Overview: This chapter explores three closely related questions in the context of federal, transboundary river basins: (1) How does the institutional design and structure of polycentric river basin organizations address and dampen opportunism, particularly shirking and burden shifting? More specifically is opportunism more problematic in river basins in which governing arrangements are not well matched to the physical setting, or provide for little flexibility in responding to disturbances? (2) As problems and conflicts among governments are addressed over time, are the capacities of polycentric river basic organizations to adapt to changing hydrological regimes enhances? That is, as states respond to problems and conflicts whose sources are either in changing biophysical settings or in opportunism issues, do they invest in institutional capacity that allow them to better manage both challenges?(3) How is adaptation, both to existing and anticipated hydrologic variability a function of institutional design?
Schlager, Edella, Kirsten Engel, and Sally Rider, eds. Navigating Climate Change Policy: The Opportunities of Federalism. University of Arizona Press, 2011.
Description: This timely volume challenges the notion that because climate change is inherently a global problem, only coordinated actions on a global scale can lead to a solution. It considers the perspective that since climate change itself has both global and local causes and implications, the most effective policies for adapting to and mitigating climate change must involve governments and communities at many different levels.
Federalism—the system of government in which power is divided among a national government and state and regional governments—is well-suited to address the challenges of climate change because it permits distinctive policy responses at a variety of scales. The chapters in this book explore questions such as what are appropriate relationships between states, tribes, and the federal government as each actively pursues climate-change policies? How much leeway should states have in designing and implementing climate-change policies, and how extensively should the federal government exercise its preemption powers to constrain state activity? What climate-change strategies are states best suited to pursue, and what role, if any, will regional state-based collaborations and associations play? This book examines these questions from a variety of perspectives, blending legal and policy analyses to provide thought-provoking coverage of how governments in a federal system cooperate, coordinate, and accommodate one another to address this global problem.
Navigating Climate Change Policy is an essential resource for policymakers and judges at all levels of government who deal with questions of climate governance. It will also serve as an important addition to the curriculum on climate change and environmental policy in graduate and undergraduate courses and will be of interest to anyone concerned with how the government addresses environmental issues.
Emerson, Kirk. “Collaborative Management and Climate Change.” In Edella Schlager, Kirsten Engel and Sally Rider (eds.). Navigating Climate Change Policy: The Opportunities of Federalism. The University of Arizona Press. 2011
Heikkila, Tanya, Edella Schlager, and Mark W. Davis. "The Role of Cross‐Scale Institutional Linkages in Common Pool Resource Management: Assessing Interstate River Compacts*." Policy Studies Journal 39, no. 1 (2011): 121-145.
Abstract: This article extends the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework’s seminal research on common pool resource (CPR) management in new directions by exploring how the design principles of robust and enduring CPR management, initially proposed by Elinor Ostrom in 1990, can be used to measure and assess cross-scale institutional linkages. This study examines data from 14 interstate river basin compacts in the western United States to identify the types of linkages established in these interstate settings, the factors that contribute to the emergence of diverse types of linkages around these sharedresources, and how different types of linkages perform. Using Ostrom’s CPR design principles to operationalize and measure linkages, the study shows that diverse types of cross-scale linkages were created under the 14 interstate compacts, with linkages related to monitoring found to be particularly prevalent. The types and diversity of linkages can largely be explained by the conditions under which compacts emerged and the water management issues states jointly face. In applying the evaluative criteria operationalized by theCPRdesign principles, this research further shows that the monitoring and collective choice linkages created by compacts tend to be of higher quality, while enforcement and conflict resolution linkages appeared to be of the lowest quality. In addition to developing the IAD literature on CPR management, these findings offer critical insights for assessing the capacity of interstate river basin compacts in the western United States to manage shared resources successfully, as well as insights for what types of institutional investments may be needed for enhanced resource governance. Download this paper here.
