Thesis or Dissertation
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Thesis or Dissertation Strategic Commoning, Amalgamating the Right People at the Right Place and Time(2022) Kamm, MoniekCollective actions in support of sustainable development are gaining momentum. Rooted in place-bound contexts, constituents from various societal realms craft collaborative solutions for wicked problems associated with sustainable development. They invest multiple means and resources and share the revenues of their collective efforts. Learning by doing, they craft organizational constructs to create and capture multiple, shared, and collective values. By aiming for long-term impact, these collective actions become strategic. Integrating strategic management and collective action theories, this study explores the nature and scope of such stragegic endeavors. The study introduces the concept op Strategic Commoning: collaborative strategy development for collective actions that address wicked problems related to sustainable development. The study finds that various organizational constructs emerge for 'entrepreneuring' in collective actions. Taking their place-bound, multiple value creating, and collaborative foundations as a common denominator, this dissertation brings a strategic perspective to place-based collective actions.Thesis or Dissertation Indigenous Fish and Wildlife Co-management as an Opportunity to Support Inuit Well-being(2020) Snook, Jamie"Inuit in the Circumpolar North are closely tied to the lands, waters, and wildlife, which underpin livelihoods, food, cultural continuity, and well-being. Co-management institutions in Canada—arising from Inuit treaties—were created to increase the inclusion of Inuit voices and Inuit knowledge in recommendations about wildlife management. Co-management decisions have important implications for Inuit well-being; however, research has yet to explicitly explore how co-management decisions can enhance and impact Inuit well-being. Therefore, this dissertation research characterized how wildlife co-management impacts well-being in Inuit Nunangat. An Indigenous co-management-led research approach was used, which drew from decolonizing methodologies, boundary work theory, and community-based research principles. First, systematic critical review methods uncovered no publications that explicitly analysed co-management from a health or well-being lens; however, social determinants of health were implicit and prevalent in the literature. Responding to this research gap, data were then collected through conversational research interviews with co-management practitioners throughout Inuit Nunangat (n=21 interviews), and with Inuit in Nunatsiavut (n=21 interviews). Qualitative data were deductively and inductively analysed using a constant comparative method and thematic analysis. Co-management practitioners described how co-management institutions can act as boundary work organizations and how the social determinants of health could be integrated inside the shared space of co-management. Nunatsiavut Inuit underscored the importance of considering the determinants of health in co-management decision-making processes. For instance, Inuit explained how historic conservation management decisions had disrupted important connections among caribou and Inuit, particularly related to food, culture, and well-being; the socio-cultural and emotional impacts of the criminalization of an important cultural practice, as well as perceived inequities in wildlife conservation enforcement; and the frustration, anger, and hurt they experienced with not being heard or included in caribou management decisions. Similarly, Inuit reflected on how commercial fisheries remain a social struggle with multiple injustices, and identified opportunities for Inuit well-being indicators to be integrated into baseline monitoring and to measure progress. These results provide insights into experiences of historic and ongoing colonial wildlife management decisions, and highlight future directions for co-management initiatives—emphasising the health and well-being of Inuit and wildlife."Thesis or Dissertation Visions of Democracy in the Information Society: The Theories of Daniel Bell, Manuel Castells, and Yochai Benkler(2020) Katsanevas, Andreas"In this dissertation, I unearth the common threads and subtle evolution of democratic ideals in mainstream theories of the information society that span over thirty years. I apply the lens of democratic theory, with a primary focus on liberal and republican traditions, to perform a close reading of seminal works such as Daniel Bell’s (1973) Post-Industrial Society, Manuel Castells’ (1996; 1997; 1998) Information Age trilogy, and Yochai Benkler’s (2006) Wealth of Networks. Through a comparative analysis, I expose the democratic canvas upon which these scholars paint their images of a rising social organization that is structured around flows of information and knowledge. Two democratic axioms stand at the center of an emergent model of information democracy. The first axiom prescribes the ideal democratic subject with the affective trait of social awareness; this model of democracy, I argue, presumes that its citizens are always ready and willing to understand, to share, and to empathize with others in their community. The second axiom refers to the idea that technologically facilitated communication can help deliver, grow, and sustain the individual citizens’ capacity for social awareness. Flows of information operate as the democratic citizens’ eyes and ears into the lives of others, facilitating mutual understanding. Thus, democracy in the information society realizes the common good through the affective orientation of each and every individual towards the social other, and through flows of information and knowledge that support such an orientation. The presence of these two axioms allows these scholars, in turn, to weld two ideals usually considered antithetical to each other – the liberal ideal of individual freedom and the republican ideal of the common good."Thesis or Dissertation Fijian Native Land - A Mataqali Owned Canoe sailed by a Foreign Crew.(2004) Baledrokadroka, Joeli"The mataqali is recognised as the landowning unit under the Land Laws of Fiji. What is the legal effect of a mataqali owning native land in Fiji? By the Deed of Cession Treaty 1874, Fiji became a British Colony. It became an Independent Sovereign Democratic State in 1970 and a Sovereign Democratic Republic in 1988 when it relinquished all ties to the Queen of England. Yet the mataqali has been adopted since Sir Arthur Gordon the first Resident Governor stopped all land sales and set up the first Royal Commission to investigate Fijian land ownership in 1876. The vesting of control of native land in the Native Land Trust Board (NLTB) creates a statutory trust relationship between the Board as trustees and the native owners as beneficiaries. While Customary Law and Traditional Rights are recognised and entrenched in the Fijian Constitution to protect the Mataqali the writer believes that this operates to the disadvantage of the very people it was designed to protect. In addition, they do not have a voice nor do they participate in the decision-making processes made by the NLTB in the administration of their resource. This paper examines the Laws of Fiji that leaves the Mataqali Landowner a 'Landowner' on paper and by name only while the NLTB continues to steer the destiny of its canoe fraudulently in the 21st century. And why it is opportune under the current Government's Blueprint policy to reform Fijian land laws to enable the Mataqali to be the master of its own canoe."Thesis or Dissertation Identify the challenges to the training provision in the small and medium enterprises in the Waipa region (Members of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, CCOC, New Zealand) and a way forward to the possible training strategies(2017) Gogoi Saikia, MadhumitaThis Business Research Project (BRP) dissertation report has been prepared as a part of the Master of Business and Management programme at the University of Waikato, New Zealand (NZ) (2016 - 2017 session). Chapter 1 predominantly explores the substance of the research. The Cambridge Chamber of Commerce (CCOC), New Zealand is a voluntary membership-based organisation. It supports the development of the local businesses situated in the Waipa region, NZ through networking, training and advocacy. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are at the foremost for the economic development in New Zealand and training is essential in the SMEs for bringing a competitive advantage. The research motivation examines the significant elements of challenges in the uptake of the training by the SMEs that are members of the CCOC. The study was also undertaken to recognise what future training contents and possible methods could be of use by the CCOC for a local business development.Thesis or Dissertation Effects of Budgetary Accounting Techniques on the Management of Financial Resources at the County Government of Kakamega(2021) Kadenge, Joshua M."Available information reveals that management of public financial resources at the county government has continued to dwindle despite implementation of efforts to their budgets with its inherent control features. Budgetary Control refers to how well managers utilize budgets to monitor and control costs and operations in a given accounting period. It is a process for managers to align financial management goals with budgets, compare actual results and adjust performance. Management of public financial resources at county levels in Kenya still remain a challenge as often reported by Office of the Auditor General where a majority have been found to; be operating on negative working capital, uncontrolled capital expenditure, fraud among others. The main objective of the study is to establish the Effect of Budgetary Accounting Techniques on the management of public financial resources at the county levels in Kenya. The specific objectives guiding the study were; to establish the relationship between Planning and management of public financial resources at county level, to establish the relationship between Control and management of public financial resources at county level, to establish relationship between Revenue Optimization and management of public financial resources at county level. It was guided by a conceptual framework relating the variables of study. The study was premised on theories such as; Theory of Budgeting, Budgetary Control Theory, Fund Accounting Theory and Stewardship Theory. Questionnaire were distributed targeting; Economic planning department, Revenue department and County treasury department. Data was elicited from selected respondents using structured questionnaire whose content validity and reliability were checked. Descriptive and ANOVA methods were used to analyse data. Chi-square method was used to determine existence of significant relationship between independent and dependent variables at x2 0.05 (95% confidence level). The results indicated existence of a significant relationship between Budget Planning, Revenue optimization, Budget Control and Management of Financial resources at the county levels in Kenya as exemplified by X2 values of; 4.94 and 9.15 respectively. The findings of the study may guide policy makers in underscoring the value of Budgetary Accounting Techniques on Management of financial resources at county level and other organizations. It would also go a long way in forming a basis for future similar research studies."Thesis or Dissertation Effect of Taxation on Economic Performance: A Case of Kenya(2021) Kadenge, Joshua M."The purpose of this study was to investigate the casual relationship between income tax, Excise duty, customs duty and VAT on economic performance. Correlation between taxation and economic performance exist as the most important issue in economic since independence. The level of taxation of taxation affects the level of country’s GDP, using regression model (Y =a+ βx+ β1X1 + β2X2 + β3X3+ ᵦ4X4 + ẹ) Where y=economic performance X1=Total Income tax/GDP X2=Total VAT/GDP X3=Total Excise duty/GPD X4= Total Custom Duty/GDP e= GDP We also use descriptive statistics to find mean and standard deviation for each variable. In our view we find out that indirect tax increase consumption and reduce savings in Kenya. The implication of this is that policy maker should focus more on enhancing international relation. Income tax revenue has been increasing in recent years at a higher proportion than the other taxes in Kenya, making it an important factor in economic decision making."Thesis or Dissertation The Role of Commercial Banks' Services on the Development of Small Medium Enterprises(2021) Kadenge, Joshua M."The main objective of this study was to determine the effect of Commercial banks on the growth of SMEs in Kakamega County. The study was guided by the following research objectives: To determine the effect of Commercial banks on the growth of SMEs capital, to examine the effect of commercial banks on the growth of SMEs human resource and to investigate ways of how Commercial banks can improve their financial assistance towards SMEs growth. This research adopted a descriptive research design. A descriptive research design is a scientific method which involves observing and describing the behavior of a subject without influencing it in any way. The research population consisted of 200 registered Kakamega SMEs. The sampling techniques included the purposive sampling method in the determination of SMEs to be included in the study. Using a confidence level of 95% and a total population of 200 SMEs the sample size was 1240. The data collection techniques that were employed for the research include the use of structured questionnaires. The respondents were requested for their time prior to sending the actual questionnaire. The study established that savings remains the most important source of finance throughout the business cycle. Access to finance has been identified as a key element for small scale enterprises to succeed in their drive to build productive capacity, to compete, to create jobs and to contribute to poverty alleviation in the county. Without finance, small scale enterprises cannot grow or compete in the turbulent business environment. The study concludes that commercial banks have a small impact on the growth of SMEs as savings remains the most important source of finance throughout the business cycle. Commercial banks plays a small role on the growth of human capital. The Kenyan government has failed to safe guard the property of the SMEs. The study recommends that Commercial banks should come up with innovative ways to finance SMEs for successful growth. Commercial banks should play a critical role on the growth of human capital. The government should be involved in business growth. Commercial banks should assist SMEs in marketing of the business products, making credit available to SMEs at an affordable rate."Thesis or Dissertation Integrating News-Feature Style in Teaching Writing(2018) Lamanilao, Randy"The study aimed to determine the effectiveness of integrating news-feature style in teaching writing to the Grade 11 students of Balite National High School, a public secondary school in the Philippines, in terms of grammatical accuracy, content and development, organization and structure, and mechanics of writing. This also determined the level of increase between pretest and posttest results in control and experimental groups, the significant difference on the writing competency of the subjects in the control group and experimental group before and after experimentation, and if the writing competency of the subjects in the experimental group better than the control group after experimentation. This study employed a quasi-experimental research design. Data were gathered from the 30 Grade 