Dynamics of Intergovernmental Networks: Harnessing Agent-Based Modeling Simulations for Resilient Infrastructures

Agent-based models (ABS) can be deployed as policy informatics platforms to track resource flows and distributions under differential configurations of intergovernmental networks and shocks to the policy systems. This study provides a detailed application of a policy informatics platform in the contested arena of transportation policy implementation networks across federal, the state of Vermont, and its regional and local governments. Through this policy informatics platform, two specific questions are addressed: (1) How the allocation and distribution of federal and state funding resources for transportation infrastructure development projects changes under different configurations of weighting state versus regional versus local government priorities? (2) How do different shocks to the intergovernmental policy system, such as increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and/or federally mandated funding sequestrations, influence the distribution of financial resources across regional and local governments? A pattern-oriented, ABM of a transportation governance network, calibrated for the state of Vermont including its regional and local town governments, is presented. This ABM simulates the dynamics of transportation project prioritization processes under alternate intergovernmental institutional rule structures and variable frequencies of shocks to assess their impacts on financial investment flows from federal to state, regional, and local scale governments. Multiple focus groups, individual interviews, and analysis of federal, state, and regional scale transportation project and program data informed the development of this ABM. This study demonstrates a practical and detailed application of a policy informatics platform by showing how ABM simulations may be used to evaluate the design of intergovernmental policy implementation networks under differential frequencies and intensities of shocks to policy systems and their impacts on policy outcomes.

"Implementation and evaluation are the opposite sides of the same coin, implementation providing the experience that evaluation interrogates and evaluation providing the intelligence to make sense out of what is happening" (Pressman & Wildavsky 1984, p. xv).