As Americans try to better manage and protect the natural resources of our watersheds, is politics getting in the way? Why does watershed management end up being so political? In Embracing Watershed Politics, political scientists Edella Schlager and William Blomquist provide timely illustrations and thought-provoking explanations of why political considerations are essential, unavoidable, and in some ways even desirable elements of decision making about water and watersheds. With ...

In addition to winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her path-breaking research on “economic governance, especially the commons,” Elinor (Lin) Ostrom also made important contributions to other fields of political economy and public policy. This four-volume compendium of papers written by Lin (often with coauthors, most notably her husband, Vincent), along with papers by others expanding on her work, brings together the strands of her entire empirical, analytical, theoretica...

This edited collection further expands our knowledge about what comprises a successful constitution in both theory and application. Building on the research and analysis of Vincent Ostrom, who as one of America's leading scholars on constitutions has spent a lifetime writing about constitutions in America and overseas.Each essay shows how particular countries, governments, and organizations devise constitutions to reflect their visions of governance and sets of rules for their lead...

This book is a firsthand investigation into water management in a fast-growing region of the arid American West. It presents three states that have adopted the conjunctive management of groundwater and surface water to make resources go further in serving people and the environment. Yet conjunctive management has followed a different history, been practiced differently, and produced different outcomes in each state. The authors question why different results have emerged from neighbors try...