Maintaining Robust Resource Governance: Mechanisms of Formal Institutional Change in a Federal Bargain

• Main Author: Hanlon, Jeffrey Wyatt
• Other Authors: Schlager, Edella
• Language: en_US
• Published: The University of Arizona. 2015
• Subjects: institutions; natural resources; watershed management; Political Science; governance
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/577203

Watershed governance is an increasingly important policy area in the United States. Understanding what design elements of institutional arrangements tend to improve the outcomes of such governance is a major theoretical challenge. When governments cooperate at the regional level to govern shared use of watersheds that cross jurisdictional boundaries, how they do so is variable. This dissertation examines an apparently successful case of watershed governance, the New York City watershed governance arrangement, to understand to what degree it is integrative and reflective of broader federal structures and processes of governance. The results support the proposition that robust regional natural resource governance in a federal bargain includes mechanisms of correcting opportunistic behaviors, responding to natural phenomena, and institutional adaptation in the face of both.