11 students of Balite National High School using Assessment Test in Writing (ATW). Statistical tools used in analyzing data were Weighted Mean and Paired-sample t-test. Results indicated that students have reached below expectations rating in both control and experimental groups involving the competencies such as grammatical accuracy, content and development, organization and structure, and mechanics of writing. The students’ writing competencies were at a low level before the instruction. During the posttest, three of the mentioned competencies except for the mechanics of writing increased but still in low expectation level. The study concluded that either in the control or experimental group, the students have similarly experienced challenges making them reached below expectations and meet expectations level. Furthermore, teaching writing with news-feature style is more effective in improving the grammatical accuracy as well as organization and structure writing competencies than the traditional teaching style. Thus, integrating a news-feature style in teaching writing is encouraged."Thesis or Dissertation Linguistic Deviations of Swardspeak and its Implication to Gay Students' English Language Competencies(2020) Rubiales, Joy Ann"This study aimed to find out the implications of linguistic deviations of swardspeak to the language competencies of the gay students. This research also sought to determine the linguistic deviations in swardspeak used by the gay students; investigate the implications of the use of swardspeak to the language competencies of the students; and develop a sociolinguistic primer on swardspeak and its linguistic deviations. The study made use of qualitative method of research wherein the researcher subjected 12 informants from Suba National High School through recording raw conversations of students using swardspeak. They are officially enrolled as secondary students for the school year 2019 to 2020. The linguistic deviation on the process of using swardspeak depends on the ability of the students. The significant role of creativity and linguistic capability may be developed and improved with frequent use of the language, implications on the use of the swardspeak provide identity for gay students, develop their self-expression, deliver exclusive space through concealment, and find comfort zone using their own language. The proposed sociolinguistic primer on swardspeak and its linguistic deviations is ready for the initial implementation and assessment. The language students might be encouraged in using the language creatively and apply it in the learning process. Activities in terms of speaking can always be practiced in the language learning process to boost the confidence of the students in expressing their ideas. Familiarization of the linguistic deviation categories might be discussed to support the students improve their linguistic competence. Conduct follow up study with the use of swardspeak in a new phase was also recommended."Thesis or Dissertation Putting the Past to Work: Archaeology, Community and Economic Development(2014) Gould, Peter G."The boundaries of 'community archaeology' are being stretched around the world, even to include projects intended to enhance the economic well-being of those who live in the communities in which archaeologists work. While economic development projects are far from the archaeologist’s conventional remit, theoretical, practical and ethical factors are driving this diversification of community archaeology. However, there is no theoretical or practical foundation within archaeology to govern the design of archaeologists’ development projects. This research addresses that gap by exploring whether theoretical, experimental and case-study evidence developed by economists interested in community governance of Common Pool Resources (CPRs) contains lessons of value for the archaeological community. The research involved case studies of long-surviving, community-based economic development projects located in communities that sought to benefit from archaeological or heritage sites at their doorsteps. The communities are similarly small, but are located in very different economic, political and cultural contexts in Peru, Belize and Ireland. Using qualitative and quantitative data developed in interviews conducted in each village, each project’s institutional structure—the formal and informal rules that govern members’ activities in each project—is compared to a set of design principles for CPRs based on studies by Elinor Ostrom. As the thesis explains, Ostrom’s principles are the most evidence-based and theoretically supported set of design principles to be articulated for CPRs. The conclusion reached is that Ostrom’s principles clearly apply to the two projects that manage a 'true' CPR, which in these cases were organisations that controlled community members who sell crafts to visitors to the heritage site. In one case, where there was no 'true' CPR to manage, certain of Ostrom’s governance principles are clearly applicable and important, but those that most distinguish CPR governance are not. One implication of this study for archaeology is that it is important to understand deeply the nature of a community and a project before applying an external model to its design."Thesis or Dissertation A Critical Assessment of Marketing Strategies in Increasing Market Share: A Case Study of Aima Dora Lingerie(2017) Pooja, Ramyead"As the world grows bigger into a global village, there is a need to bring buyer and seller together and this has been possible by new technologies and communication methods. People are now able to trade, test and experience a whole new phase in business as costs are being reduced and have a wider market access. The aim of this study was to investigate on the assessment of marketing strategies in increasing market share of Aima Dora Lingerie (ADL). Faced with ever demanding client expectations and fierce competition, ADL is having difficulties to meet client expectations and increase its sales force. One of the major problem faced by the brand is that its marketing strategies are not aligned with its business model. Marketing is the core activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, partners, and society at large. This research has made use of quantitative research strategies to investigate on the assessment of marketing strategies in increasing market share at ADL. Primary data was collected using online-administered questionnaires and the survey was conducted on the targeted population. The population was small and therefore convenience sampling technique was used. The whole population of 155 respondents was taken as the sample due to the accessibility and proximity of participants. The findings revealed that there were some areas of weaknesses regarding the strategies used at ADL to engage its customers. It had a negative impact on company engagement levels and was a reason for poor advertisements. Based on the findings, recommendations have been proposed to put forward new marketing strategies to increase brand awareness and brand recognition, to differentiate from other competitors and as well as to rise in the sales force."Thesis or Dissertation Elinor Ostrom: A Biography of Interdisciplinary Life(2019) Clark, Sara"My dissertation is a study of 2009 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012) that sheds light on intellectual life and the organization of knowledge in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Using biography, this project uncovers Elinor’s interdisciplinary practice, especially through the influences of her husband and intellectual partner Vincent Ostrom and their interdisciplinary research Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University Bloomington. My analysis focuses on how Elinor, the only woman yet to receive the Economics Nobel, negotiated complex studies of human behavior—from water supply in Southern California to police services throughout the United States to forest governance around the world—by developing a primarily collaborative research approach that integrated methods and insights from the social sciences. Elinor prioritized increasing understanding of these global problems over identifying with a clear disciplinary community. I argue that who Elinor was as a person made it possible for her to develop and give meaning to her interdisciplinary practice. Organized chronologically and structured by significant events, this study examines Elinor’s intellectual life in four parts: her childhood and early adult education, development of the Ostrom Workshop, publication of her most well-known book Governing the Commons (1990), and global expansion of her ideas and research community. Attention to Elinor’s various roles as student, team leader, teacher, mentor, partner, entrepreneur, art collector, field researcher, administrator, and philanthropist contributes a complex, dynamic example of a female intellectual life. Interviews with members of the Ostroms’ academic and personal communities as well as examination of their personal papers and art collection provide primary perspective to this study. Ultimately, the blurred boundaries between her personal life and professional career point to four shaping tenets of Elinor’s interdisciplinary practice: hard work, artisanship and contestation, collaboration, and openness to multiple solutions."Thesis or Dissertation Common Goods in Uncommon Times: Water, Droughts, and the Sustainability of Ancestral Pueblo Communities in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico, AD 1100-1700(2017) Aiuvalasit, Michael"Adapting our infrastructure and institutions to climate change is a crucial dilemma for modern society. Archaeologists should be well positioned to address this issue with examples from the past. Yet, too often when we find that cultural changes are synchronous with climate variation, such as abandonment of a region during a drought, we advance causal arguments to what may merely be correlations. I argue that identifying proxies for resource management in the archaeological record, particularly for resources managed by collective action and vulnerable to climate change, can help to address this problem. To test this approach I studied water management practices of Ancestral Pueblo communities living on the highland mesa-tops of the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. Between AD 1100-1700 cultural histories across this region diverged. Ancestral Towa communities of the Jemez Plateau sustained high populations until Spanish removal in the 17th century. The adjacent Pajarito Plateau was nearly completely depopulated by ancestral Tewa and Keres communities by the early 16th century. Archaeologists hypothesize that droughts were a factor in pushing people off the Pajarito Plateau, yet the endurance of communities on the Jemez Plateau is unconsidered. Mesa-top communities in both regions constructed artificial water reservoir features, which historical Pueblo communities managed as common pool resources. I hypothesize that these archaeological features reflect collective action decision-making for managing water, a resource vulnerable to scarcity on these mesa-tops during droughts, and that decisions made about water management influenced the long-term sustainability of Ancestral Pueblo communities. Through diachronic socio-hydrological modeling, I identify how climate variation influenced feedbacks between resource users, water infrastructure, and hydrological systems. I conducted modeling of paleohydrological system responses to droughts, direct geoarchaeological investigations of fifteen reservoirs at nine Ancestral Pueblo villages, and geospatial analyses of water access. My hydrological modeling found that the Pajarito Plateau is more vulnerable to hydrological droughts than the Jemez Plateau. My geoarchaeological investigations found that communities on the Jemez Plateau built reservoirs before droughts when populations were low, and that reservoirs were used and maintained through their entire occupation histories. By contrast, communities of the Pajarito Plateau built reservoirs in the early 1300s when hamlets were coalescing into villages at the peak of regional populations. All of the reservoirs on the Pajarito Plateau, as well as many of the villages with reservoirs, were then abandoned by the mid-1400s. Through least cost analyses from hundreds of water sources to thousands of archaeological sites I found that water costs became much higher during droughts on the Pajarito Plateau, which was further exacerbated by the pooling of resources (and risks) in aggregated communities. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that an over-reliance on collective action approaches to water management made communities on the Pajarito Plateau more vulnerable to hydrological droughts than communities on the Jemez Plateau. My work shows how archaeological research into resource management, employing earth science methods and common pool resource theory, contributes to dialogs surrounding adaptations to climate change."Thesis or Dissertation Harm Reduction in Ontario: Approach Opioid Crisis from the Spectrum of Governing the Commons(2018-19) Ahmadi, Muzhgan"The increase in psychoactive drugs and its association with generating state profit creates many disagreements and prejudices towards harm reduction policies programs and practices, primarily to reduce adverse health, social and economic consequences of the use of legal and illegal psychoactive. 10 percent of these legal and illegal psychoactive drug users suffer from an opioid-related crisis and developed nations such as Canada, Australia, and the United States are left with untreated pain and lack in the appropriate use of opioids and other health-hazard risks of nonmedical use (Globenewswire, 2019). However, Canada remains to view the epoch crisis from political spectrum, re-implementing and redesigning the punitive laws and legislation of the drug consumption, exacerbating the drug-related deaths and victims, rather, to reduce the burden of the crisis effects on the local populations by adapting to the pandemic and resolving issues through provision of access to adequate resources, health-related treatments, and improve prevention sites (both in numbers and quality). It is further noted without intervention, there is expected to be 235 000 opioid-related deaths (both from prescript and illicit drug consumption) from 2016 to 2020, and this number is to be increased to 500 000 by 2025 (Allison, Keith, Margaret, 2018). To illustrate the opioid crisis, it is important to address the epidemic from determinants of social (and educational), etiology, and epidemiological grassroots rather a political problem of Canada. Furthermore, there are supporting objectives to direct why there is a need to utilize the drug's historical and current methodologies to overcome the crisis because there exists mass research and policies over opioid overdose, but constraints active planning, designing and implementing of health systems strategies (eg, needs, usage, risk of opioid-related preventions). First, it studies the need for reimplementation of opioid overdose crisis in its published and existing harm reduction policies and practices/ programs. Second, it supports crisis management by analyzing the governance of commons resources of the Canadian healthcare systems prior to health determinants inequalities and access to prevention facilities. Third, opioid crisis needs to be scrutinized under the Canadian healthcare system both as a state governing and community-based governing resource in which both the allocation and utilization of healthcare facilities benefits (or deprives) from the access of the services to its local population. This is because the Canadian health sector subsidies from the same system which also facilitates the distribution of country’s national economic, education, and