Governing the large-scale urban commons : a multi-scalar institutional analysis of energy transitions in Taiwan

Abstract

Domestic development of renewable energies is considered a viable option in energy policy to reduce global carbon emissions. However, despite the initiatives of the national government, massive inaction for the production of renewable energies integral to energy transitions remains prevalent due to high complexity and uncertainty. While the literature suggests specific co-production arrangements between the state actors and the non-state actors at multiple scales as the solution, how a strong multi-scalar state affects its effectiveness is under-researched. To address this research gap, this study takes an institutional political-economic approach and conceptualizes the development of solar energy distributed across a large-scale energy infrastructure as the dynamic co-production of an “urban infrastructural good”. It explores the multiple conditions under which the sets of institutions involving the state actors and the non-state actors at multiple scales, or the large-scale urban commons, can effectively co-produce such good with inclusive coordination in the context of a democratic unitary system and state developmentalism where the central government is dominant over other organizational actors in Taiwan. Drawing principally from the theories of polycentric governance and urban commons, this study specifically examines the institutional linkage that coordinates the state actors across multiple scales; the institutional foundation of persistent experimentalism that facilitates resource pooling for institutional changes; and the institutions that foster conflict resolution to sustain the changes. With a research design of comparative case studies, this study comprises two main analyses with the principal employment of Qualitative Comparative Analysis and Process Tracing Analysis to evaluate 19 cases of locality at the local scale and 12 cases of civic initiatives at the communal scale, identifying the empirical models which are conducive to the co-production of distributed solar energy as a manifestation of early energy transitions. Based on these empirical models, this study argues that 1) permissive geographical condition, 2) strong public entrepreneurship, 3) strong informal network across a governance system, and 4) functional organizational capacity of a networked group embedded in the governance system are the antecedent conditions that facilitate the institutional change for the co-production of distributed solar energy. The institutional change can be effectively sustained by varying sets of institutions in a democratic unitary system with state developmentalism, but unequivocally underscored by three institutional mechanisms: 1) The institutional congruence with local/communal political institutions for conflict resolution; 2) The strategic inclusion of new actors for resource pooling with differential group membership; and 3) The relatively equal participation in collective-choice making for the involved actors to keep them in the collective action. Overall, these findings point to the institutional logics in the effective governance of the large-scale urban commons with a democratic developmental state: To afford the decision-making centres in a governance system the locus of control at the scale they operate for conflict resolution, and to allow the autonomy for them to craft their own membership rules and manage internal resource distribution so that they are willing to mutually respond to the needs of other decision-making centres through adjustments over time.