Self‐Organizing Policy Networks: Risk, Partner Selection, and Cooperation in Estuaries

Policy actors seek network contacts to improve individual payoffs in the institutional collective action dilemmas endemic to fragmented policy arenas. The risk hypothesis argues that actors seek bridging relationships (well‐connected, popular partners that maximize their access to information) when cooperation involves low risks, but seek bonding relationships (transitive, reciprocal relationships that maximize credibility) when risks of defection increase. We test this hypothesis in newly developing policy arenas expected to favor relationships that resolve low‐risk dilemmas. A stochastic actor‐based model for network evolution estimated with survey data from 1999 and 2001 in 10 U.S. estuaries finds that…