governmental institutions causing fluctuations in its management of commons servicing the prevention of national opioid crisis."Thesis or Dissertation A Simbologia nas Cédulas do Cruzeiro(2016) Moreira, Fabiana Chagas; Goulart, Fábio Ortiz; Hungria, Diego Lemos Canabrasil de; Alvarenga, Marcos Aurélio do Carmo"Como apontado por Alain Jean Costilhes, 'toda moeda é […] um documento histórico que é preciso saber decifrar para descobrir tudo o ele pode revelar sobre a realidade do mundo em que foi produzido (COSTILHES, 1985, p. 8). Nesse sentido, moedas' (COSTILHES, 1985, p. 8). Nesse sentido, moedas e cédulas operam como registros de um tempo e uma sociedade específicos."Thesis or Dissertation Spatial Dynamics of Water Governance and Crop Production in Irrigated Smallholder Agricultural Systems(2017) McCord, Paul"Smallholder agriculturalists in semi-arid regions face many challenges to agricultural production. This includes increasingly unpredictable precipitation events. Irrigation plays a role in adapting to these climatic events, as it can salvage harvests by bridging unexpected dry periods. Nevertheless, reliable access to irrigation water is often predicated on effective water management. Institutions shaping water availability are most effective if they are designed in accordance with local environments, are flexible enough to adapt to ever-changing conditions, and are crafted through the input of local-level resource users, among other traits. In this dissertation, I inspect the interplay between water governance, water availability, and smallholder adaptation within a set of communities in the Mount Kenya region. More specifically, three empirical chapters inspect: (1) Smallholder adaptation through one type of on-farm practice, crop diversification; (2) The readjustment of local-level water institutions following a policy shift at the national-level and the resulting impact on water availability; and (3) The contextual drivers of smallholder water availability as well as asymmetries between household-level availability. Several important findings are revealed. Regarding crop diversification, households that are frequently visited by agricultural extension officers and are located in areas with higher average rainfall also grow a greater number of crops. This suggests a need to ensure that households in drier areas have access to extension education as well as irrigation. Concerning reorientation of local-level institutions following a national policy shift, the willingness to adjust management approaches is often dependent on perceived advantages/disadvantages from changing strategies. Water managers that believe they will be disadvantaged by the policy shift are more reluctant to adopt new water sharing practices and may only alter their management practices if required to do so by regional and national level authorities. Finally, concerning the drivers of household-level water availability, a host of institutional, infrastructural, and biophysical elements influence water delivery, suggesting that in assessing resource provisioning outcomes in social-ecological systems, contextual elements at multiple scales need to be evaluated. This analysis also finds that vast disparities in water availability exist within and across communities, a finding that highlights the need develop new strategies to evaluate asymmetries in resource provisioning."Thesis or Dissertation Beyond Institutional Diversity: Studying Governance and Leadership in the Social-Ecological System of Urban Lakes in Bangalore, India(2017) Nath, Sanchayan"This dissertation seeks to explain how the lakes, in the Indian city of Bangalore, have been governed over time."Thesis or Dissertation Collective Management of Irrigation in Eastern Spain: Integration of New Technologies and Water Resources(2015) Ortega Reig, Mar Violeta"The aim of this thesis is to analyze how farmer-managed systems adapt to the changes related to the integration of new water resources and drip irrigation technologies. Chapters two and three study the operating principles for water management. These principles, when applied by farmers as collective rules, result in interactions that create equity on water rights and transparency. The study area includes the irrigation system of the Huerta of Valencia (Spain). This system, well known internationally, has traditionally used surface water from the Turia River. Though recently, the use of groundwater and treated wastewater have been integrated with surface water. In this context, the analysis evolves around the subject of how the rules, developed for the sharing of surface water, have been adapted for conjunctive use of these new water resources. In addition, attention is also placed on how this process was crucial for the management of the 2005 - 2008 drought period. Results show that the operating principles, based in the proportionality and uniformity on irrigation frequency between users, underlie a system of distribution that is equitable, transparent and robust. In addition, the use of drought emergency wells and the reuse of treated wastewater have not resulted in any important conflict. These resources are used together with surface water during drought periods, increasing the guarantee of supply. However, treated wastewater use affects the uniformity on irrigation frequency among Water User Associations. Besides, Groundwater User Associations overlap in irrigated surface, farmers and infrastructure with Water User Associations using surface water. This situation results in informal conjunctive, a strategy that seems effective to deal with drought. Chapter four analyses the conversion to drip irrigation, an important technological transformation. In order to do that, institutional and management changes are examined. The cases studied are the Acequia Real del Júcar, the Júcar-Turia Channel and the General Community of Irrigators of Vall d'Uixó. At Water User Association level a centralization of managment has been observed (in the irrigation network, water resources managment and the merging of preexisting associations). In addition, the reasons to convert, the advantages, disadvantages and the satisfaction of users are also assessed. Besides, the work examines some aspects of how users adapt the use of irrigation and fertigation technology to their needs, diverging in some cases from the initial criteria of design. Chapter five discusses and compares the implications of the previous chapters. Some aspects of irrigation management and governance are assessed in a more detailed manner for the case of gravity irrigation Water Users Associations. In addition, the changes related to the introduction of drip irrigation technologies and new water resources are further compared In conclusion, the thesis reflects on current water policy dilemmas, focusing in currently prevailing water policy measures in the Valencia region, but also at world level: drip irrigation implementation, reuse of treated water and conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water. This allows identifying and comparing local aspects that influence the adoption and adaptation of new technologies and the integration of new water sources. Considering these features in irrigation policy would increase the efficacy of traditional solutions. Including these perspectives would also help to adapt new solutions to collective water and irrigation management settings characterized by significant complexity."Thesis or Dissertation Self-Governance in the Commons: A Study of Social Control in Swedish Recreational Lobster Fisheries(2015) Vera, Telemo"Most of the natural resources we rely on for our existence on this planet could in one way or another be a subject to overexploitation through tragedy of the commons. Tragedy of the commons occurs when rational individuals all acting in their own self-interest creates a situation that is suboptimal for everyone involved (Hardin, 1968). For long privatization or government control over a common were seen as the only two options to avoid this tragedy. Through empirical studies Elinor Ostrom described a third alternative based on local self-governance where individuals themselves managed to collaborate around a scarce resource and create long-term sustainability (Ostrom, 1999). In this study the appropriateness of a self-governance system in small coastal societies and in the city of Gothenburg was assessed through a case study of recreational lobster fishers. Further on some factors to get acceptance for regulations in a common were highlighted. One of these factors was the development of social norms regarding regulations in lobster fishing. The norm development seemed to have followed a perceived crisis in the fishery. This visible decline of the stock made the fishers realize the importance of the regulations and thus internalizing them, creating a norm. Another important factor is that the stationary nature of the lobster. Lobsters live most of their life within the same area this can be expected to increase the incentives for fishers to treat the resource sustainably since a growth in the local stock will likely benefit the same fishers in the years to come. Based on the existence of social punishment for violators in the small coastal communities, it can be assumed that the social control in Grundsund and on Stora Kornö is much greater than in Gothenburg. Social control is one very important factor for the success of a self-governance system; therefore it could be assumed to be easier to implement a self-governance system in the small coastal societies of Grundsund and Stora Kornö than in the city of Gothenburg."Thesis or Dissertation Implementation of the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries in the North-East Atlantic: A Case Study of how the Joint Norwegian-Russian Fishery Commission has worked with the EAF(2014) Voronova, Olga"The Ecosystem Approach in Fisheries became a worldwide trend. More and more countries are adopting and developing this in management framework with different rate of success. There is a widespread agreement about the necessity of a new fisheries management strategy, which is taking into account food web linkages and human activity, which may affect sustainability of ecosystem. However, there is no precise instructions for implementation of the regime. Therefore, the main issue for fisheries managing authorities is to transfer the general guidelines into specific tools for managing resources, The North-East Atlantic always has been productive area, and well established management system. The Norwegian-Russian Commission has long-lasting history of successful cooperation. This case-study investigate, how it will function within ecosystem framework, and how implementation process changing well-established management framework."Thesis or Dissertation Sea Change: Social-Ecological Co-Evolution in Baltic Sea Fisheries(2015) Hentati-Sundberg, Jonas"Sustainable management of natural resources requires an in-depth understanding of the interplay between social and ecological change. Linked social-ecological systems (SES) have been described as complex adaptive systems (CAS), which mean that they are irreducible, exhibit nonlinear dynamics, have interactions across scales and are uncertain and unpredictable. These propositions have however rarely been tested empirically, in part due to a lack of methodological approaches and suitable datasets. In this thesis, I address this methodological and empirical gap in a study of long-term change of Baltic Sea fisheries. In Paper I, we develop the concept of fishing style through integrating multivariate statistical analysis and in-depth interviews. We thereby identify an intermediate level of detail for analyzing social-ecological dynamics, embracing the case specific and context dependent approaches of the social sciences with the generalizable and quantifiable approaches from the natural sciences. In Paper II we ask: How has the Baltic Sea fishery been regulated over time, and can we identify a way to quantify regulations in order to be able to analyze their effects? We analyze all regulatory changes in Sweden since 1995 with a new methodology and conclude that there is a clear trend towards increased micro-management. In Paper III, we use the fishing styles developed in Paper I and examine how they have changed over time. We relate these changes to the dynamics of regulation (Paper II), as well as to the dynamics of fish stocks and prices. We conclude that regulation has been the main driving force for observed changes, but also that regulation has prompted significant specialization and decline in flexibility for fishers over time. These changes are unintended consequences and may represent a looming risk for the long-term sustainability of this social-ecological system. Paper IV zooms in on a particular fishery, the pelagic trawl fishery for sprat Sprattus sprattus and Atlantic herring Clupea harengus, mainly targeted for the production of fishmeal and fish oil. Suspicions of non-compliance in this fishery motivated us to apply a statistical approach where we used socioeconomic data to re-estimate the historical catches in this fishery (a novel approach to catch-reconstruction estimates). We found that catches had been significantly underreported over several years, with consequences for the quality of stock assessments and management. The study underlines the importance of understanding linked social, economic and ecological dynamics for sustainable outcomes. Finally, Paper V takes a longer historical look at the Baltic Sea fishery, using regionally disaggregated data from 1914-2009 (96 years), which were analyzed with a novel type of nonlinear statistical time-series methods (Empirical Dynamical Modeling). Our analysis explicitly recognized the potential nonlinear dynamics of SES and showed high predictability across regions of catches and prices of cod Gadus morhua and herring. The signal was generally nonlinear and predictability decreased strongly with time, suggesting that the dynamics of this SES are ever-changing. To our knowledge, this is the first long-term analysis of a SES using empirical data and methods developed from the CAS field of research. The main contributions of this thesis are the integrated analysis of social and ecological data, the development of novel methods for understanding SES dynamics, insights on the ever-changing nature of CAS and the quantitative analysis of management outcomes. Future work should focus on assessing the generality of these findings across a broad range of SES and evaluate alternative governance approaches given the complexity and uncertainty of SES suggested by this thesis."Thesis or Dissertation Soziale Netzwerke im kollektiven Handeln und Entscheiden: das Allmende-Problem einer Dörfergemeinschaft im Nordwesten Senegals(2013) Faye, Malick"This study investigates the influence of social structures and social networks on collective decision making of a fragmented, heterogeneous committee which is responsible for the extraction and distribution of a common-pool resource, water, in an agro-pastoral village community in Senegal. It shows how self-management of this common good succeeds despite of conflict and distrust between peasants and semi-nomads. The analysis combines, for the first time, the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework with social interaction models of Biased Net Theory and dynamics of committee decision making, thereupon extending the analytical approach. The study reveals that collective action in an institution depends upon the segmented structure of the social interactions, the integrative character of the institution, the representation of the various subgroups in the committee, and the existence of an influential core of decision makers who occupy also central positions in the villages."Thesis or Dissertation The Management of Lake Ellesmere/Te Waihora(2016) Chittock, Kendrick D."Strategies