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

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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.