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

大型资源系统，如海洋渔业和国家森林，由各种治理系统管理。在过去的几十年里，这些资源系统一直是许多案例研究和大样本分析的主题，这些分析调查了其他形式的治理在鼓励长期可持续收获方面的效率。特别是，研究集中在政府官僚机构、专门法院、宗教人物或公地私有化如何改善长期资源管理。然而，随着发达民主国家越来越多地利用委员会、立法机构或基于用户的协会等投票机构来管理自然资源设置，了解投票系统在制定稳定、长期的资源产出政策方面的能力和局限性变得越来越重要。不同的投票规则如何影响资源采收权的最终分配？在什么样的结构条件下，投票可以导致资源的长期可持续性？在什么条件下，投票会产生过度收获的动机？该项目通过创建受控的实验室实验，研究个人如何使用多数决定原则投票来划分共享资源，从而研究这些问题。迄今为止，令人惊讶的是，很少有研究考察投票制度在制定可持续的、长期的开采政策方面的影响。人们可能期望投票制度会产生公平的结果，因为各种各样的行为者或利益相关者都是决策过程的一部分。然而，也有可能出现这样的情况：一些行为者能够推动一项提案，要么使一个群体受益，而牺牲其他群体的利益，要么使短期政治利益压倒长期可持续性考虑。该项目研究了投票是如何将个人资源使用者对不可持续开采水平的偏好聚合或潜在地调解成成功的资源管理系统的。本研究利用实验室实验，仔细控制收割机之间共享资源的特征，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资源储备的政策辩论。

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.