to manage common-pool resources vary and despite substantial scholarly and practical literature very little has been written on how communities and co-governance interact with a nested system, especially as they apply to a Treaty arrangement as is the case in New Zealand. This research compares the institutional design for managing Lake Ellesmere/Te Waihora to Ostrom’s Design principles for long-enduring CPR institutions. The results reveal that several of Ostrom’s principles are not met. Co-governance, co-management and Treaty relationships are also shown to impact the relationship between communities and nested systems through the lens of Ostrom’s principles."Thesis or Dissertation Communal Land Tenure: A Social Anthropological Study in Laos(2015) Bounmixay, Luck"Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) or Laos is a landlocked and mountainous country situated in the center of the Continental Southeast Asia region bordering with Myanmar, China, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. It is considered one of the most forested countries in the region and ranked as one of the most culturally diverse with almost 50 percent indigenous peoples. Yet, it is one of the poorest nations in the world. Over the last decade, forest resources have become degraded because of logging, concessions, hydropower and mining as well as shifting cultivation due to rising population density in the uplands. Lao Government policy has focused on eradicating shifting cultivation, but the initial government land and forest allocation program meant that the ethnic groups lost their rain-fed upland fields as they were no longer allowed to practice customary land use with long fallows. None of the upland ethnic groups have title to the land they use. Many environmentally sound traditional land use systems still exist in Lao PDR in remote areas in the form of communal tenure. Here the land is managed by the village which each year re-distributes it according to need and labor. This research focuses on these traditional systems to identify which particular features of the management regime could help 'reverse degradation by innovation'. The research hypothesis is that common property regimes are a means for the poor to secure access to natural resources’ benefit streams that serve as a safety net against vulnerability. At the same time and most importantly, with communal tenure recognized by government, the communities can lower the risk of their lands being grabbed by concessions. The thesis reviews Elinor Ostrom’s theory on Common Property Resource (CPR) of literature to test the hypothesis. Field study was conducted in Houaphan province in Lao PDR focusing on Hmong and Tai Daeng ethnic groups in three districts (Xum-Nue, Viengxay and Sopbao). It is seen that the traditional communal land management as a system which for the ethnic groups is linked to their culture. It allows for equity and if the government endorses communal land title which is possible by law but not yet implemented, this system could be copied under appropriate institutional arrangements to other places in the country. It is also realized that land may not be under shifting cultivation for many more years due to growing population density and that proactive measures should be taken to quickly restore the fertility of the fallows. This change of land use can best be practiced by the communities as a whole with control over their lands. This study is not only considered an important contribution to current land policy making process; it also is necessary to take into account when carrying out in practice land management in Lao PDR."Thesis or Dissertation Fisheries in the Waza Logone Floodplain: An Analysis of the Status of the Fisheries Sector and Mitigation of Conflicts within the Sector in North Cameroon(2015) Ziébé, Roland"This PhD dissertation covers the dynamics of floodplain fisheries in the Waza Logone floodplain (Far North region, Cameroon) and conflicts between fishers. The main objective is to understand the dynamics of the fisheries sector in the Waza Logone floodplain and specifically the level of fishing effort, diversity of fishing gear and conflicts between fishermen. It's aims to (i) assess the current situation of the fishing effort and catches in the Waza Logone floodplain, (ii) evaluate the sustainability of fisheries practices, and (iii) provide a means to better understand the factors influencing conflicts and conflict resolution between fishers in the Waza Logone floodplain. Methodology consisted mainly of a rural appraisal technique and included an open workshop with 18 traditional and municipal authorities, leaders of international and national NGOs, an interview survey in 91 villages and a daily survey on fishermen, canoes and fishing materials, between August 2008 and June 2009 in 13 fishing spots. In addition, fishing channels along the Logomatya River, the Lorome Mazera River and around the Abana natural mares were counted, after which thirteen (13) of them were selected for a more detailed survey. It also included an institutional analysis on conflict management and fisheries policy in Cameroon and the Central and West African region."Thesis or Dissertation Historia, Uso y Manejo de Los Bosques en un Ejido de la Región Chamela-Cuixmala, Jalisco(2014) Monroy, Ana"The forests have global importance because they provide ecosystem services in many scales. Deforestation, degradation and loss of biodiversity are processes that diminish quality of these services. In Mexico these processes have been especially dramatic and accelerated.Also forest in México are characterized by poverty and inhabited areas. Thus addressing the issue of forests is complex as social and ecological factors converge and their study often requires a focus on socio-ecological systems. In the Chamela-Cuixmala region where there have been socio-ecological studies in the nearby of the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve, the upper parts with different ecosystems to tropical dry forest have yet been little explored despite the importance they have. This study took as a reference for understanding the socio-ecological system three main areas: 1) the environmental history, 2) the social actors and collective action, and 3) productive activities and forest types. All this information was integrated and interpreted using the framework of the Commons Theory. The main objective in this study was to understand the environmental history and social organization in relation to the use and management of forests in an ejido of the Chamela-Cuixmala region: Pabelo. The methodological approach was qualitative, which seeks to understand the phenomenon of study from the perspective of the actors involved. The main methods were semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and botanical collections. Regarding the regional environmental history was found that uplands and mountainous areas have functioned as a refuge from the arrival of the Spaniards. The ejido Pabelo was a hacienda dedicated to raise livestock, this activity prevails at present, but forests always have played an important role for subsistence. The inequitable distribution of land caused problems between the ejido members, and then the common areas were distributed among some ejidatarios but only for the use of pasture for livestock. As for the social actors, government at the federal level was of great relevance to the site. Collective action reflects a lack of organization and unity among members. In addition to raising livestock, other activities concerning whit the forest are practiced, like forestry, payment for environmental services and agriculture in a lesser extent, these activities have different impacts on forests. As for the use of plant resources a total of 100 species were found, the forest type with the highest number of useful species was semi deciduous tropical forest. In turn, the type of forest most degraded is the oak forest. Much of the problems relating to forest management and collective action are associated with property rights over land, in addition to the pursuit of personal profit. However, in the ejido the forest management strategy combines many activities which helps to face socio-economic and environmental problems. According to the management of each forest type there may be appropriate strategies to help sustainability in relation to the local context. This study helps integrate information at a regional level understanding the socio-ecological dynamic of an ejido in the top of the Chamela-Cuixmala region that can be the basis for deepen in further studies."Thesis or Dissertation Many Voices of the Manukau: Participatory Modelling, Ecosystem Services and Decision Making in New Zealand(2015) Davies, Kathryn Kinsale"Ecosystem service approaches are increasingly utilised in coastal areas, often as part of an ecosystem-based management or adaptive governance framework that aims to address complex or ‘wicked’ coastal problems. The popularity of ecosystem service approaches stems in part from their potential to link human well-being to the functioning of ecosystems and provide a common language for negotiating trade-offs. This is particularly enticing in situations where there are a multiplicity of stakeholders, conflicting values, and accompanying disputes. However, at present, most ecosystem service models are driven by ecological research and are deficient in incorporating context-specific cultural services. A participatory approach to model-building can integrate social values into ecosystem service frameworks while simultaneously contributing to the generation of social capital. Elements of social capital, such as social learning and social capacity, are needed to support adaptive governance and ecosystem-based management frameworks, and to resolve wicked problems. This research draws on a case study from an urban estuary in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Manukau Harbour, the second largest harbour in the country. Manukau Harbour has a long history of environmental degradation and conflict that is inextricably linked with the cultural values of local and regional stakeholders. Using a novel participatory modelling method, the research included a diverse group of participants in a rapid process of identifying, valuing, and considering trade-offs associated with the ecosystem services of the study area. This approach revealed that the participants often shared a common interest in recreational values and other cultural services, and that participants associated a majority of their values with seascapes, rather than landscapes, in the area. These findings could have important implications for improving decision-making approaches, as an emphasis on cultural services and seascapes could contribute to benefits across multiple ecosystem services and functions in the degraded area. Additionally, the research provides important insights into how participatory modelling methods can be utilised to integrate a diverse range of social values into an ecosystem service framework while enhancing social learning, social capacity, and other elements of social capital, among participants."Thesis or Dissertation Social Capital in Marine Management Collaborative Networks: Lessons Learned in the Coral Triangle and the Philippines(2015) Pietri, Diana M."There has been a recent proliferation of collaborative ecosystem management approaches that create interlinked individuals working together to address socio-ecological problems. In these collaborative networks, through cooperating toward shared goals, participants create and maintain relationships, build trust, and share knowledge – thus generating forms of social capital. Social capital, goodwill fostered among connected individuals, is a crucial component of network success and facilitates collective action and social learning, while also helping members address problems they could not realize on their own. Despite the shift toward larger-scale and more collaborative marine management approaches, thus far there has been limited empirical examination of the importance of social capital in influencing the effectiveness of these efforts. Therefore, in this dissertation I explore the role of social capital and the links between social capital and network effectiveness in three collaborative marine management networks operating at various geographic scales: the Regional Exchange (REX) network of Southeast Asia and Melanesia’s Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries, and Food Security (CTI-CFF) and the Philippine’s Southeast Cebu Coastal Resource Management Council (SCCRMC) and Danajon Double Barrier Reef Management Council (DDBRMC). I explored participant perceptions of their experiences and observed the structure of relationships among network members. I used a mixture of qualitative interviews with participants in each network, social network analysis with members of CTI-CFF and the SCCRMC, and participant observation at network events. I found that in all three networks, new relationships were developed across socio-cultural boundaries among individuals who had not worked together previously, such as individuals in different Coral Triangle countries and from different municipalities active in the SCCRMC and DDBRMC. The networks nurtured the development of local leaders (e.g., national government representatives in the Coral Triangle, Philippine municipal managers), who served as key sources of information and new knowledge and linked network subgroups, thus helping generate social capital. The ability of the networks to achieve their goals, foster social capital, and sustain efforts was strongly influenced by the presence of governance mechanisms to streamline network activities. In the SSCRMC, for instance, strong governance mechanisms provided a platform for coordinating efforts and enabling members to work together efficiently toward goal achievement. Though social capital was created to varying degrees among network members, there was still a need in all three networks for diffusion of the knowledge and social capital gained through the networks to other relevant levels of management, like local communities. The new framework I applied to observe these networks linking key elements of social capital and components of collaborative effectiveness offers a novel analytic approach for examining collaborative network effectiveness and can be applied to other similar networks. My findings offer empirical evidence illustrating how social capital can help networks achieve goals that eventually may result in improved socio-ecological outcomes and are applicable to the design and implementation of other ecosystem management networks. The CTI-CFF REX network, SCCRMC, and DDBRMC demonstrate some of the tangible benefits of social capital and underscore the value of and need to invest in collaborative ecosystem management networks."Thesis or Dissertation The Process of Networked Civic Innovation: Examining The Role of Values, Resources, and Power in Community-Based Technology Projects(2015) Agarwal, Sheetal Doshi"This dissertation examines the social organizational implications of community-based innovation processes. Expanding upon existing literature, I study new forms of organizing in new innovation contexts. I call this process community-based networked civic innovation. This comparative case study analysis is based on participant observation of the process of innovation as it occurred in four informally organized civic networks (Living Voters Guide, Occupy TempCheck, Puget Sound Civic Communication Commons, and the Tea Party Technology Collaboration). The aim of each project was to transform community communication practices through technology implementation. This dissertation aims to explain why some projects achieve intended adoption outcomes while others fail to do so. In particular, it investigates the role and interactions of