The Role of Cross‐Scale Institutional Linkages in Common Pool Resource Management: Assessing Interstate River Compacts*

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 shared resources, 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 the CPR design 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.

Legal and institutional foundations of adaptive environmental governance

“…[Example:] 2012 NYC Watershed Memorandum of Agreement, South Platte River Compact in context of the Platte River Recovery and Implementation Program (Birge et al 2014), and traditional community-based irrigation governance (e.g., Cox 2014), which have external and internal mechanisms to monitor and regulate stakeholder compliance, e.g., water usage and deliveries (see also, Heikkila et al 2011). …”

Linking multi-level governance to local common-pool resource theory using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis: Insights from twenty years of biodiversity conservation in Costa Rica

“…In the Costa Rican context of this paper, a ''linkage'' is defined as ''a formal rule, strategy, or regularized action that establishes interdependencies among two distinct actors around different tasks'' (Heikkila et al, 2011). Based on this definition, the two main tasks on which I focused to identify the linkages for this study consisted of finding interdependencies that could (1) increase local institution's bargaining position to wrestle autonomy from the central government and/or (2) increase local institutions' access to financial or political resources to maintain or increase the autonomy wrestled from the central government.…”

“…Further, I suggest that to adequately do the above, we also need to move away from the interpretation of facilitating conditions as conditions that must be present or absent for the outcome to occur -and toward the study of configurations of conditions. While the call for the study of configurational institutional analysis is not new (Cox, 2011;Heikkila et al, 2011;Rudd et al, 2003;Rudel, 2005;Schlager, 2002), the approach illustrated here relies on fsQCA -a tool designed to study configurational relationships.…”

“…The idea of a diagnostic approach has been embedded and developed further into a multi-tiered framework for the study of social-ecological systems (Ostrom, 2009). The social-ecological system (SES) framework can highlight the role that multi-level linkages play in generating CPR dilemmas, and the processes of collective action that can address those dilemmas (Heikkila et al, 2011).…”

Multi-level governance for large marine commons: Politics and polycentricity in Palau's protected area network

“…A critical research frontier is the governance of larger CPRs, which requires analysis of interdependencies among different levels and scales of more complex systems (Heikkila et al, 2011;Ostrom, 2009). We take Elinor Ostrom's design principle of polycentric, nested enterprises in long enduring, larger CPR systems as a starting point for interdisciplinary research on the governance of large CPRs (Marshall, 2008).…”