by Tomás Olivier & Sechindra Vallury
Water governance is a critical challenge that demands locally tailored solutions to address diverse social and ecological conditions. Our new paper explores this through Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts (NRDs)—a basin-level governance arrangement created to manage groundwater resources. We investigated how well NRDs design policies to fit their local social-ecological contexts and the influence of broader institutional mandates on those policies.
The overarching goal of our research was to bridge the gap between institutional fit and policy design literature. To do this, we aim to better understand the drivers behind institutional fit—how well governing arrangements address local resource challenges—and the mechanisms shaping policy design in decentralized governance systems like Nebraska’s NRDs. Our research question was: how do actors in governing arrangements design policy outputs to fit to their social, ecological, and institutional environment?
Figure 1. Nebraska’s Natural Resource Districts and the status of their Integrated Management Plans. The map was generated using data provided by the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources.
Nebraska’s NRDs are an ideal case for examining institutional fit. Established in 1972, these districts are defined by river basins and tasked with managing shared resources like water, soil, and land. Each NRD develops its own management plans and groundwater rules, which vary widely due to differing local conditions such as precipitation, population, and agricultural needs. This setting allows for a comparative study of how context influences policy design across NRDs.
Using topic modeling, k-means clustering, and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we analyzed Integrated Management Plans (IMPs) and Groundwater Management Rules and Regulations (GMRRs) produced by 23 NRDs. We found evidence that the design of NRD outputs (plans and rules) aligned with local biophysical conditions. NRDs in areas with higher precipitation or greater groundwater demand tended to emphasize water management priorities tailored to those conditions. For instance, NRDs in drier western Nebraska prioritized policies addressing groundwater scarcity, as illustrated by their IMPs’ focus on water quantity controls (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Topic model of stemmed text from Integrated Management Plans of 23 Natural Resource Districts.
Our results also suggested that NRDs with a state mandate to develop Integrated Management Plans (IMPs) produced more distinct, context-sensitive policy outputs than those without mandates. NRDs with state-mandated IMPs showed lower textual similarity across their policy outputs, indicating more tailored responses to local conditions. Voluntary IMPs, on the other hand, often relied on boilerplate language, reflecting less contextual customization.
The fsQCA analysis identified multiple pathways for achieving institutional fit, involving combinations of factors like population size, precipitation, and state mandates. For example, NRDs with large populations and high precipitation but no state mandate tended to produce outputs with less focus on enforcement mechanisms, highlighting how context shapes policy emphasis (see Table 2).
This study underscores the importance of institutional fit in natural resource governance. It shows that decentralized systems like Nebraska’s NRDs can successfully tailor policies to local contexts, particularly when supported by state-level guidance. However, the reliance on voluntary planning can lead to inconsistent levels of customization, raising questions about equity and effectiveness across districts.
You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at
Olivier, Tomás and Sechindra Vallury. 2024. “ Institutional Fit and Policy Design in Water Governance: Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (4): 809–832. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12550.
About the Authors
Tomás Olivier is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration and the Assistant Director of the Center for Policy Design and Governance at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Follow him on Bluesky: @tomasolivier.bsky.social
Sechindra Vallury is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy at the Odum School of Ecology and the Director for Policy at the River Basin Center, University of Georgia.
Follow him on Bluesky: @sechindra.bsky.social
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