values, resources, and power across the innovation process. Using ethnographic methods, qualitative network analysis, and value sensitive design methods I conducted process analysis to evaluate both social and technical components of innovation. Looking across both design and use stages of innovation, I found that the primary work of civic technology projects is the organizing of a diverse set of actors to effectively complete innovation tasks. I found that the process of innovation is shaped by a series of micro-processes: formation of the network, establishment of governance rules, visioning, translation, and encoding. Each of these micro-processes is both shaped by and shaper of conditions of values, resources, and power. The outcomes of these micro-processes, which occur in early stages, continue to affect and shape innovation outcomes at later stages as actors respond to conditions. Under certain conditions networks configure or reconfigure in a manner that either supports or undermines the organizing work of innovation. Analysis demonstrated the importance of engaging the intended user community throughout all stages. I found technological frames and community technology champions to be integral in supporting intended adoption outcomes. Findings also showed that projects that 'failed' in one context found life elsewhere, suggesting the need to account for how ideas travel through civic networks and expand our definitions of success and failure. This study is relevant to scholars of communication and technology, organizational communication, innovation studies, and design studies. From a communication perspective, it reveals the communicative practices at the heart of innovation processes that support and inform the organizing work required to achieve intended outcomes."Thesis or Dissertation Gestão de Recursos Comuns no Entorno de Areas Protegidas: Ação Coletiva e Desenvolvimento Rural no Sistema Sócioecológico (SES) do Parque Nacional da Serra da Bodoquena-MS(2013) De Araújo Pereira, Márcio"This thesis has as its theme the common natural resources and the management models that allow new governance systems in the rural areas in the surrounding of protected areas. As central question, seeks to answer how the various actors affected by the process of creation of a protected area organise themselves and develop collective actions for the management of common natural resources in the surroundings of this area. There has been hypothesised that there is a closeness among the actors as their goals in relation to common natural resources, which refers to setting up a new governance system that promotes the development of collective actions specific to the management of common resources. Another hypothesis is that state action, through government policies, has limited effect on the coordination and promotion toward a consensus among actors. In this sense, the objective of this work is to study the collective action of social actors in the management of common natural resources in the surroundings of the National Park of Serra da Bodoquena (PNSB), which covers areas of the municipalities of Bodoquena, Bonito, Jardim and Porto Murtinho in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul. Based on institutional approach for the study of the self-organisation and self-governance in common-pool resources situations developed by Elinor Ostrom, the investigation sought the theoretical explanation of phenomena and problem identified. Methodologically this is a documentary and field research, which has a feature of small-N case of study, proceeding an applying of the framework for analysing social-ecological systems (SES), conducting also a systematic analysis of documents close to a meta-analysis. The conclusions point out that the expected mobilisation of groups of individuals in the pursuit of common goals is twofold in this case, with the participants of the action arena creating different goals and different collective actions according to their interests, environmental or productive, and that the govern of the commons remains under the control of agribusiness interests rooted in the culture of the local agricultural production."Thesis or Dissertation Institutional Change and Politics: The Transformation of Property Right in Kenya's Maasailand(2003) Mwangi, Esther"The evolution of property rights continues to concern scholars of institutions in particular and of economic development more generally. This study investigates why (and how) group ranch members in Kajiado District, Kenya, supported the subdivision of their collective landholdings into individual, titled units. It also explores the outcomes of this transition to individual rights. An increasing scarcity value of land with population increase and the promise of new income-generating opportunities in the individualized arrangement are important factors motivating group ranch members to support subdivision. In addition, distributional asymmetries that arose out of a failure to enforce internal governance arrangements were important motivators. Difficulties in enforcing livestock quotas resulted in poorer livestock herders bearing the uncompensated costs of collective resource use, while the wealthy herders reaped the benefits. Problems with excluding non-members, particularly the wealthy, well-connected herd owners from neighboring individual ranches increased distributional conflict. Group ranch members saw in subdivision an effective way to eliminate these disadvantages. Distributional concerns were more pronounced during the (inequitable) allocation of land parcels following group ranch subdivision. Individuals and groups shifted between formal-legal and customary institutions as they pressed for the assignment of their preferred property rights, and as they sought to ‘equalize’ parcel sizes. Power asymmetries between negotiating parties were important for conflict resolution, but where insufficient, state structures provided a more effective avenue for resolution. Viewed over a longer time scale, however, this transformation of property rights is path dependent with actors increasingly seeking exclusive rights in an effort to defend their land claims against threats of appropriation by the state, by Maasai elite, and by non-Maasai. Politics is at the core of institutional change. Vegetation cover does not vary significantly between the management strategies that groups and individuals employ to manage their land after subdividing the group ranch. The relationship between management regime and vegetation structure is complicated by longstanding herd redistribution strategies among extended families and their stock associates. It is also obscured by emerging post-transitional arrangements in which rights are traded through leasing and pasture-sharing agreements."Thesis or Dissertation The Patchwork Quilt of Climate Change Policies: An Assessment of Voluntary and Mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reduction Programs(2009) Matisoff, Daniel"Climate change policy resembles a patchwork quilt of overlapping state, national, and international policies that vary across topic areas and policy tools. This dissertation seeks to make contributions to the understanding of the adoption and implementation of climate change policy across several types of mandatory and voluntary policy including information disclosure requirements and cap-and-trade regimes. While much is known regarding the adoption of and effectiveness of different types of environmental policies, this dissertation seeks to fill in several gaps in this literature. I provide a quantitative approach to understanding state climate change policy adoption and find that state policy adoption reflects political resources, rather than geographic resources or regional diffusion. In a study of the experience of individual firms within the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme I discuss the uncertainty, complex production processes and transaction costs that limit firms’ ability to adapt to carbon regulation. Using a difference-in-differences model to compare several cases of private voluntary and state-run mandatory approaches to climate change policy, I find that private voluntary agreements are associated with improved environmental behavior which likely reflects improved management at firms. I conclude with observations regarding the relationship between the array of climate change policies. The variety of climate change policies is overlapping and can be complementary. State climate change policies represent laboratories of policy experimentation and demonstrate the potential implementation of national and international regulation for parts of the economy that are not easily addressed by cap-and-trade programs. Cap-and-trade programs are useful for large point sources, but are inefficient when low-cost strategies are not implemented. Voluntary policies may help firms find low-cost abatement strategies, market themselves as environmental leaders, and help firms better cope with the complexity and uncertainty of greenhouse gas regulation. It is important that policy-makers take advantage of these comparative strengths of different types of climate change policy."Thesis or Dissertation The Effect of Institutions on Guatemalan Forests: Conceptual, Methodological and Practical Implications(2011) Marquez Barrientos, Lilian I."Challenging socially accepted notions of rural communities inability to overcome the 'Tragedy of the Commons' and amidst international concern for the fate of Earths remaining forests, resource dependent rural communities (usually poor, barely educated, and neglected) have shown how capable they can be in managing forest resources. Yet resource governance is a complex balance between sustainability and degradation where communities can fail or succeed. Institutional arrangements lie at the core of the explanation of why some succeed and others fail. This dissertation analyzes the institutional arrangements of three Guatemalan community forestry experiences in the tropical dry forests of Chiquimula. Their stories are different, showing both failure and success in managing conflict, involving fruitful and disastrous alliances, and resulting in thriving or declining forests. They offer concrete evidence of how institutional arrangements are created and how they evolve, reflecting on the challenges policy makers, practitioners and researchers face when supporting communities in their governance efforts. Using IFRIs (International Forestry Resources and Institutions Research Program) interdisciplinary approach, institutional and forest ecology analysis constructs a socio-ecological picture of community forestry to assess forest protection and use. The forest showing stronger protection status belongs to the community with stronger resource governance institutions, offering additional evidence that when communities are allowed and supported they can be effective resource users and conservationists. On the other hand, failed community efforts offer a reflection on what may go wrong and how international donors and state agents supporting local resource governance may do more harm than good if they do not fully understand the complexity of the whole endeavor and the role local institutional arrangements play. A methodological analysis on the challenges of interdisciplinary research is also presented."Thesis or Dissertation Land-Use Decision Making, Uncertainty and Effectiveness of Land Reform in Acre, Brazilian Amazon(2006) Ludewigs, Thomas"From 1970 to 1999, almost 700,000 families were settled through land reform programs in Brazil. However, lot turnover contributed to re-concentration of land and to the limited success of these programs. This dissertation explores land-use decision-making in an aging land reform settlement in the Amazon. It focuses on how farmers respond to limited access to the information and to opportunities that are typical of the frontier context. I analyze the interactions among variables affecting families, communities and the agrarian structure of the settlement, and changes in land-use and cover (LUCC) resulting from these interactions. The study site is a government sponsored colonization project (P.C. Humaitá) in the State of Acre, Brazil. Variables affecting land-use choices were analyzed studied through a microlevel approach using remote sensing linked to social sciences' techniques. A property grid (n=739) overlaid to satellite images (1981-2003) was used to analyze LUCC during this period. It was found that differences among social groups, access to urban centers, and use of agricultural credit contributed to explain LUCC along settlement's lifetime. Additionally, lot consolidation into larger properties was found to correlate with accessibility to urban centers, but not with deforestation. It was also found that diversification of livelihood strategies through time comprises an important adaptive mechanism to the uncertain conditions that are present on frontier settlements. Additionally, it was found that social learning processes help farmers deal with uncertainty and to take advantage of economic opportunities. There have been enough experiences in the Amazon to inform better governance approaches to promote rural development; despite failures and problems, land redistribution and regularization is an historical need in Brazil and should continue to be a policy priority. However, land markets and infrastructure constraints during different stages of settlement formation are important forces undermining the goals and successes of land reform in the region."Thesis or Dissertation Urban Forests as Social-Ecological Systems: The Role of Collective Action and Institutions in Sustainable Urban Forest Management(2012) Mincey, Sarah"This dissertation portfolio addresses the question: How do institutions and collective action facilitate sustainable urban forest management (UFM)? The research utilizes mixed methods to address this question through case studies in Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A. First, the need for institutional analysis in urban ecosystem research is established by arguing that decline of urban forests is related to lack of UFM investment (e.g., free-riding) due to the non-excludable nature of the resource. Such dilemmas are resolved through institutions that adjust individuals’ incentives to invest in collective good. