Course Description
Exploration of the institutional frameworks employed to govern human-environmental interactions. Conventional and critical perspectives on idealized institutional forms (e.g., state, market, community) and governance trends will be covered. Taught in seminar format designed to advance student work on a topic of interest.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will have additional responsibilities related to facilitating class discussions, the number of weekly readings, and the thematic scope of term papers.
Athena Title
Institution and Sustainability
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- Students will have a basic understanding of key lenses through which human behavior may be viewed and the unique value (and limitations) of an institutional lens.
- Students will have a basic understanding of institutional drivers of environmental behaviors and outcomes which operate at multiple levels, from the village level to the international level.
- Students will be familiar with different solutions to collective action dilemmas, the governance instruments associated with these (e.g., regulatory, market-based, self-organization), and the conditions under which they emerge(d).
- Students will have a basic understanding of how different types and levels of institutions shape the behavior of individuals, groups, and corporations (and related outcomes) in different contexts.
- Students will understand the formal and informal aspects of institutions and governance and the importance of integrating institutional and political lenses on governance.
- Students will be able to employ new concepts and terms in an analysis of a particular social and/or environmental problem.
Topical Outline
- PART 1: CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS
• Theories of human behavior: rational choice and the role of institutions in mediating human-environmental behavior
• Sustainability and the collective action/public goods dilemma
• Institutional approaches to the dilemma: community, hierarchy, market, contract
- PART 2: INSTITUTIONAL FORMS
“Community”:
• Customary law and institutions
• Collective action theory
• Self-organization in common property regimes and grassroots environmental movements
“Hierarchy”:
• State authority and regulatory control
• International law
“Market”:
• Market-based instruments of governance
“Contract”:
• Coase and the governance of externalities
• Legal pluralism
- PART 3: KEY BODIES OF INSTITUTIONAL SCHOLARSHIP AND APPLICATION
• Property rights
• Governing natural resources for their sustainable and equitable use (decentralization and subsidiarity; hybrid
governance)
• The governance of transnational corporations
Institutional Competencies
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
Social Awareness & Responsibility
The capacity to understand the interdependence of people, communities, and self in a global society.
