Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Investigating Majority Rule Voting in Common Pool Resource Settings

海洋渔业和国家森林等大规模资源系统由各种治理系统管理。在过去几十年里，这些资源系统一直是许多案例研究和大样本分析的主题，这些研究和大样本分析调查了鼓励长期可持续采伐的替代治理形式的效率。特别是，研究的重点是政府官僚机构、专门法院、宗教人士或公地私有化如何改善长期资源管理。然而，随着先进民主国家越来越多地利用投票机构，如委员会、委员会、立法机构或以用户为基础的协会来管理自然资源环境，了解投票系统的能力和局限性，以制定产生稳定、长期资源收益率的政策变得越来越重要。不同的投票规则如何影响资源采摘权的最终分配？在什么结构性条件下，投票才能带来资源的长期可持续性？而且，在什么情况下，投票会产生过度捕捞的动机？该项目通过创建受控实验室实验来研究这些问题，这些实验是关于个人如何使用多数规则投票来划分共享资源的。到目前为止，令人惊讶的是，很少有研究考察投票机构在制定可持续、长期的开采政策方面的影响。人们可能会认为，投票制度将产生公平的结果，因为不同的行动者或利益攸关方是决策过程的一部分。然而，情况也可能是这样，一些行为者有能力推动一项提案，要么使一个群体受益，损害其他群体的利益，要么认为短期政治利益将凌驾于长期可持续性考虑之上。该项目调查投票是如何运作的，以聚合或潜在地调和个别资源用户对进入成功的资源管理系统的不可持续的提取水平的偏好。通过利用实验室实验仔细控制收割机之间共享资源的特征，这项研究测试了现有理论解释政策结果的能力和局限性。这些发现将有助于现实世界关于如何最好地管理脆弱的资源库存的政策辩论。

Large scale resource systems, such as ocean fisheries and national forests, are managed by a variety of governance systems. Over the past few decades, these resource systems have been the subject of numerous case studies and large-sample analyses investigating the efficiency of alternative forms of governance at encouraging long run sustainable harvesting. In particular, studies have focused on how government bureaucracies, specialized courts, religious figures, or privatization of the commons can improve long run resource management. As the advanced democracies increasingly utilize voting institutions like commissions, committees, legislatures, or user-based associations to govern natural resource settings, however, it has become increasingly important to understand the capabilities and limitations of voting systems to produce policies yielding stable, long run resource yields. How do different voting rules affect the final distribution of resource harvesting rights? Under what structural conditions can voting lead to long run sustainability of resources? And, under what conditions will voting create incentives to over-harvest? The project investigates these questions by creating controlled laboratory experiments of how individuals divide a shared resource using majority rule voting. To date, surprisingly little research has examined the effect of voting institutions in producing sustainable, long run extraction policies. One might expect that a voting system will produce equitable outcomes since a diverse set of actors or stakeholders are a part of the decision making process. It might also be the case, however, that some actors are capable of pushing through a proposal that either benefits one group at the expense of others or that short run political interest will trump long term sustainability considerations. The project investigates how voting operates to aggregate or potentially mediate individual resource users' preferences for un-sustainable levels of extraction into successful resource management systems. By utilizing laboratory experiments that carefully control the characteristics of a shared resource among harvesters, this study tests the capabilities and limitations of existing theory to explain policy outcomes. The findings will contribute to the real-world policy debates over how best to manage fragile resource stocks.