Edella Schlager

Political Pitfalls of Integrated Watershed Management

ABSTRACT Integrated watershed management, preferably under the direction of a watershed or basin management body, has been prescribed in the water policy literature and from other quarters for decades. Few instances may be found where this recommendation has been implemented. This gap between prescription and practice is sometimes attributed to politics, as a sort of nuisance to be overcome or avoided through rational, comprehensive, consensus-based decision making. Fundamental political considerations are inherent in water resources management, however, and are unavoidable even if the desire for watershed-scale decision-making bodies were realized. Boundary definition, choices about decision-making arrangements, and issues of accountability will arise in any watershed and may help to explain why watershed management has more often taken polycentric organizational forms composed of subwatershed communities of interest. An example of a small Southern California watershed is used to highlight the political issues inherent in attempts at watershed management.

Policy making and collective action: Defining coalitions within the advocacy coalition framework

Research on policy communities, policy networks, and advocacy coalitions represents the most recent effort by policy scholars in North America and Europe to meaningfully describe and explain the complex, dynamic policy making processes of modern societies. While work in this tradition has been extraordinarily productive, issues of collective action have not been carefully addressed. Focusing on the advocacy coalitions (AC) framework developed by Sabatier (1988) and Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993) as an example of a productive research program within the policy network tradition, this article (1) examines the potential of the AC framework, with its emphasis on beliefs, policy learning, and preference formation, to provide richer explanations of policy making processes than frameworks grounded exclusively in instrumental rationality; (2) suggests that paradoxically, however, the AC framework can more fully realize its potential by admitting the explanations of collective action from frameworks based on instrumental rationality; (3) incorporates within the AC framework accounts of how coalitions form and maintain themselves over time and of the types of strategies coalitions are likely to adopt to pursue their policy goals; and (4) derives falsifiable collective action hypotheses that can be empirically tested to determine whether incorporating theories of collective action within the AC framework represents a positive, rather than a degenerative, expansion of the AC framework.

A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process

In an earlier review of political theories of the policy process, Sabatier (1991) challenged political scientists and policy scholars to improve theoretical understanding of policy processes. This essay responds by comparing and building upon three emerging theoretical frameworks: Sabatiers advocacy coalitions framework (ACF), institutional rational choice (IRC), and Moes political theory of bureaucracy, which he calls the politics of structural choice (SC). The frameworks are compared using six criteria: (1) the bound aries of inquiry; (2) the model of the individual; (3) the roles of informa tion and beliefs in decision making and strategy; (4) the nature and role of groups; (5) the concept of levels of action; and (6) the ability to explain action at various stages of the policy process. Comparison reveals that each framework has promising components, but each remains short of provid ing a full explanation of the processes of policy formation and change. Directions for future theory development and empirical examination are discussed.

Rationality, Cooperation, and Common Pool Resources

Substantial dissatisfaction has emerged with the conceptualization of natural resource problems and individual decision making as represented in the tragedy of the commons model by Garret Hardin. A research program devoted to developing a theory of common pool resources that accounts for both successes and failures of cooperation among appropriators using common pool resources is reviewed. The theory identifies a set of configural attributes of resources and appropriators that, if present, support the emergence of self-governing arrangements. The model of individual decision making on which the tragedy of the commons is based—perfect rationality—is also challenged. Perfect rationality cannot account for cooperation. Alternative models of decision making are explored.

Managing hydroclimatic risks in federal rivers: A diagnostic assessment

Hydroclimatic risks and adaptive capacity are not distributed evenly in large river basins of federal countries, where authority is divided across national and territorial governments. Transboundary river basins are a major test of federal systems of governance because key management roles exist at all levels. This paper examines the evolution and design of interstate water allocation institutions in semi-arid federal rivers prone to drought extremes, climatic variability and intensified competition for scarce water. We conceptualize, categorize and compare federal rivers as social–ecological systems to analyse the relationship between governance arrangements and hydroclimatic risks. A diagnostic approach is used to map over 300 federal rivers and classify the hydroclimatic risks of three semi-arid federal rivers with a long history of interstate allocation tensions: the Colorado River (USA/Mexico), Ebro River (Spain) and Murray–Darling River (Australia). Case studies review the evolution and design of water allocation institutions. Three institutional design trends have emerged: adoption of proportional interstate allocation rules; emergence of multi-layered river basin governance arrangements for planning, conflict resolution and joint monitoring; and new flexibility to adjust historic allocation patterns. Proportional allocation rules apportion water between states based on a share of available water, not a fixed volume or priority. Interstate allocation reform efforts in the Colorado and Murray–Darling rivers indicate that proportional allocation rules are prevalent for upstream states, while downstream states seek reliable deliveries of fixed volumes to increase water security. River basin governance arrangements establish new venues for multilayered planning, monitoring and conflict resolution to balance self governance by users and states with basin-wide coordination. Flexibility to adjust historic allocation agreements, without risk of defection or costly court action, also provides adaptive capacity to manage climatic variability and shifting values. Future research should develop evidence about pathways to adaptive capacity in different classes of federal rivers, while acknowledging limits to transferability and the need for context-sensitive design.