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework, a precursor to the Social-Ecological System (SES) framework, is demonstrated for examining the role of institutions in UFM. Secondly, we consider the influence of municipal zoning institutions on canopy cover in Bloomington, finding that high-density residential zones are more like commercial zones than other residential zones in terms of canopy, and that mixed-use zoning is associated with intermediate canopy cover. This refines widely-held theory that residential lands have the most canopy cover and implies that canopy is driven in part by institutions that regulate impervious cover, suggesting bureaucrats consider fine-scale zoning distribution in UFM. Next, we consider collective action and institutions in the survival and growth of planted trees and community cohesion in Indianapolis. We find trees in neighborhoods that collectively water are more likely to survive than those in neighborhoods that assign watering of individual trees to individual residents. Subsequent collective action is more likely in neighborhoods that collectively water, and institutions such as signed watering agreements and monitoring of watering improve tree establishment. This supports the application of collective action theory and institutional design principles to UFM. Finally, we model parcel scale tree structure in Bloomington home-owner and neighborhood associations, finding significant differences in parcels by association type and development age, and demonstrating the significant influence of institutions on tree species diversity. This research utilizes the SES framework, extending its use to urban forests, and reinforces the significance of institutional analysis in urban ecosystems research. Practically, the research suggests that community association rules play an important role in structuring parcel-scale urban forests."Thesis or Dissertation Credit Risk Management and Rules: The Experience of Group-Based Microcredit Programs in the United States(1999) Hung, Chi-Kan Richard"This dissertation focuses on peer group lending programs in the United States."Thesis or Dissertation Forest Governance in a Frontier: An Analysis of the Dynamic Interplay Between Property Rights, Land-Use Norms, and Agricultural Expansion in the Mosquita Forest Corridor of Honduras and Nicaragua(2007) Hayes, Tanya M."This study integrates methods that include institutional analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and land-cover analysis to examine how property-rights policies influence agricultural expansion in the Mosquitia Forest Corridor, a biological corridor that runs from eastern Honduras into northern Nicaragua. I compare the ability to stop mestizo expansion in two protected areas in the Mosquitia: one reserve under government management and the other governed by native residents who hold common-property rights to their lands. The variation between sites creates opportune conditions to investigate whether property rights are a determining factor in preventing mestizo encroachment, and the impact that different property-rights policies have on residents’ resource institutions and the broader resilience of the social and ecological systems. The study findings are that public policies that recognize local governance institutions promote resilient forest management systems. I find that native residents who hold common-property rights are better able to stop agricultural expansion than are public managers. Forests under indigenous territorial management are better conserved than those under public management. Furthermore, the analysis of institutional change finds that native residents are better able to address market and demographic pressures introduced by mestizo settlers when they are supported by public policies that recognize their common-property claims."Thesis or Dissertation NGOs in Policymaking in Tanzania: The Relationships of Group Characteristics, Political Participation and Policy Outcomes(2007) Elliott, Ginger L."The study of non-governmental organizations in African countries has focused almost exclusively on their roles as service providers, leading to a limited perspective on their participation in society. This analysis instead considers NGOs as deliberate political actors in Tanzania. Interest group theory is used to understand organizations’ behavior in the policymaking process. The research revealed that local Tanzanian non-governmental organizations acted in the same ways as Western interest groups when they attempted to influence policy outcomes. They were engaged as stakeholders, consultants, lobbyists, networkers and challengers. Variation in group behavior existed across four policy cases, but the patterns were similar. Organizations began as participants invited by the government, later deciding whether further engagement was needed to achieve specific policy goals. If they decided in the affirmative, they would then commence lobbying and/or challenging government officials. In the meantime, most of these organizations also chose to form coalitions to strengthen their policy positions. Groups that chose to challenge policymakers by changing the venue of contestation (turning either to the public or Members of Parliament) were similar in significant ways. Each organization was involved in multiple policy areas, all were large organizations, none had links to government, all were oriented toward advocacy, and all had activist leadership. They varied by age (years since being founded), cause and professional status. By contrast, organizations that chose not to challenge did not share any meaningful characteristics. However, only non-challengers were considered to have achieved a substantial number of their initial policy goals. These organizations relied on long-term lobbying to influence policy, and they developed meaningful relationships with officials. The three sets of organizations that challenged the government were unable to realize their desired policy outcomes. Their willingness to use challenger behavior was intricately linked with their organizational characteristics: being more oriented toward advocacy rather than service, having activist leadership, and having the resources to carry out active campaigns against policy. The findings suggest that to be successful in Tanzanian politics, such groups need to consider not always acting in ways that seem most natural to their activist natures, instead diplomatically engaging policymakers."Thesis or Dissertation Farming in the Commons, Fishing in the Congress, and U.S. Aquaculture in the 21st Century(2015) Welch, Aaron W."Fisheries and aquaculture policy in the United States exhibits a peculiar duality. Commercial fishing is functionally open-access, heavily subsidized, and regulated by a federal bureaucracy staffed in part by fishing industry representatives. Marine aquaculture, in contrast, is effectively forbidden. Today there are no functioning fish farms anywhere in the federal waters of the United States, largely due to a regulatory environment that discourages applications for aquaculture permits. This bifurcated policy does not seem to be dependent on any specific environmental or economic rationale. Instead, this policy appears to be the product of a series of individual assumptions and policy choices that may have been initially reasonable, but have since accreted into an unworkable whole. This dissertation consists of a series of unique, but thematically connected research projects designed to examine current U.S. policy on aquaculture and fishing in the United States, and the assumptions that inform that policy, with the goal of informing a more consistent treatment for these two modes of seafood production. Chapter 1 introduces the dissertation by reframing the discussion of aquaculture and fishing, by examining the global importance of aquaculture as a productive system, and by discussing the blurring line between fishing and aquaculture. This chapter also provides a roadmap for the rest of the dissertation. Chapter 2 examines the federal fisheries management system in light of historical reality and public choice theory. Chapter 3 describes the nutrient footprint of an offshore aquaculture facility. Chapter 4 uses disclosures from the federal lobbying disclosure system to examine the patterns of advocacy around aquaculture and fishing in the U.S. Congress and administrative agencies. Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation with a few thoughts on the value of interdisciplinarity in pursuing further research into aquaculture and fisheries policy in the United States."Thesis or Dissertation Community Forestry, REDD+ Pilot Project, Power, and Corruption: A Case Study of Ludikhola Watershed in Gorkha District, Nepal(2015) Kandel, Tara"REDD integrates conservation, sustainable management of forest and enhancement of forest carbon stocks, emerged though a global partnership under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Ludikhola watershed in Gorkha district, Nepal, is selected for this research where REDD+ pilot project was carried out from 2010 to 2013. The dynamic relationship between actors, knowledge, power, corruption and policy at the micro level and the reciprocal effects of these relationships on gender, class and caste has been investigated in REDD+. The objectives of the study were; to analyze the community forestry as a resource regime and investigate the empirical aspect of REDD+ through governance policies, to evaluate how powerful actors exercise their power in the introduction and implementation of REDD+ in CF and to study how corruption occurred in the REDD+ pilot project. Three CFUGs were selected for the household survey. The findings showed that the CF is a place where different actors exercise their power to influence decisions regarding forest management. In the REDD+ pilot project, main goals of maintaining and enhancing biodiversity were not met; there were a lack of distribution of benefits and information to different groups of local people. 69% of the total respondents say that powerful actors did not take account of their voice during the formation of rules and regulations. The community forestry was not properly conducted in levels of a participatory mechanism; it is more functioning through key actor´s interests. A significant relationship between corruption and powerful actors was found; the test also showed that higher castes and government officials have the significant relationship with corruption in community forestry. 47% thought that there was fraud monitoring and reporting, 42% embezzlement and 11% bribing. It is realized that much of the existing policy frameworks in community forestry needs to be revised to create a facilitating environment for REDD+ and there is a great need of improved agricultural practices and providences of the option for other livelihood diversification to reduce the forest dependency. Although, its ability to reduce net-carbon emissions, control leakage and increase local benefits through a national REDD+ policy may seem difficult to accomplish. Globally, there are no acknowledged motivations connected to the REDD+ policy, besides the obvious interest in limiting climate change."Thesis or Dissertation Accounting for the Links Between Social and Ecological Systems for Effective Nature Conservation(2015) Gonzalez, Angela Guerrero"This thesis addresses one of the greatest challenges faced by conservation researchers and practitioners: understanding and accounting for the social-ecological complexity that characterises most global environmental problems. This thesis makes theoretical and empirical contributions to research on the problem of fit that extend beyond the conservation planning field. It provides empirical support for how collaboration approaches to governance can enable the coordination of actions across different management scales, and demonstrates how interactions between the social and ecological systems can be accounted for in conservation planning decisions, and in assessments of the effectiveness of environmental governance arrangements."Thesis or Dissertation Polycentric Governance: A Theoretical and Empirical Exploration(2015) Tarko, Vlad"The dissertation overviews and elaborates the concept of polycentricity, and applies it to two cases. Spontaneous order plays an important role in many non-market systems. But not all spontaneous orders are productive or sustainable. The concept of polycentricity aims to describe the productive subset of spontaneous orders, including both markets and non-market forms of organization. Broadly speaking, a polycentric system of governance is a collection of heterogeneous decision centers acting independently, but under a common system of rules and/or norms limiting negative externalities and free riding. The role of the overarching set of rules or norms is to assure that the spontaneous order is indeed productive and sustainable."Thesis or Dissertation Improving Policing: The Impact of Neighborhood-Oriented Policing on Officers' Attitudes Toward the Public(1989) Kessler, David A."Progressive police administrators are searching for new methods of organizing departments. A spate of empirical research found the assumptions of the professional model to be Invalid. Two experimental approaches have emerged in response: (1) improve the information processing capacity of departments, (2) organize ways to improve interaction between officers and citizens. The most important information for solving crimes is provided by citizens to field officers. Departments that cultivate good relationships with the community will be more effective than departments that insulate officers from the community. Effective policing requires a service style that is less aggressive and more responsive to citizens. This approach is resisted, however, by officers steeped in the traditional police subculture, who prefer a crime-fighting style. One problem for neighborhood-oriented policing is motivating street officers to adopt a service style. It has been argued that contact between field officers and the community improves officer's understanding of their constituents. Officers learn to antagonize people less and to elicit more information from people which improves a department's performance. This study examines the proposition that officers in programs that encourage citizen contacts become more accepting of a service style of policing. With a survey of 1,107 respondents, a comparison was made of the attitudes of officers working in neighborhood-oriented policing programs to other officers. Officers in the neighborhood-oriented policing programs were more service-oriented. They had more contacts with citizens and knew more people. From these contacts, officers obtained more information from citizens, and they were more responsive to citizens concerns. Officers also obtained more information on suspects, and they acted on this information. Therefore, the capacity for coercion was more important since they encountered more suspects. While most officers agreed that aggression inhibits citizen cooperation, officers were more aggressive in dangerous areas. The perception of danger was based on situational variables rather than the programs or activities."Thesis or Dissertation The Co-Production of Property Rights: Theory and Evidence from a Mixed-Right System in Southern Mexico(2005) Kauaneckis, Derek"This dissertation presents a framework for explaining variation in property right institutions as a result of interactions among decision-makers at three levels; formal government actors, the community of right-holders and individual right-holders. It uses a simple game-theoretic model where enforcement is the mechanism linking levels of interaction to the property institution. Property rights are understood as a function of the value of the resource to which a right has been assigned and the cost of enforcement. It recognizes that representatives of formal government, including bureaucrats, regulators and various types of law enforcement and monitoring agents do not uniformly enforce claims to property. Right- holders make decisions about contributions to the production of a property right institution based on expectations of external third-party enforcement, levels of peer-enforcement and their own ability to individually enforce property claims. This combination of different types of enforcement activities determines the structure of rights that ultimately results. The theoretical framework is applied to the empirical case of mixed-right system among communities bordering a National Park in the southern Mexican state of Campeche. Data collection incorporated a structured survey administered across a selection of twelve communities and semi-structured survey administered across a selection of twelve communities and semi-structured interviews with public and private agency officials. The results support the institutional economics perspective that resource value is fundamental to agency officials. The results support the institutional economics perspective that resource value is fundamental to understanding property right institutions, and that enforcement activity influences the type of right. However, it provides additional evidence that is the actions by different types of enforcement agents; bureaucratic, community and individual, which ultimately determines the specific structure of property rights. While the research focuses on property rights to