Abstract
Monitoring and enforcement have been recognized as keys for sustainable common pool resource governance. With a couple of notable exceptions, however, scholars have not examined how they are deployed when governments are the primary actors devising such agreements and where multiple public goods are provided for – an important level of governance to understand. We explore the design of monitoring and enforcement safeguards that governments adopt to limit opportunism and support compliance in a complex governing arrangement, the New York City Watersheds Memorandum of Agreement. The agreement defines how New York City and a group of watershed jurisdictions jointly manage a shared natural resource. Furthermore, we test how the design of such safeguards vary depending on the type of public good they cover, illuminating how “federal” safeguards may work at the sub-state level, and, ultimately, the particular form of polycentric governance being used. The results indicate that concerns for water quality as well as potential for opportunistic behavior drive institutional design considerations. Monitoring and sanctioning authority for water quality is dominated by state and federal actors, which hold New York City to account, while watershed jurisdictions are held responsible by regional actors for administration of economic development goods.
Highlights
Common pool resource (CPR) scholarship has consistently recognized the importance of monitoring resource characteristics and resource user actions to encourage compliance with institutional arrangements (Ostrom 1990, 1999, 2005; Gibson et al, 2005; Chhatre and Agrawal, 2008). Ostrom (1990) alerted scholars to the importance of monitoring systems characterized by monitors accountable to resource users; graduated sanctioning for rule violators; and low cost conflict resolution mechanisms to settle compliance disputes
No longer would watershed jurisdictions and organizations avail themselves of the courts to check the actions of the city; rather, disputes and grievances were to be brought before the Watershed Protection Partnership Council (WPPC) (MOA, Article IV)
If the city failed in its commitment to properly fund public goods arrangements, the watershed jurisdictions could have the land acquisition programs suspended; and, if the watershed jurisdictions pursued their grievances in court, the city could suspend its funding of public goods (MOA, Article V)
Summary
Common pool resource (CPR) scholarship has consistently recognized the importance of monitoring resource characteristics and resource user actions to encourage compliance with institutional arrangements (Ostrom 1990, 1999, 2005; Gibson et al, 2005; Chhatre and Agrawal, 2008). Ostrom (1990) alerted scholars to the importance of monitoring systems characterized by monitors accountable to resource users; graduated sanctioning for rule violators; and low cost conflict resolution mechanisms to settle compliance disputes. From meta-case analysis (Blomquist 1992; Tang 1992; Schlager, 1994), to lab experiments (Ostrom, Walker, and Gardner, 1992), to large-n field studies (Lam, 1998) provided support for the design principles working in this complementary fashion to produce robust resource governance (Schlager, 2004). It was not just the presence or absence of such mechanisms that mattered; rather it was the form that the mechanisms took and the types of actors in the role of monitors that affected performance. Scholars continue to produce studies identifying the design principles in action (e.g. Quinn et al, 2007; Villamayor-Tomas et al, 2014), exploring how the design principles may be scaled up to explain intergovernmental cooperation (e.g. Heikkila et al, 2011; Dietz et al, 2003), characterizing the conditions in which design principles may emerge in selfgoverning arrangements (e.g. McCay, 2002; Coleman & Steed, 2009), theorizing about how differences
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