The inter-community domain of commons governance: A framework for analyzing collaborative management of shared...

Of the polycentric lenses through which environmental governance is analyzed, the inter-community domain tends to receive less attention. When scholarly classifications focus on the community level, distinctions and interactions between different communities are often subsumed under a broad, general category of "community," thereby inadequately capturing the nuances of inter-community processes. However, managing non-excludable resources effectively usually requires coordinated action both within individual communities and between them; while local-level management is critical for developing context-specific rules, broader inter-community cooperation is essential for addressing trans-community challenges such as ecological interdependence, knowledge sharing, policy alignment, resource mobility, and management scale. While commons scholarship has traditionally emphasized cooperation and rule-making within communities, this paper argues that inter-community governance presents distinct institutional challenges and dynamics-such as coordinating across heterogeneous norms, resolving inter-group tensions, and developing shared governance across different community jurisdictions-that require focused analytical attention. These inter-community dynamics often parallel-and sometimes feed into-national and international negotiation processes, particularly where state policies or transboundary resource regimes intersect with local commons governance. This paper borrows insights from the liberal intergovernmentalism theory in International Relations to introduce an Inter-Community Institutional Framework for analyzing the dynamics of communal collaboration. The framework is applied to forestry and fisheries management on Buvuma Island in Lake Victoria to evaluate perceptions of environmental threats, intra-community interest in collaboration, negotiation processes, and institutional outcomes. The findings highlight that inter-community institutions are not simply an extension of local collective action but emerge through distinct processes shaped by shared threat perceptions, internal preferences for collaboration, and structured negotiation across community boundaries.