PhD Candidate Adriana Molina Garzon and Dr. Krister P. Andersson have had their article "Decentralization Can Increase Cooperation among Public Officials" published in early view for the American Journal of Political Science.

ABSTRACT

Collective action among public officials is necessary for the effective delivery of many social services, but relatively little is known about how it can be fostered through policy reforms. In this article, we compare cooperation among public officials within decentralized versus centrally‐administered municipalities in Honduras. Leveraging a quasi‐experiment in health sector reform, coupled with behavioral games and social network surveys, we find that decentralization is associated with greater cooperation. When they are able to communicate, health sector workers in decentralized municipalities contribute more to a public good than their centrally‐administered counterparts. This increase in cooperative behavior results in part from the decentralization reform engendering greater numbers of interactions and stronger ties across different levels of government. These findings indicate that institutional reforms like decentralization can favorably reconfigure patterns of social interactions across public organizations, which is an important component of administrative capacity in developing countries.

Learn more at: 

Off

By: Krister Andersson, Kimberlee Chang, Adriana Molina-Garzon

Publication Date: October 2020

Abstract:

 Strong local institutions are important for the successful governance of common-pool resources (CPRs), but why do such institutions emerge in the first place and why do they sometimes not emerge at all? We argue that voluntary local leaders play an important role in the initiation of self-governance institutions because such leaders can directly affect local users’ perceived costs and benefits associated with self-rule. Drawing on recent work on leadership in organizational behavior, we propose that voluntary leaders can facilitate a cooperative process of local rule creation by exhibiting unselfish behavior and leading by example. We posit that such forms of leadership are particularly important when resource users are weakly motivated to act collectively, such as when confronted with “creeping” environmental problems. We test these ideas by using observations from a laboratory-in-the-field experiment with 128 users of forest commons in Bolivia and Uganda. We find that participants’ agreement to create new rules was significantly stronger in group rounds where voluntary, unselfish leaders were present. We show that unselfish leadership actions make the biggest difference for rule creation under high levels of uncertainty, such as when the resource is in subtle decline and intragroup communication sparse.

Read it

Also, CU Today published a press release about the article that you can read here!

Off

Krister Andersson, �鶹ӰԺ; Alan Zarychta, University of Chicago; Tara Grillos, Purdue Univerity. 

Published: December 30, 2019

Abstract: 

This article draws on health sector reform in Honduras to examine the mechanisms through which governance reforms shape the behavior of street‐level bureaucrats. It combines insights from behavioral public administration with original data from lab‐in‐the‐field workshops conducted with more than 200 bureaucrats to assess the relationship between decentralization and motivation. Findings show strong evidence that motivation, measured as self‐sacrifice, is higher among bureaucrats in decentralized municipalities compared with bureaucrats in comparable centrally administered municipalities. Increased motivation is most pronounced in decentralized systems led by nongovernmental organizations compared with those led by municipal governments or associations. Additionally, the evidence suggests that higher motivation is related to changes in the composition of staff rather than socialization or changes among existing staff. Overall, this research helps move beyond indiscriminate calls for decentralization by highlighting the interplay between reform design and bureaucratic behavior, as well as the limitations of governance reforms in motivating more experienced bureaucrats.

Click to read more 

Off

Krister Andersson, �鶹ӰԺ; Kimberlee Chang, �鶹ӰԺ 

Published: October 4, 2019

Abstract: 

Social, biophysical, and institutional contexts affect forest users’ incentives to work together to restore forests. With renewed government commitments to support such activities, we argue that effective interventions need to consider several context-specific factors – such as the user groups’ future discount rates, opportunity costs, and collective-action capabilities – because these factors will help determine the effectiveness of such interventions. To test the effects of a suite of contextual factors, we analyzed observations from 184 different groups in 133 forests across eight developing countries. We find that the combination of certain enabling factors increases the probability of users undertaking forest improvement activities, and that social contexts can condition the effect of institutional and biophysical contexts. Our findings carry implications for the design and implementation of future interventions to restore forests in developing countries.

Click  to read more!

Off

Krister Andersson became a professor in the CU Political Science Department in 2005 after a career with the United Nations. Andersson worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, focusing on issues of forest conservation.

“During my time at the UN, we were asked by member governments to provide advice for how they could develop policies that were more supportive of local people using and protecting forest resources.”

Andersson’s career with the UN and his exposure to the problems within public policy is what ultimately pushed him into Graduate school.

“I became more interested in trying to contribute to the scientific knowledge of what actually works in forest protection and what allows certain communities to be really good at using the forest sustainably, while other communities do not seem to care about the long-term sustainability of forest resources.”

Professor Andersson attended Indiana University to examine this topic of interest. “I became a research assistant during Graduate school and ended up working with Professor Elinor Ostrom who had already done a lot of work on the local governance of natural resources. I learned how to do research on my topic of interest with her and other colleagues at the university.”

Andersson’s interest in forest sustainability has brought him around the world – specifically to countries in Latin America, where his primary research is focused. “I really enjoy working in Latin America and with Latin American colleagues. Also, it helps that my wife is from Chile and that we speak Spanish at home.”

“Travelling has been integral to my research because so much of my work is about issues where there are no readily available databases. To test new theories and ideas I am required to go out and collect the data.”

As the Director of the Center for the Governance of Natural Resources at CU’s Institute for Behavioral Sciences, Andersson conducts research with other faculty members and students from various departments on campus. Andersson funds this research with grants from the National Science Foundation and other organizations.

“The research we do all has one thing in common and that is we are interested in how policy interventions affect decision making on the ground. We have looked at rural-development interventions in Brazil, groundwater taxes in Colorado, Payments for Environmental Services in Tanzania, and Decentralization policies in Bolivia, to mention a few.”

