Doctoral Dissertation Research: Stakeholder Involvement, Collective Decision Making and Institutional Change Public participation in decision making pertaining to environmental problems has been proposed as a means of improving the policy making process and its outcomes. Stakeholders can, however, be involved in the decision making process in a variety of ways and little is known about how different forms of involvement shape policy development and outcomes. In this doctoral dissertation proposal, the researcher plans to evaluate the influence of different configurations of stakeholder involvement on collective decision making regarding the use of a common pool resource. Case studies of recent decisions regarding interstate river basins will be employed for this purpose.