environmental resources, the framework is useful for understanding rights across a variety of public policy areas."Thesis or Dissertation Can Forest Sector Devolution Improve Rural Livelihoods? An Analysis of Forest Income and Institutions in Western Uganda(2009) Jagger, Pamela"Forest sector devolution is widely promoted throughout the low income tropics as a policy that leads to poverty reduction. However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence to support this assertion. Drawing on the case of a major forest sector reform in Uganda, this dissertation addresses the question: has Uganda's forest sector reform led to improvements in rural livelihoods? Uganda provides an excellent case study of two parallel devolution processes: democratic decentralization of oversight of private forests to local government; and devolution of ownership and management of Central Forest Reserves to the for-profit parastatal National Forestry Authority. The first empirical chapter uses pre and post-reform household level data to estimate the direction and magnitude of the effect of the reform on the contribution of forest income to rural income portfolios. The findings show that decentralization to local government has had minimal impact of the contribution of forests to household income portfolios. However, for the case of devolution to the National Forestry Authority, relatively wealthy households have significantly increased forest income since the reform was implemented. Using the methods of institutional analysis, the second empirical chapter discusses the incentives facing actors involved in and affected by reform implementation. The analysis demonstrates that the motivations and information shaping incentives for forest officials and forest users are hindering the ability of poor and vulnerable households to increase the share of their income from forests. The third empirical chapter describes heterogeneity in perceptions of formal withdrawal rights for forest products. The findings demonstrate that there is considerable heterogeneity in knowledge of formal forest withdrawal rights among forest officials, village leaders and households. Perceptions of formal rights do not appear to have a significant effect on the harvesting behavior of rural households. The findings from this study challenge the assertion that forest sector devolution is an effective strategy for rural poverty reduction."Thesis or Dissertation Scaling Up from the Top Down and the Bottom Up: The Impacts and Governance of Inter-Community Forest Associations in Durango, Mexico(2012) Garcia-Lopez, Gustavo A."Mexico’s community forestry experiment has become famous as a global model for sustainable forest use and socioeconomic development. However, many Mexican forest communities are facing significant challenges such as weak organization and limited access to markets. Scholars and practitioners have argued that connections across different levels of governance between local communities, inter-community networks, and other governmental and non-governmental stakeholders may help deal with these situations. Yet there are still gaps in our understanding of why these cross-scale arrangements form, their internal governance, their benefits, and the factors that make them successful. This dissertation addresses these gaps by analyzing the economic, political and forest impacts that inter-community forest associations (FAs) –a type of cross-scale governance arrangement– have on forest communities; and the factors that influence FAs’ effectiveness. Drawing on collective action and political economy theories applied to common-pool resources, I engaged in a year-long comparative case study of four FAs in the Mexican state of Durango –two organized by communities themselves (bottom-up) and two created by non-community actors (top-down). The results show that FAs often form from in response to community needs, but also as adaptation strategies and responses to national policies and the political-economic context. Throughout their histories, FAs have played a crucial role in helping communities solve regional problems such as improving road infrastructure, preventing and combating forest fires, and improving market access and political representation. The results also underscore FAs’ capture by peasant leaders and foresters using the organizations for profit and for escalating into higher political positions. Finally, I show that leadership, financial autonomy, social capital and enforcement of institutions are crucial for the success of these associations."Thesis or Dissertation Linking Land Use, Land Cover, and Land Ownership at the Parcel Scale in the Midwest United States(2009) Donnelly, Shanon"Land ownership institutions play an important role in how land-use decisions translate to land cover. This research addresses three tightly linked but independent research questions to better understand the relationships between land use, land cover, and land ownership in the Midwest United States. The first research objective is to describe how ownership parcels split during the period of 1928 to 1997. A spatial database of ownership parcels was developed for six time points for two townships in Indiana. A method for describing the spatiotemporal pattern was then developed using spatial metrics to describe parent and child parcels for each parcelization event during the time period. Using a transition matrix approach, the research finds that there are common patterns of parcelization. The notion of a land-use portfolio is used to address the relationship between land use and land cover. Landowners were interviewed and asked to draw maps of the land use on their parcel. These maps were then digitized and incorporated with land-cover data derived from aerial photography in a GIS. The correspondence of land use and land cover was then assessed quantitatively. The general finding is that a more complex land- management portfolio does lead to more land-cover fragmentation but not equally across portfolio types. To address property-rights arrangements outside of a one household-to-one parcel scenario, the notion of intentional communities is used to describe scenarios where multiple people own land in common. Data were first collected on how communities legally own their land and then examined for differences in land-cover patterns between land ownership types. Results suggest that type of land ownership may be a useful way to categorize communities but does not explain much of the variance in terms of land-cover patterns."Thesis or Dissertation Contestable Markets for State Economic Governance: Reducing the Costs of Democracy in U.S. States(2000) Collins, Brian K."The research asks what causes US states to make policies that decrease or increase the costs of democracy? The costs of democracy arise when a democratic government exploits an agency relationship and monopoly policy-making powers to provide distributive policy regimes that undermine economic performance."Thesis or Dissertation The Politics of Structural Choice of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation: The Theoretical Foundations of Design of International Environmental Institutions(2005) Allen, Linda"For over a century, states have been crafting international institutions to address a wide range of environmental problems but the effectiveness of these institutions has been limited. Theories of international relations have historically guided research on these institutions, but this scholarship has failed to provide adequate insights into why states have not been able to design effective institutions. The main thesis of this study is that the design of international environmental institutions reflects efforts of political actors to overcome problems of expertise, political uncertainty, and political compromise while they seek to achieve their policy goals within a particular political arena, rather than efforts by states to rationally pursue mutually beneficial joint gains or a desire of a powerful hegemon to cater to its own self-interest. To test this thesis, this study examines the institutional choices associated with the creation of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). This research consists of a single case study that draws on multiple sources of qualitative and quantitative data collected from documentation, archival records, interviews, written surveys, and direct observation and analyzed using counterfactuals and process tracing for qualitative data and descriptive statistics for quantitative data. The findings of this research indicate that the positive theory of public bureaucracies has greater explanatory power for the institutional design of the CEC than rival theories, hegemonic stability and functionalistic theories. Overall, this research suggests that this theory of domestic politics offers a potentially useful theoretical approach for understanding the institutional design of international institutions."Thesis or Dissertation Essays on the Effects of Institutions and Trust on Collective Action(2009) Coleman, Eric"This dissertation examines the effects of community-based institutional arrangements and trust on the propensity to act cooperatively in natural resource commons. There are three empirical studies comprising the major chapters of the dissertation. In Chapter 2, the effects of user group monitoring and sanctioning activities are empirically assessed as applied to forestry. In Chapter 3, statistical models are tested to examine the propensity of both user groups and external governments to engage in monitoring and sanctioning activities. Chapter 4 relies on experimental work conducted in Bulgaria. It reports on the effects of common property institutions on cooperation in these experiments."Thesis or Dissertation What We Deserve: The Moral Origins of Economic Inequality and Our Policy Responses to It(2014) Bower-Bir, Jacob"This dissertation is about economic inequality and why it thrives in a country with professedly egalitarian values. I propose that people’s economic behavior and policy preferences are largely driven by their understanding of deservingness. So long as a person believes that their compatriots are generally served their economic due, economic outcomes require no tampering, at least on moral grounds. People may tolerate grave inequalities—inequalities that trouble them, even—if they think those inequalities are deserved. Indeed, if outcomes appear deserved, altering them constitutes an unjust act. Resources meted to the undeserving, conversely, require correction. To begin, I show how desert unifies behavioral research into the otherwise disparate notions of justice that social scientists usually cite. Desert I treat as a social institution, one that helps resolve a common multiple-equilibria problem: the allocation of wealth and socioeconomic station. As a natural phenomenon emerging from repeated human interaction, individuals are motivated to ensure desert’s reward. The precise definition of desert, however, will vary across cultures and individuals. I use surveys, survey experiments, and economic experiments to determine how different segments of the American population define economic desert. I then use those surveys and experiments to measure the extent to which different sub-populations believe that economic desert is actually rewarded. Finally, I show that these two variables—definition of economic desert and faith in its reward—shape an individual’s willingness to redistribute wealth, both in the laboratory and through national policy, and often at a detriment to personal financial wellbeing."Thesis or Dissertation Assessing Wetland Assessment: Understanding State Bureaucratic Use and Adoption of Rapid Wetland Assessment Tools(2012) Arnold, Gwen"Rapid wetland assessment tools, technically complex science policy innovations that are deployed within the regulatory sphere and have relatively low public salience, can highlight and help interpret the data a bureaucrat should use when making wetland regulatory choices. These tools can help bureaucrats overcome the longstanding challenge of quantifying wetland benefits when making such choices. However, state wetland bureaucrats use these tools infrequently in regulation, and states find adopting tools into regulatory policy difficult. This research explores why.These problems are analyzed by focusing on six Mid-Atlantic states and using an original survey of state wetland bureaucrats (n=149), interviews with policy actors (n=98, 58hours), ethnographic data collection (18 months spent working with federal wetland bureaucrats who work regularly with state counterparts), and secondary source analyses.Research reveals that street-level wetland bureaucrats are more likely to deploy tools in regulation when they have more opportunities to learn about tools via on-the-job experience, lateral communication about tools with policy network members, and vertical communication of tool-supportive cues from their administrative hierarchies. The institutions of cooperative environmental federalism and the Clean Water Act generate power inequities, path dependencies, and perverse incentives which discourage states from adopting tools into regulatory policy. This phenomenon is illuminated via synergistic institutional analysis, an approach the dissertation proposes for using the complementarities among rational choice, sociological, and historical institutionalism to explain policy outcomes. Contrary to a core expectation of cooperative environmental federalism, ostensibly pro-environment pressures the federal government imposes on states can prevent states from pursuing environmentally beneficial policies. Finally, the dissertation develops the concept of the street-level policy entrepreneur,an implementing bureaucrat who crafts or secures a policy innovation intended to improve implementation processes, then seeks to entrench the innovation in the practices of bureaucratic peers. Neither the conventional political science literature on policy entrepreneurship nor the street-level bureaucracy literature gives sufficient attention to the entrepreneurial capacity of these actors. Yet case studies of tool adoption efforts pursued by states show that implementing bureaucrats can pioneer, rather than merely receive and execute, policy innovations."Thesis or Dissertation Landscape Change and Land-Use/Land-Cover Dynamics in Rondônia, Brazilian Amazon(2001) Batistella, Mateus"Deforestation and colonization processes within the Brazilian Amazon have attracted substantial attention since the early 1970s. The phenomenon has been associated with issues related to global change, alteration of biogeochemical cycles, land-use/land-cover (LULC) dynamics, and biodiversity losses. This dissertation focuses on an area of approximately 3,000 km within the State of Rondonia in western Amazon. Two adjacent settlements of similar age, similar biophysical features, and similar assets among colonists were compared to assess the role of their different architectural and institutional designs in LULC dynamics and landscape change. Vale do Anari was planned as an orthogonal road network system. The majority of Rondonia was colonized following this scheme. Machadinho d'Oeste was designed with attention to topography in laying out the grid of farm properties and included communal reserves with right-of-use to local rubber tappers. Field research was undertaken in conjunction with the use of multi-temporal remotely sensed data (1988-1998), GIS integration, and landscape ecology methods. The results indicate that the communal reserves play an important role in maintaining lower levels of fragmentation in Machadinho, where 66% of forest cover remained in 1998 (after 15 years of colonization), in comparison with just 51% in Anari. Without the reserves, forest cover in Machadinho is also 51%. Although analyses at the property level showed that the area deforested per property per