In another project, Andersson and students from CU studied a decentralization reform in Honduras and its effect on the quality of healthcare that citizens were receiving. “We interviewed 9,500 households in Honduras about how they perceived this reform and we measured the degree of malnourishment among kids in all households. Our analysis, which is still underway, is showing that the reform made a difference in improving public health services, especially when it comes to providing improved access to women and children.”

This project was conducted over the course of five years, indicating the time and dedication that these research projects take.

Andersson is also working on a research project with Nathan Cook, a political science graduate student. “With funding from the National Science Foundation, we are going to look at issues of inequality in community managed forests in India and Nepal.”

“The idea of community managed forests is becoming a really popular strategy for forest conservation and it has some substantial benefits to local communities, but often the richest members of the community are benefiting the most and we will investigate this problem and together with colleagues in Nepal and India, identify and test possible solutions.”

Outside of his research, Andersson teaches public policy classes and encourages students to get involved in research.

“In my Introduction to Environmental Policy class, students do term projects that are linked to specific problems and issues here on CU campus. For example, one group is looking at the cost and benefits of the CU recycling program. The students in my class work on practical issues where they do original research on local problems and at the end of the course they present a report to stakeholders on campus.”

Andersson provides opportunities for students to learn how to research and apply it in a practical way that will inform a good response to a public problem.

Andersson is also applying these concepts to graduate level courses. Next semester, Andersson is teaching a graduate level seminar called Behavior Science Public Policy Analysis.

“The idea with this course is to explore how we can make public policies better and more effective by incorporating findings from the behavioral sciences.”

“A lot of our public policies are based on old-fashioned understandings of human behavior, so the course will examine the assumptions behind policies and discuss alternative policy approaches based on a better understanding of human behavior.”

When asked what advice he would give to students wanting to become involved in research, Andersson said: “Take public policy courses in the Political Science Department because in these classes you will learn how research can help make a difference in local and national decision making and activism.”

You can read more about Professor Anderson and his research

Off

Off

Lisa Dilling, Elise Pizzi, John Berggren, Ashwin Ravikumar, Krister Andersson

Abstract:

Cities are key sites of action for adaptation to climate change. However, there are a wide variety of responses to hazards at the municipal level. Why do communities take adaptive action in the face of weather- and climate-related risk? We studied what cities are doing in response to existing natural hazards, such as floods, droughts, and blizzards as an analog for understanding the drivers of adaptive behavior toward climate change risks. We conducted a survey of 60 U.S. municipalities followed by six in-depth case studies in the intermountain west states of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah that regularly experience weather and climate extreme events. Our analysis shows that perception of risk and external factors such as planning requirements and availability of funding stand out as important drivers. Nevertheless, political action is rarely driven by a single factor or event. Overall, our results suggest that multiple factors interact or act in combination to produce an enabling environment for action in the face of weather- and climate-related risk.

Off

Valdivieso, P. and Andersson, K.

Abstract:

Why do some local governments successfully address issues related to environmental disaster risk management (EDRM), while others do not? This research contributes to a growing literature about the relationships between institutions, multilevel governance, and EDRM at the local level in developing countries. Supported by the frameworks of institutional analysis and polycentric governance, as well as an in-depth case study of three municipalities in Chile (Cauquenes, Lebu, and Panguipulli) with data from primary sources (e.g., interviews, surveys applied to representative samples of householders, and archival research), this study identifies the types of institutional responses that appear to improve governance outcomes. The analysis reveals that municipal operational rules combined with representation, municipal structures, institutional trajectories, and polycentric relationships between municipal governing councils and society are influential factors for successful EDRM.

Off

Cook, Nathan J., Wright, Glenn D., Andersson, Krister P.

Abstract:

Concerned with the challenges of sustainable development, policy makers and scholars often urge nongovernmental organizations to increase their efforts to support governance of natural resources in developing countries. How does funding from external NGOs influence the responsiveness of local government policy to the sector-specific needs and policy preferences of local citizens? Using a unique longitudinal dataset from surveys of local governance actors in 200 municipalities in Bolivia and Guatemala, we explore these questions in the context of local natural resource policy. We find preliminary support for the hypothesis that external NGOs gain disproportionate influence over local policy processes in forestry by donating to local governments, and that this influence “crowds out” the influence of local grassroots actors, leading to less responsive local governance as rated by councils of local citizens. However, political pressure on local government officials from organized local groups in the forestry sector counteracts this negative relationship. Although NGOs can contribute to technical capacity for local governments and are generally seen as supportive of decentralized and participatory governance, our findings suggest that NGOs exert political pressure on local governments in pursuit of their own policy goals, and that NGO support may sometimes steer local governments away from responding to the specific livelihood needs of local resource users. More generally, our findings underscore the importance of local political contexts in moderating the effects of NGO interventions.

Off

Valdivieso, P.E., Andersson, K.P., Villena-Roldan, B. 2017.

Abstract:

We study how the local institutional context shapes local government decisions about responses to perceived threats of natural disasters and climatic change. We draw on institutional theories and field observations to develop hypotheses about the effects of municipal institutional arrangements, social capital, and multilevel governance. To test these ideas, we analyze a unique data set with over-time observations for almost all local governments in Chile. Our analysis shows multiple institutional conditions supporting proactive local adaptation: municipalities with relatively robust institutional settings tend to devote more resources for to environmental risk management and adaptation. We use our quantitative model to show that altering institutional arrangements settings can make a difference for increasing local government investments in this area. Although few local governments in Chile currently enjoy favorable institutional conditions for risk reduction and adaptation, our findings identify ways that external actors may contribute to a more propitious institutional climate.

Off