The politics of decentralized natural resource governance. PS—Political Science and Politics

As human populations and their demands on natural resources continue to grow, citizens and offi cials from around the world search ever more intensely for effective solutions to envi-ronmental problems. Various factors conspire to make natural resources diffi cult to govern well. First, since many larger scale natural resources can be common pool resources, they pose dif-ferent—and arguably more diffi cult—challenges to governance than private or public goods. Second, the use of natural resources can produce signifi cant externalities. Third, the complex spatial and temporal boundaries of natural resources along with their potential externalities rarely conform to existing political institutions. Environmental problems often take decades o