Legal and institutional foundations of adaptive environmental governance

Legal and institutional structures fundamentally shape opportunities for adaptive governance of environmental resources at multiple ecological and societal scales. Properties of adaptive governance are widely studied. However, these studies have not resulted in consolidated frameworks for legal and institutional design, limiting our ability to promote adaptation and social-ecological resilience. We develop an overarching framework that describes the current and potential role of law in enabling adaptation. We apply this framework to different social-ecological settings, centers of activity, and scales, illustrating the multidimensional and polycentric nature of water governance. Adaptation typically emerges organically among multiple centers of agency and authority in society as a relatively self-organized or autonomous process marked by innovation, social learning, and political deliberation. This self-directed and emergent process is difficult to create in an exogenous, top-down fashion. However, traditional centers of authority may establish enabling conditions for adaptation using a suite of legal, economic, and democratic tools to legitimize and facilitate self-organization, coordination, and collaboration across scales. The principles outlined here provide preliminary legal and institutional foundations for adaptive environmental governance, which may inform institutional design and guide future scholarship.

Regime shifts and panarchies in regional scale social-ecological water systems

In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. We summarize resilience assessments conducted in each system to provide a synthesis and reference by the other articles in this special feature. We also present a general framework used to evaluate the interactions between society and ecosystem regimes and the governance regimes chosen to mediate those interactions. The case studies show different ways that adaptive governance may be triggered, facilitated, or constrained by ecological and/or legal processes. The resilience assessments indicate that complex interactions among the governance and ecosystem components of these systems can produce different trajectories, which include patterns of (a) development and stabilization, (b) cycles of crisis and recovery, which includes lurches in adaptation and learning, and (3) periods of innovation, novelty, and transformation. Exploration of cross scale (Panarchy) interactions among levels and sectors of government and society illustrate that they may constrain development trajectories, but may also provide stability during crisis or innovation at smaller scales; create crises, but may also facilitate recovery; and constrain system transformation, but may also provide windows of opportunity in which transformation, and the resources to accomplish it, may occur. The framework is the starting point for our exploration of how law might play a role in enhancing the capacity of social-ecological systems to adapt to climate change.

Narrative Policy Framework: Contributions, Limitations, and Recommendations

Narrative policy framework (NPF) is a relatively new framework that has become a common approach for understanding the role of stories in various aspects of public affairs. This edited volume provides an overview of the NPF, offers a comprehensive review of the applications to date, and consists of eight original empirical applications. The objectives of this chapter are to review the collection as a whole, assess some of the general contributions and limitations of the NPF, and offer constructive recommendations for advancing the research program.

Conjunctive Management Through Collective Action

This chapter focuses on the interaction between conjunctive management and collective action. Collective action has several characteristics that provide a natural ‘fit’ with conjunctive management. These include building trust and ownership to enhance water user’s acceptance of the need for better and more integrated management and resolving conflict and facilitating trade-offs between and across water users. But what are the opportunities and challenges for conjunctive management through collective action? And what types of settings encourage broad-based collective action by water users and governments? These questions are addressed through a comparative analysis of specific instances of groundwater governance in Australia, Spain, and the western United States of America. For each case, the diverse policy and institutional settings are explained, and consideration given to the motivators for, and successes of, conjunctive management and collective action. The chapter draws comparisons across the cases to suggest lessons on incentives for conjunctive management, as well as exploring its challenges, before identifying future directions for more effective integrated water management.

Institutional adaptation and effectiveness over 18 years of the New York city watershed governance arrangement

ABSTRACT In 1997, an unlikely group of governments, nonprofit organizations, and interest groups signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to share governance of the adjacent Catskill and Delaware watersheds in the Catskills mountains of New York. At stake was the quality of the source for 90% of New York City’s municipal water, and the livelihoods and interests of the communities in the watersheds. The agreement was celebrated as an example of how regional approaches to water management may be possible in ways that promote equity, power sharing, economic growth, and resource protection, but has not since been assessed along those terms since a National Research Council report in 2000. Using interviews with governance actors, meeting minutes from a key decision-making forum, legal and policy documents, and 2015 survey data of policy actors, this article presents a retrospective of the first 18 years following the signing of the MOA to identify keys to its function as a living and changing policy system in the face of political and ecological change. As an example of adaptive co-management, the case is a rich and crucial test for large-scale regional watershed management, and presents insights for other large city watersheds.