On multi-level governance models, structures, and open knowledge

This blog post serves as an exploratory and developmental process for my PhD. Its focus is on the academic literature I engage with, presented in a blog format, against the backdrop of professional contexts. A blogging approach enables exploration of the ties between research and practice, supporting reflexivity.

Licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY-4.0), except for any content quoted from third-party sources or where otherwise noted. Quoted material remains under the copyright of its respective owners.

Over time, my research has begun to focus on developing a governance model for open knowledge diplomacy in the context of Australian university libraries (Figure 1). It draws on both empirical evidence (interviews and open publishing data), with a climate scholarship case study, and a theoretical lens that draws on critical disability studies, International Relations, and library and scholarly communications literature.

In my research, I distinguish governance models from structures. I define a model as the overarching logic and principles that determine how decision-making, norms, accountability, and power are reflected (such as participatory, two-way, or inclusive and cooperative governance models), and structure as the mechanisms and processes in practice when a model is implemented (such as roles, reporting lines, and committees). A governance model can then encompass and be implemented through different structures, depending on the context. ¹

Over time, relational style governance models in knowledge production have contributed significantly to my research, especially those grounded in local and community-driven philosophies, such as in Adema’s and Moore’s Scaling Small and Leonelli’s Philosophy of Open Science.

Reading through Moore’s ‘Exploring models for community governance‘ (2021) (focused on scholarly communication), there is the principle that “good governance is situated, i.e., it is highly specific to the resource and community in question.” Adema and Moore (2021) also describe how COPIM governance and its publishing ecosystem are situated (preserving local contexts) while still having global reach.

Such discussions touch on the challenge of how good governance of open knowledge can remain situated, while also recognising that it operates across a global, multi-sector, multi-actor, and multi-level ecosystem. There’s also an additional challenge that ‘Open’ as a term has different histories, as well as different political connotations, interests, and motivations and schools of thought.

As a challenge, this isn’t new for open scholarship governance. Knowledge Exchange’s (KE) Open Scholarship Framework flags:

“The lack of good templates for governance and regulation, particularly ones that can operate across the whole ecosystem, is a substantial challenge” (2019, p. 27).

It’s clear that conversations and models are continuing to develop around multi-level open scholarship governance, especially in open science spaces. For example, Wyber (2026) discusses the political science of open science with a matrix approach, and Cojocaru and Cojocaru (2026) examine ‘Multi-Level Governance of Open Science in the Republic of Moldova amidst EU Accession.’

Multi-level governance

Multi-level governance first appeared in my research in the context of climate governance and diplomacy. Multi-level governance (or MLG) refers to:

“…systems of governance where there is a dispersion of authority upwards, downwards and sideways between levels of government – local, regional, national and supra-national – as well as across spheres and sectors, including states, markets and civil society” (Daniell & Kay, 2017, p. 4).

Climate governance rests on the systems and mechanisms (including diplomacy) required to address climate change internationally, spans multiple levels (local, national, regional, global), and involves multiple actors (both state and non-state).

We already see open science and knowledge (largely through science and knowledge diplomacy) adopting an MLG approach, similar to climate diplomacy. Hernandez (2021, p. 89) describes knowledge diplomacy as a “multi-level (e.g., global and national) process of joint decision-making, using the art and science of negotiations.”

Last year, I noted that open knowledge diplomacy requires engaging with different ‘scales of governance’ and multiple actors, which also reflect different levels of analysis (to borrow an International Relations term). That is, varied networks of actors (and their governance systems and mechanisms) as building relationships and initiatives that are horizontal and vertical, as well as both top-down and bottom-up. I also noted that focusing exclusively on macro (that is, state-level actors or bodies with regulatory authority) can miss interests and drivers for behaviour at other levels.

In this international context, Bulkeley (2010) describes how it is no longer the case that decisions are seen as “cascading down levels vertically.” Instead, we find that local actors employ their own discrete strategies to realise participation at different scales within multi-level governance relations.

KE’s Open Scholarship Framework also defines actors in open scholarship across three levels of scale as micro (individuals), meso (groups, organisations, and institutions), and macro (systematic and regulatory authority), alongside different ‘arenas’ (political, economic, social, and technological). The framework recognises that a focus on meso-level behaviour is needed in the transition to open scholarship.

Trust, access, transparency, and identity

There is, of course, a need to continue building our understanding of what multi-level governance for open knowledge looks like in a complex, ever-changing landscape. That means directly engaging with governance questions concerning public trust (in institutions, research, and scholarly outputs), access and transparency (beyond scholarly outputs and governance outcomes), and community identity (including scholarly, institutional, and national).

University libraries have a role as knowledge brokers within governance structures, as actors at the ‘meso’ level. However, stepping back further, their contributions to community identity and trust, and facilitating access, also provides different perspectives and positionalities for governance models. It’s also worth noting that university libraries exist as meso-actors that sit within other meso-actors, namely universities. And while meso-actor behaviour is considered significant to changing the scholarly landscape, universities are regarded in the KE Open Scholarship Framework (2019, p. 87) as being

“amongst the weakest collective actors… . They are effective perhaps at blocking change, but not generally at enacting it.”

In the Australian context, multi-level governance for open knowledge (or scholarship) means engaging with sector conversations on universities’ social license and understanding the position and function of libraries within the ‘idea of the university,’ and how knowledge production, trust, and community intersect with these.

Community governance norms, such as trust, are not “something that can be completely organised through rules and board structures” (to borrow Moore’s (2023) words). As such, trust – thick or thin, cognitive or affective – as a norm, needs to be part of conversations around governance models. Building and maintaining trust is not ‘one-size-fits-all,’ especially when it comes to multi-level governance with diverse community contexts. And different level actors won’t have the same local knowledge, trust, or community capital to effect change or build systems.

Engaging with governance models in open knowledge requires going beyond structural and compliance understandings of governance to also examining the underlying assumptions, challenges, motivations, behaviours, and principles that guide decision-making (E.g., community identities and histories, power asymmetries, trust at different scales, accountability in non-hierarchical structures, and legitimacy).

None of this makes it easy to have a governance model ‘template’ that covers an entire knowledge ecosystem, especially with less-than-tangible concepts like trust. However, multi-level governance (along with other models) can help recognise the complexity of the open scholarly landscape and acknowledge local differences in practices and communities without flattening them.

1. Different conceptions of governance do exist across different contexts and disciplines. ↩︎