Water is one of the essential ingredients for life on earth and touches every aspect of our lives. Growing concern for equitably providing safe water now and into the future is an increasingly salient for individuals, communities, governments, and researchers as water scarcity continues to be a growing issue. In this dissertation I focus on the role of local collaborative governance institutions as a strategy for incorporating stakeholders into decision-making processes to manage resources. Chapter 1 uses the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework to understand agricultural producers’ motivations to collaboratively govern groundwater in Kansas, how they measure the success of collaborative efforts, and how they have adapted as individuals and a community under conditions of voluntary and collective withdrawal restrictions. Chapter 2 uses the Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance to understand why Michigan water users have not chosen to collaboratively govern shared water resources despite being able to do so since the state’s implementation of the 2008 Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact. Chapter 3 outlines a new research agenda for incorporating the construct of structural power within the Social-Ecological Systems Framework.
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