Research Projects
Collaborative Policy
Collaborative policy institutions are an experiment in democratic governance. Instead of the coercive policies
typical of traditional environmental policy, collaborative institutions attempt to build voluntary cooperation between competing
stakeholders in order to promote long-term resource protection. Collaborative institutions have both critics and advocates, and
to date, the academic community has not reached a verdict on their effectiveness. My research attempts to understand
the mechanics of collective action within watersheds, including an assessment of the success of collaborative institutions.
The papers below report results from research on the National Estuary Program, one of the leading national examples of
collaborative watershed institutions. Forthcoming papers will examine collaborative land-use and transportation planning in California.
- Weible, Chris, Paul Sabatier, and Mark Lubell. 2004. ""A Comparison of a Collaborative and Top-Down Approach to the Use of Science in Policy: Establishing
Marine Protected Areas in California."Policy Studies Journal, 32(2): 187-207.
- Lubell, Mark. 2004. Collaborative Environmental Institutions: All Talk and No Action?
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 23(3): 549-573.
- Lubell, Mark. 2004. Resolving Conflict and Building Cooperation in the National Estuary Program.
Environmental Management 33 (5): 677-691.
- Lubell, Mark. 2003. "Collaborative Institutions, Belief Systems, and Perceived Policy Effectiveness."(Sorry, no link) Political Research Quarterly 56(3): 309-323.
- Mark Schneider, John T. Scholz, Mark Lubell, Denisa Mindruta, and Matt Edwardsen. 2003. "Building
Consensual Institutions: Networks and the National Estuary Program." American Journal of Political Science
47 (1): 143-158.
- Lubell, Mark, Mark Schneider, John T. Scholz, and Mihriye Mete. 2002. "
Watershed Partnerships and the Emergence of Collective Action Institutions." American Journal of Political Science
46(1):148-163.
- Lubell, Mark. 2000. "Cognitive Conflict and Consensus Building in the
National Estuary Program." American Behavioral Scientist 44:629-648.
- Lubell, Mark. 2003. "Do Watershed Partnerships Enhance Beliefs Conducive
to Collective Action?" Forthcoming in Paul Sabatier et al. Swimming Upstream: Collaborative Approaches to
Watershed Management. MIT Press.
Internet Appendices for 2003 Political Research Quarterly
Agricultural Watershed Management
One of the largest remaining water quality problems in the United States and elsewhere is non-point source pollution from
agricultural runoff. A common solution to this problem is to develop watershed management programs that encourage farmers to participate in
policy decisions as well as adopt on-farm "best management practices", which are designed to reduce the quantity and improve the environmental quality of agricultural runoff. Trust is a critical resource
for solving the collective action problems involved with agricultural watershed management. This research is currently underway with grant funding from the Russell Sage Foundation and the
California Policy Research Center.
- Lubell, Mark, and Allan Fulton. 2008. " Local Policy Networks and Agricultural Watershed Management." Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 18 (4):673-96.
- Lubell, Mark. 2008. "Familiarity Breeds Trust: Collective Action in a Policy Domain." Journal of Politics, 69 (1): 237-250.
- Lubell, Mark, and Allan Fulton. 2007. Local Diffusion Networks as Pathways to Sustainable Agriculture. California Agriculture61(3): 131-137.
- Lubell, Mark and Allan Fulton. 2006. "Agricultural Water Quality Management in the Sacramento River Valley: A Survey of Producers' Opinions.
Policy Report of Sac Valley Farmer Survey Results.
- Lubell, Mark. 2004. Collaborative Watershed Management: A View from the Grassroots.
Policy Studies Journal 32 (3): 321-341.
- Lubell, Mark. 2001. " Trust and Cooperation in Watershed Management."
Grant awarded by Russell Sage Foundation, Initiative on Trust.
Environmental Activism and Behavior
Environmental activism and behavior are classic examples of collective-action because each individual citizen prefers to
free-ride on the behavior of others, thereby avoiding the costs of participation but reaping the benefits of new policies.
The papers below use a variety of survey data to test a collective action model of environmental activism. This work continues in collaboration with
Arnie Vedlitz (Texas A&M) and Sammy Zahran (Colorado State University).
- Lubell, Mark, Sammy Zahran, and Arnold Vedlitz. 2007. Collective Action and Citizen Responses to Global Warming. Political Behavior 29(3): 391-414.
- Lubell, Mark, Arnold Vedlitz, and Sammy Zahran. 2006. "Collective Action, Environmental Activism, and Air Quality Policy."
Political Research Quarterly 59(1): 149-160.
- Lubell, Mark. 2002. "Environmental Activism as Collective Action."
Environment and Behavior 34: 431-454.
- Zahran, Sammy, Eunyi Kim, Xi Chen, and Mark Lubell. 2007.
"Ecological Development and Global Climate Change: A Cross-national Study of Kyoto Protocol Ratification." Society and Natural Resources 20: 37-55 (Note:
This paper looks at collect action at the level of countries, not individuals. An extension of my work with Sammy Zahran)
Local Government Policy and Politics
Historically, theories of local government policy have largely ignored the structure of local political institutions such as district-based
versus at-large elections, or mayor verus city manager executive structures. Neoinstitutional theory suggests these institutions will have systematic
effects on collective decisions. In collaboration with Rick Feiock (Florida State University), this research examines the effect of local political institutions
on growth management and environmental policies.
Experimental Social Dilemmas and Cultural Evolution
The collective-action problems seen in many public policy arenas have structural features that can be simulated in
a laboratory in order to test central hypotheses. These are often called "social dilemma" experiments, and
can be found in nearly every social science discipline--one author called them the e.coli of social science. In collaboration
with Peter Richerson and Richard McElreath, I have recently expanded into experiments testing theories of cultural evolution. Social dilemmas are just
one place where cultural evolution is important. The papers below report from a variety of these experiments.
- McElreath, Richard, Adrian Bell, Charles Efferson, Mark Lubell, Peter Richerson, and Tim Waring. 2008. Beyond Existence and Aiming Outside the Laboratory:
Estimating Frequency-Dependent and Payoff-Biased Social Learning Strategies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363: 3515-3528.
- Efferson, C., Lalive, R., Richerson, P. J., McElreath, R., and Lubell, M. 2008. " Conformists and mavericks: the empirics of frequency-dependent cultural transmission.
Evolution and Human Behavior 29 (1): 56-64.
- Efferson, Charles, Peter J. Richerson, Mark Lubell, Ed Edsten, Timothy M. Waring, Brian Paciotti, and William Baum. 2007. "Learning,
Productivity, Noise: An Experimental Study of Cultural Transmission on the Bolivian Altiplano." Evolution and Human Behavior 28: 11-17.
- McElreath, Richard, Mark Lubell, Peter J. Richerson, Timothy Waring, William Baum, Edward Edsten, Charles Efferson, and Brian Paciotti. 2005.
"Evolutionary Models to the Laboratory Study of Social Learning." Evolution and Human Behavior 26(6): 483-508.
- Lubell, Mark, and John T. Scholz. 2001. "Cooperation, Reciprocity, and the
Collective Action Heuristic." American Journal of Political Science 45: 160-178.
Agent-Based Models and the Evolution of Cooperation
The beginnings of some results from simulations that examine how institutions influence the evolution of cooperation.
Featuring agent-based simlutions in the spirit of Axelrod (1984) and Nowak and Sigmund.