The robustness of water governance systems depends on participants’ cooperation in providing shared benefits, such as flood control and drought relief. Supporting cooperation and managing conflict rest on the types of decision-making venues available to participants. Well positioned and designed venues are particularly important in federal systems as actors across levels of government share overlapping authority in addressing public problems.
Drawing on novel data sets including the coding of two decades of media reports and interviews with key water managers in the Rio Grande/Bravo, this manuscript empirically examines decision making venues, how types of actors and types of interaction vary by venue, and the types of policy solutions most commonly adopted by decision making venues.