year is the same in both settlements for the entire time period of study, in Anari the rate of deforestation was lower before 1988 and higher between 1994 and 1998. Also, pasture conversion is more significant in the fishbone scheme of Anari. Analyses of landscape structure confirmed that Machadinho is less fragmented, more complex, and more interspersed. The combination of privately based decisions for the properties and community-based decisions for the reserves clearly indicates that this architectural and institutional design can produce positive social and environmental outcomes. By comparing different settlement designs, this dissertation contributes to the rethinking of colonization strategies in the Amazon."Thesis or Dissertation Marketable Permits: Managing Local, Regional and Global Commons(2000) Dolsak, Nives"This dissertation analyzes applicability of marketable permits for managing natural common-pool resources, especially the atmosphere as a sink for carbon dioxide (a global common-pool resource). It focuses on factors affecting 'performance' of marketable permits, which is operationalized as: (a) effectiveness to reduce resource overuse, and (b) market liquidity (number of trades, proportion of resource users who trade, and price dispersion). Multiple markets for common-pool resources are examined. These are: sulfur dioxide allowance trading, Wetlands Mitigation Banking, early emission trading programs, Regional Clean Air Incentives Market, Lead Phasedown Program, and production permits for ozone-depleting substances. Drawing on secondary data, this dissertation employs the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to examine the effects of the following factors on the performance of marketable permits: (1) resource characteristics affecting resource 'measurability'; (2) users' characteristics; (3) legal and regulatory environments; and (4) rules regulating users and resource-use. Three major findings emerge for devising rules to manage the global atmosphere as a sink for carbon dioxide. First, marketable permits perform better when the resource-use is severely limited by an authorized agency and the limits are enforceable at low costs. Given that only countries are parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, marketable permits for global atmosphere will have to rely on national limits enforced by national governments. Internationally, compliance with national limits will have to be reviewed periodically and non-compliance at the country level sanctioned. Second, countries should have autonomy to devise their own monitoring and enforcement systems. These systems need to be audited regularly by an accredited third party. Third, within and across countries, differences in the reliability of measuring resource flows attributable to various users will require non-uniform exchange ratios. These ratios should be determined by the scientific advisory board to the Convention, not by market mechanisms. Rather than having as many exchange ratios as resource users, various resource users will be classified into categories. National regulators should have the autonomy to classify projects into various categories. These categorizations will be reviewed regularly by third-party auditors. Buyer liability will create incentives for correct categorizations."Thesis or Dissertation Constitutional Orders and Deforestation: A Cross-National Analysis of the Humid Tropics(1998) Turner, Paul Warren"In this study, I explore the intermediary role of national political institutions in the context of deforestation in the humid tropics. More specifically, I focus on those institutions that shape the constitutional order—that is, the basic macropolitical framework that defines a polity's most fundamental rules regarding political roles and relationships. I give special attention to those rules that determine the locus of policymaking authority and the accountability relationships that obtain between politicians and citizens. I hypothesize that open constitutional orders will suffer lower levels of deforestation because such orders are more likely to be responsive to the policy preference of peasant producers—the predominant occupational class in the humid tropics—for a more diffuse distribution of landed property rights. Where the distribution of landed property rights is more diffuse, fewer shifted cultivators (peasant producers displaced to frontier regions) will be created and, therefore, the pressures to clear tropical forest cover will be less pronounced. To examine this hypothesis, I conduct a statistical analysis of fifty-eight (58) countries in the humid tropics using data from the period 1976-1990. Because of the presence of several influential cases in the data set, I employ robust regression methods, supplemented with bootstrap methods. To probe the potential fragility of the relationship between constitutional openness and tropical deforestation, I also perform a sensitivity analysis. This consists of the estimation of various alternative model specifications, controlling for additional factors that existing theory suggests are also important in explaining cross-national variation in tropical deforestation levels. The results of the analysis reveal that the relationship between constitutional openness and tropical deforestation levels is consistently in the hypothesized direction, and generally within the limits of conventional levels of statistical significance. Among the important conclusions of the study are that tropical deforestation processes are inextricably linked to landed property rights struggles within tropical countries and that national political institutions matter in determining the outcomes of such struggles."Thesis or Dissertation Biomass Burning in Tropical Ecosystems: An Analysis of Vegetation, Land Settlement, and Land Cover Change to Understand Fire Use in the Brazilian Lower Amazon(1998) Sorrensen, Cynthia"Research in global environmental change emphasizes that biomass burning significantly contributes to increased atmospheric trace gases and possible climate change. Analyses of what drives anthropogenic fire is less thoroughly examined because such study involves examining the human and physical dimensions of biomass burning at local and regional scales. This dissertation uses a multi-scale approach to address fire use within local and regional contexts. It investigates dynamics and effects of fire use within four rural communities with different settlement histories, then expands these findings to understand burning patterns in a larger agricultural frontier south of Santarem, Brazil's third largest Amazon city. The aim of the dissertation is to understand how landscape environmental factors and land settlement shape land use practices and the burning patterns associated to those practices. Abstract: Research in global environmental change emphasizes that biomass burning significantly contributes to increased atmospheric trace gases and possible climate change. Analyses of what drives anthropogenic fire is less thoroughly examined because such study involves examining the human and physical dimensions of biomass burning at local and regional scales. This dissertation uses a multi-scale approach to address fire use within local and regional contexts. It investigates dynamics and effects of fire use within four rural communities with different settlement histories, then expands these findings to understand burning patterns in a larger agricultural frontier south of Santarem, Brazil's third largest Amazon city. The aim of the dissertation is to understand how landscape environmental factors and land settlement shape land use practices and the burning patterns associated to those practices. The dissertation integrates analyses of biomass burning at three spatial scales: regional, ecological field, and local. At the regional scale, a model of biomass change is developed from remotely sensed data and used in combination with household land use information to infer extent of biomass burning in the study region over a 9 year period. At the field scale, physical evidence of slash and burn agriculture is examined through vegetation inventories and measure of post-fire fuel loads in 14 agricultural fields. At the local scale, in-depth household interviews on household history, land use strategies, and present/historical burning practices compliment physical evidence, to provide a fuller understanding of the local causes and impacts of fire use. Throughout the dissertation a geographic information system (GIS) is used to assess temporal and spatial characteristics of human settlement; and a global positioning system (GPS) is used to link vegetation information and settlement findings to land cover classifications derived from remotely sensed data. This dissertation advocates the need for local and regional studies on environmental issues to inform global environmental change research and estimation. It provides a framework that links human dimensions of biomass burning to larger global change issues. Findings in the dissertation contribute to the discipline of geography in the area of human/environment interactions."Thesis or Dissertation Governing the Policy Network on Urban Agriculture in Bangkok: The Role of Social Capital in Handling Cooperation and Conflicts(2014) Boossabong, Piyapong"Since 2010 a policy network on urban agriculture (UA) has emerged in Bangkok, incorporating policy actors from both governmental and non-governmental bodies. This study argues that multiple forms of social capital – including shared rules, reputation, trust, reciprocity, moral obligation, shared norms and shared knowledge among various actors – have shaped the functioning of this policy network since its emergence. In addition, the study argues that these forms of social capital support the capacity of the policy network to enhance cooperation and handle conflicts. The role of social capital in governing the UA policy network is examined in relation to the floods experienced in Bangkok between late 2011 and early 2012. The analytical framework adopted is based on two contrasting theories: Ostrom’s institutional rational choice (IRC) and Habermas’ communicative action theory (CAT). Both are applied to link social capital and policy network studies. Following these two perspectives, this study conceptualises social capital by considering both rational and normative commitments. By focusing on IRC and CAT perspectives on power, this study analyses how instrumental, communicative and structural power relates to social capital. Findings reveal that the aforementioned forms of social capital influenced the emergence of the policy network by determining the status of the network’s constituent organisations and groups and their power relations. Members of organisations and groups that shared forms of knowledge agreed that the reason for cooperation was epistemic, while reciprocity and moral obligation supported their decision to cooperate. The study also found that the reputable and trusted organisational leader within the network, who shared rules, norms and knowledge with others, played a key role in facilitating a deliberative process while handling conflicts. The analysis aims to bridge social capital and policy network studies, and reveals the benefits of articulating IRC and CAT to understand policy network governance."Thesis or Dissertation A Community-Based Approach for Managing Forest Patches in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil: A Case Study of the Micro-Watershed Barracão dos Mendes, Rio de Janiero State(2014) de Souza, Fernanda Oliveira"In the last 400 years, the coastal Brazilian Atlantic Forest, one of the world's top biodiversity hotspots, has been transformed from once being a continuous forest, into an intensely fragmented landscape due to human activities. Rural small communities living embedded into this mosaic of forest fragments rely on natural resources, and their livelihoods depend on their capacity to use and manage these fragments effectively. Thus, the inclusion of rural communities in the processes of forest conservation and management may serve both environmental and community development objectives. The current study aims to close the existent gap between communities and legal environmental requirements to ensure livelihoods and to preserve functioning ecosystems and ecosystem services, in Barracão dos Mendes micro-watershed. The objective is to develop ideas how local people can be involved in forest conservation processes within the concept of community-based development. The study area is located inside the buffer zone of a protected area, the Três Picos National Park. The methodology consists of the following steps: as a basis, the Brazilian legal framework for nature conservation was analyzed. In addition, interviews with 34 local people, 5 local actors as well as a participatory mapping was carried out, to identify local assets regarding their organizational profile and individual talents, local knowledge on ecosystem values, as well as, their sense of attachment to place; and interviews with 3 external actors to identify their supporting role inside the study area. The results show that the Brazilian legal framework is still centralized-commanded and excludes rural livelihoods. External actors mainly act as funding agents, which partly causes communities dependency on external interventions instead of capacity building, which may mobilize local assets. On the other hand, the existing local assets such as organizational ones are significant – such as local associations and committees for their representation – in addition of local knowledge on ecosystem values – such as establishment of riparian forests for water provision – showing a positive trend for grass-root development and conservation to occur. Through the proper use of the natural resources by local people, rather than prohibition, the local conservational status and community development may succeed. Moreover, the study showed that additional in-depth researches under a community-based development and conservation approach is needed for Barracão dos Mendes micro-watershed."Thesis or Dissertation Reclaiming the Commons: A Discourse for New Politics. How Grassroots Activists are Shaping the Future(2014) Ball, Sophie"This thesis draws together a number of examples of activism and protest in order to shine a light on some of the discourses and practices that have emerged in the late 20th and early 21st centuries that offer alternatives to the neoliberal discourse. I make the case for the political significance of the activists who have been a force for change that has been largely overlooked – until 2011, the year which saw a series of protests take place across a large part of the globe: ‘the year politics changed’. I present this argument through what I call the story of the commons, and assert that this narrative is evidence of a vision that has arisen piecemeal, and largely from grassroots levels. The examples of discourse and practice that this thesis explores illustrate both the emergence of the language of the commons from many different spheres of life and also its influence across a range of fields. The analysis includes a historical overview of the commons, while focusing on the evolution of the concept from the latter half of the 20th century to the present day, with the most recent material taken from events occurring in 2012. Through this vision, we recognise what is lost through the hegemony of ongoing capitalist appropriation, accumulation and exploitation of all aspects of life and reassert rights over - reclaim - that which has been lost. Through the struggle of all those involved in reclaiming the commons, a discourse for new politics emerges and shapes the future. This thesis demonstrates the emergence of a new discourse of the commons that makes possible a reconceptualisation of social, economic and political spaces."