William Blomquist

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https://hdl.handle.net/1805/25231

Water Policy Resource

Professor William Blomquist is an IUPUI School of Liberal Arts faculty member within the Department of Political Science. He teaches American politics, constitutional law, public policy, and research methodology. He is the associate editor of the Water Resource Research Journal and a member of the Policy Studies Journal editorial board.

Professor Blomquist has collaborated with local governments, state and federal agencies, and nongovernmental organizations in the United States and elsewhere on decisions about how to organize policy making and implementation in water resource management, how to allocate water resources among competing uses, and how to involve multiple stakeholders and communities in those processes. He has led workshops and provided consultation for government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, and conducted collaborative research with local governments and nongovernmental organizations.

Professor Blomquist's translation of research into water policy resource solutions is another excellent example of how IUPUI's faculty members are TRANSLATING RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.

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Browsing William Blomquist by Subject "Common pool resources"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    All CPR's Are Not Created Equal: Two Important Physical Characteristics and Their Relation to the Resolution of Commons Dilemmas
    (International Association for the Study of Common Property, 1991) Blomquist, William; Schlager, Edella; Tang, Shui-Yan
    Workshop Abstract: "Policy prescriptions offered in the now-voluminous literature on common-pool resources (CPRs) frequently focus upon the strategic situation of resource users, paying relatively less attention (or none at all) to the characteristics of the common-pool resources themselves. In short, most contributions to the policy literature presume that all CPRs are alike. Based on our reconsideration of the strategic situations users face, and our empirical observation of three kinds of CPRs fisheries, irrigation systems, and groundwater basins we conclude that two physical characteristics of CPRs have vital implications for the likelihood of successful resolution of difficulties over resource use, and for the types of resolutions users develop. Those physical characteristics are the degree of stationarity of flow units and the existence of storage capacity. Speaking generally, fisheries are CPRs with fugitive flow units and without storage capacity, irrigation systems have fugitive flow units but possible availability of storage, and groundwater basins have relatively stationary flow units and storage capacity. Using comparisons among these types of CPRs, we analyze the effects of these physical characteristics upon the. prospects for the emergence- of successful cooperation in resource use."
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    Common Property's Role in Water Resource Management
    (Second International Conference on Property Rights, Economics and Environment, 1998) Blomquist, William
    Since I was invited to speak about common-property arrangements in the management of water resources, I shall begin with a description of common-property arrangements. I will then turn to the relationship between the common property and regulatory-agency approaches to water resource management, addressing both its empirical manifestations and some theoretical bases for understanding them. Then I will consider the relationship between common-property and private-property or market arrangements, again analyzing that relationship from empirical and theoretical perspectives. When I use examples or illustrations in this brief presentation, they will have to do with groundwater basins in the United States since those are the empirical cases with which I am familiar. And throughout my remarks, I will be applying the analytical approach of institutional rational-choice analysis, and restating the work of many scholars who have worked in the field of common-property resources.
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    CPR Coding Manual
    (Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, 1989) Ostrom, Elinor; Agrawal, Arun; Blomquist, William; Schlager, Edella; Tang, S.Y.
    "The fourth activity we have undertaken has been the identification of in-depth case studies that describe how CPR appropriators have succeeded or failed in efforts to manage inshore fisheries, small- to medium-sized irrigation systems, communal forests, or grazing lands. Identifying and coding in-depth case studies is undertaken in several steps. Most of this manual is devoted to an in-depth discussion of this activity."
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    Getting Out of the Commons Trap: Variables, Process, and Results in Four Groundwater Basins
    (Social Science Perspectives Journal, 1987) Blomquist, William
    "Jointly-accessible resources used by multiple individuals are often endangered. Indeed, we call the supposedly inevitable destruction of such resources 'the tragedy of the commons'. Commons problems have been classified with other 'social traps' such as the collective action problem and the Prisoner's Dilemma game. Reasoning by analogy and metaphor from these other 'traps' has yielded a general prognosis of doom for the commons, escapable only via privatization of the resource or centralized public management. In fact, alternative organizations of resource use exist, and have led to resource preservation and even to resource enhancement. The question is how, and under what conditions, users of a common resource might collectively coordinate their behavior to avoid impending doom and enhance resource use without resort to either of the forms prescribed in the prevailing literature. Drawing upon the methods of institutional analysis and the experience of actual cases of commons management, this paper presents descriptive and quantitative evidence on: (a) the relevant characteristics of the settings in which resource users operate, (b) the steps taken in a process of resolution of a commons dilemma, and (c) the results obtained thus far by the users of groundwater basins in arid and heavily populated portions of southern California. The likelihood of successful resolution is compared across different settings, and the efficiency and equity of different public/private organizational form mixes are compared, as well."
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    Local Communities, Policy Prescriptions, and Watershed Management in Arizona, California, and Colorado
    (International Association for the Study of Common Property, 2000) Schlager, Edella; Blomquist, William
    For the past 25 years, since the National Water Commission published its final report, 'Water Policies for the Future,' prescriptions of the water policy literature have centered upon two themes: 1) 'the watershed' is the appropriate scale for organizing water resource management--although watersheds are regions to which political jurisdictions almost never correspond--because all water sources and uses within a watershed are interrelated; and 2) since watershed-scale decision-making structures do not exist to begin with, they should be created as soon as possible to bring together all 'stakeholders' and produce integrated watershed management plans that can be implemented efficiently, preferably through some form of watershed management authority. Despite the consistency of the message over the last quarter-century, the gap between prescription and practice is wide. On the other hand, our observation of water resource management activities in the western states has revealed that the development of regional watershed management is in fact occurring in several places, but in an altogether different manner--watershed-scale decision-making arrangements and management activities are being assembled in a variety of decentralized and polycentric forms that involve both linked and nested relationships among smaller organizations. Drawing upon political economy and institutional analysis literature, the paper provides a straightforward conceptual and analytical presentation to account for incremental and decentralized approaches to the development of regional-scale institutions as represented in four watersheds in California and Colorado.
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    Property Rights, Political Power, and the Management of Ground and Surface Water
    (Western Political Science Association, 1997) Blomquist, William; Schlager, Edella
    Among the more popular contemporary recommendations for improved watershed use and protection is conjunctive use of surface and underground water resources. Conjunctive use involves the coordination of surface water supplies and storage with groundwater supplies and storage, for purposes of sustainable watershed use and enhanced watershed protection. Among the several potential benefits that have been promoted by advocates of greater conjunctive use are: improved security of usable water supplies, lessened exposure to extreme events such as droughts and floods, reduced reliance on costly and environmentally disruptive surface water impoundments and distribution systems, and enhanced protection of aquatic life and habitat.