William Blomquist
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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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Item Introduction to William Blomquist & His Work(Center for Translating Research Into Practice, IU Indianapolis, 2021-04) Blomquist, WilliamProfessor Blomquist briefly discusses his translational research that deals with water resource policy.Item Being Smart and Lucky: Why Water Policy is Important Even in a Wet State(Center for Translating Research Into Practice, IU Indianapolis, 2021-04-23) Blomquist, WilliamMost natural resource problems are ultimately human problems – matters of human social behavior and choice. The structures and processes of decision making that we use in trying to deal with those problems are therefore very important. Professor Blomquist's goal is to aid in understanding how we make decisions about our water resources and how we can do that better, based on studies of past and current efforts.Item Welcome and Introductory Remarks(Indiana University, 2013-01-25) Blomquist, William; Labode, Modupe; Wilson, FredWilliam Blomquist, “Welcome.” Modupe Labode, “Introductory remarks.” Fred Wilson, “Inspiration: Musings on what Monuments Memorials, and Public Art Inspire Me”Item Dispute Resolution Processes. Thinking Through SGMA Implementation(Stanford University, 2019) Moran, Tara; Martinez, Janet; Blomquist, WilliamThis report examines 74 multi-entity parties formed as Joint Powers Authorities or Memorandums of Understanding to guide Groundwater Sustainability Agencies through the process of including dispute resolution clauses in their Groundwater Sustainability plans.Item California’s New Landscape for Groundwater Governance (Water in the West Reports and Working Papers)(Stanford University, 2017) Conrad, Esther; Gordon, Beatrice; Moran, Tara; Blomquist, William A.; Martinez, Janet; Szeptycki, LeonItem Putting Adaptive Management into Practice: Incorporating Quantitative Metrics into Sustainable Groundwater Management(Stanford University, 2019) Conrad, Esther; Moran, Tara; Crankshaw, Ilana; Blomquist, William; Martinez, Janet; Szeptycki, LeonThis report uses four cases to examine how agencies have used adaptive mangement and quantitative metrics to set minimum thresholds, measurable objectives and interim milestones to measure groundwater in California. The report offers recommendations for Groundwater Sustainability Agencies as they write their sustainability plans.Item Comparison of Institutional Arrangements for River Basin Management in Eight Basins(Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2005) Blomquist, William; Dinar, Ariel; Kemper, KarinThis study represents an effort toward understanding conditions that affect successful or unsuccessful efforts to devolve water resource management to the river basin level and secure active stakeholder involvement. A theoretical framework is used to identify potentially important variables related to the likelihood of success. Using a comparative case-study approach, the study examined river basins where organizations have been developed at the basin scale and where organizations perform management functions such as planning, allocation, and pricing of water supplies, flood prevention and response, and water quality monitoring and improvement. This paper compares the alternative approaches to basin governance and management adopted in the following river basins: the Alto-Tiete and Jaguaribe River Basins, Brazil; the Brantas River Basin, East Java, Indonesia; the Fraser River Basin, British Columbia, Canada; the Guadalquivir Basin, Spain; the Murray-Darling River Basin, Australia; the Tarcoles River Basin, Costa Rica; and the Warta River Basin, Poland. The analysis focuses on how management has been organized and pursued in each case in light of its specific geographical, historical, and organizational contexts and the evolution of institutional arrangements. The cases are also compared and assessed for their observed degrees of success in achieving improved stakeholder participation and integrated water resources management.Item Decentralization of River Basin Management: A Global Analysis(World Bank Group, 2005) Dinar, Ariel; Kemper, Karin; Blomquist, William; Diez, Michele; Sine, Gisele; Fru, WilliamDecentralization and increased stakeholder involvement have been major elements of water sector reform as ways to promote sustainable and integrated resource management particularly of river basins. Based on an analytical framework for relating decentralization and stakeholder involvement to improved river basin management, this paper infers several hypotheses about factors associated with greater or lesser likelihood of success of the decentralization process using data from 83 river basins worldwide. The results suggest that physical, political, economic, financial, and institutional characteristics of the basin do affect the process and the level of performance of the decentralization. In particular, the presence of water scarcity may be a stimulus to reform, uniting the stakeholders in the basin and leading to better performance; organized user groups push for the initiation of decentralization reforms but may be associated with costs to the process and difficulty of achieving decentralization; the existence of dispute resolution mechanisms supports stakeholder involvement and improves decentralization performance; where stakeholders accepted greater financial responsibility, complying with tariffs and contributing to the budget for basin management, the decentralization process and performance measures increased; basins with higher percentages of their budgets from external governmental sources benefited from better stability and support and it shows in the performance of the decentralization process.Item To Consolidate or Coordinate? Status of the Formation of Groundwater Sustainability Agencies in California(Stanford University, 2016) Conrad, Esther; Martinez, Janet; Moran, Tara; DuPaw, Marcelle; Ceppos, David; Blomquist, WilliamItem Resolving Common Pool Resource Dilemmas and Heterogeneities Among Resource Users(International Association for the Study of Common Property, 1998) Schlager, Edella; Blomquist, WilliamHeterogeneities among resource users are commonly viewed as anathema to resolving common pool resource dilemmas. Ostrom (1990:211) states that resource users are more likely to adopt a set of rules that improves joint welfare if 'appropriators will be affected in similar ways by the proposed rule change', which is only possible if appropriators are homogeneous in all important respects. While heterogeneities may, in many cases, confound attempts to resolve common-pool resource dilemmas, they are ubiquitous. As the IAD framework demonstrates, there are numerous dimensions on which resource users may differ. Furthermore, most attention to heterogeneities has focused on attempting to reach agreements for solving shared problems. As both Ostrom (1990) and Scharpf (1997) argue, reaching an agreement is only one step in resolving shared problems, attention must be paid to implementation, including commitment and monitoring. Heterogeneities may effect resource users' willingness to follow as well as enforce rules. "Even though in many instances heterogeneities present substantial challenges to users of a shared resource, they nevertheless surmount such obstacles and devise and implement institutional arrangements. The issue then is how those arrangements address and overcome the obstacles presented by differences among resource users. In general, most institutional arrangements devised to address common-pool resource dilemmas also address heterogeneities by separating resource users into homogenous groups, forcing resource users to work together, or removing groups of users from the resource. Thus, in evaluating institutional arrangements for managing common pool resources, attention must be paid not only to their efficiency, effectiveness, and fairness, but also to how the resolve resource user heterogeneity.