Introduction Andreas Thiel, William A. Blomquist and Dustin E. Garrick; Part I. Foundations for Understanding and Researching Polycentric Governance Mark Stephan and William A. Blomquist: 1. An introduction to polycentricity and governance Mark Stephan, Graham Marshall and Michael McGinnis; 2. Seeing polycentrically: examining governance situations using a polycentricity lens William A. Blomquist and Nadine Jenny Shirin Schroeder; 3. Foundational aspects of polycentric governance: overarching rules, social-problem characteristics and heterogeneity Andreas Thiel and Christine Moser-Priewich; 4. Evolutionary institutional change and performance in polycentric governance Andreas Thiel, Raúl Pacheco-Vega and Elizabeth Baldwin; Part II. Interactions and Performance in Polycentric Governance Tom Koontz and Dustin E. Garrick: Overview and Introduction Tom Koontz, Tanya Heikkila, Dustin E. Garrick and Sergio Villamayor-Tomas; 5. Cooperation in polycentric governance systems Tom Koontz; 6. Conflict and conflict resolution in polycentric governance systems Tanya Heikkila; 7. Competition in polycentric governance systems Dustin E. Garrick and Sergio Villamayor-Tomas; 8. Assessing performance in polycentric governance system interactions Tom Koontz, Tanya Heikkila, Dustin E. Garrick and Sergio Villamayor-Tomas; Part III. Constituting Polycentric Governance Graham Marshall and Andreas Thiel: 9. Polycentricity and citizenship in environmental governance Graham Marshall and Anas Malik; 10. The Faustian bargain: power-sharing, constitutions, and the practice of polycentricity in governance Vlad Tarko, Edella Schlager and Mark Lutter; 11. Practicing polycentric governance Bryan Bruns; Conclusions Andreas Thiel, William A. Blomquist and Dustin E. Garrick; References.