1007/s00146-013-0527-2
AI & Society
Keywords
Field
DocType
Institutional design, Intergovernmental relations, Infrastructure development, Agent-based modeling, Complex systems, Basins of attraction, Network governance
Distributed power,Corporate governance,Local government,Network governance,Computer science,Knowledge management,Regional science,State space,Focus group,Government,Socioeconomic status
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
30
3
1435-5655
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
2
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Asim Zia121.72
christopher koliba201.01