When Urbanization Leads to Governance Beyond the State: Network of Actors Along an Urbanization Gradient in Bengaluru, India

The rapid growth and expansion of cities in the global South has altered the values, perceptions, actor groups and thus dominant institutional and governance structures influencing management and access of local common pool resources. In this paper, we explore how urban transformation and changes in...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Arvind Lakshmisha, Harini Nagendra
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Utrecht University Library Open Access Journals (Publishing Services) 2025-02-01
Series:International Journal of the Commons
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Online Access:https://account.thecommonsjournal.org/index.php/up-j-ijc/article/view/1369
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Summary:The rapid growth and expansion of cities in the global South has altered the values, perceptions, actor groups and thus dominant institutional and governance structures influencing management and access of local common pool resources. In this paper, we explore how urban transformation and changes in governance have influenced interactions of actors involved in commons (lake) management, with selected cases along an rural-urban gradient in the Greater Bengaluru Metropolitan Region (GBMR). We map the actors, actively and directly involved in lake management, and the interactions between them along an interconnected series of lakes, to identify five broad types of interactions: cooperation, conflict, competition, resistance and passive acceptance. Visualising the network of actors along the gradient, we highlight that the actor networks are fragmented based on municipal boundaries. We find that there is an increase in the non-state actors as we move along the rural-urban gradient highlighting diverse forms of polycentric governance arrangement with urbanisation. We find passive acceptance and resistance as predominant forms of interactions in rural areas and cooperation in urban areas. We find that with an increase in non-state actors there has been a shift from a state of dependence to a state of engagement between communities and the state actors leading to governance beyond the state.
ISSN:1875-0281