Crafting hierarchical institutions for surface water resource management of the Platte River: A case study for the assessment of institutional performance and transformation.

摘要

Much of the literature indicates the existence of a common feature of the surface water resource. Those studies emphasize a communal ownership pertaining to the access of the surface water resource. Meanwhile, the concept of "open access" is introduced distinctively to compare with the concept of "common property," that is rooted in the presence of regulatory system, relating to the utilization of the surface water resource. The presence of a regulatory system represents the multiple layers of the regulatory institutions rather than dominance of a single institution to manage the surface water resource.;This research selected the surface water resource of the Platte River in the section of Nebraska for the case study. The particular concern of this research began by identifying the multiple layers of regulatory institutions that are involved in managing the surface water resource of the Platte River. The process of this identification required the explanation of the historical development of the present regulatory mechanism. Hence, the first goal of this research is to identify all enforced major water laws and their institutional mechanisms throughout the utilization history of the Platte River.;The research continued by evaluating the performance of these identified institutional mechanisms in terms of two criteria to measure their successfulness. The first criterion assessed how consistently the institutional mechanisms were structured to carry out the goals of the water laws. But any conclusions pertaining to their successfulness cannot be made unless the performance of the institutional mechanism is evaluated in terms of its ecological consequences. Thus, the second criterion was developed to appraise the ecological consequences that are characterized as "the test of the instrumental efficiency.".;The evaluation of the institutional performance was not only to measure the successfulness of the common resource management systems of each system, but also to characterize the pattern of transformation of the surface water resource management system in response to the on-going socio-economic environment and the ecological environment.