A bridge over sustainable water: Politicians’ perceptions about the preconditions for collective action

Sustainable water resource management is a core interest for all societies. As water systems are often common resources, the management of water systems requires coordinated action among actors along the water. For flowing water, a complication for coordination is upstream–downstream relations where what happens upstream affects downstream, but not the other way around. In this study we present results from a survey experiment with politicians in Sweden, focusing on whether and to what extent their willingness to cooperate is affected by their placement upstream or downstream along a fictive water system. Our findings indicate that politicians from upstream and downstream municipalities share the view that upstream politicians bear greater responsibility for undertaking preventive actions and are willing to assume remedial responsibility for problems caused by them. These results challenge the notion that self-interest is the primary obstacle to resolving environmental collective action problems.