There are 8!

Ok, so a week later and I haven't posted about writing. Lousy way to stay accountable. This week has been off, and to be honest, I have been productive, but not with regards to word output. I haven't gotten any start on my actual goals either. So here's a reminder that I should be working on comprehensive exam preparation more directly, and prewriting like a fiend.

That being said, I was looking around a web site on public laws and stumbled upon a set of agreements between states for fire protection. I know that the federal government has been horrible about funding anything but suppression, and underfunding that when it does. (Learned that $2.2 billion was transferred from prevention and mitigation programs to suppression between 2002 and 2009). Well, states are apparently trying to engage in some collective action to distribute risk. Not sure what these are yet, but it is quite interesting. There is definitely variation in these agreements, and they go back to the 1950s at the earliest. Notably three have been formed since the 1980s and one was formed as recently as 2007.

The fact is that these have not been written about at all it seems. They are not collaboratives, they are states engaging in collective action outside of the "hierarchy" of traditional cooperative federalism. I think there might be something here.

Today: 381

Keep going

I mentioned the last two days that whatever happened I needed to continue this habit of writing daily after my deadlines. Well it did and did not happen. I missed my scheduled time to write, but I am also reconsidering the time of day to write. This time of year I don't like to work outside after noon just due to light issues. So I waited until the end of the day. I also had no specific project to work on, so I didn't crank out words on that. Today was not supposed to be a word production day. Instead today I am reflecting and assessing.

One of the suggestions from the book I have been following is that every so often goals should be revisited and revised. A monthly schedule tends to work well. So here I am, a month later, looking to set new goals. Last month's goals were:

- A new draft of my collaboratives and fire mitigation grant and dissertation proposal, this time focusing on collective learning

- A paper on the failure of the voluntary sector and collaborative partnerships between nonprofits and the government sector

- Three answers to past comprehensive exam questions from my major area, Public Policy

- Not word-count specific, but I also intend to get my Water Mangers Use of Weather Data paper submitted at the AZ Law School Environmental Journal

The first two were accomplished. The last two I did not even get started on. They will carry over though. I have one more goal, but it is related to teaching next semester so should not be included in this time.

One thing I noted in my writing is that I was still writing the bulk of the papers in the last days. Yes I was producing anywhere from 500-1500 words on other days, but they were not directly producing the finished product. I want to try and start accomplishing more of the work ahead of time. Now that I have at least  two months until the next deadline I hope that new patterns will take hold, and I can accomplish some of this writing outside of deadlines.

One way of accomplishing this is to break up the big goals into subgoals. That way I have "finished" product that can be completed in shorter periods over time that aggregate into the finished product. With enough time this can work, so I am beginning with these two goals.

The first goal is being expanded to completing all pre-writing for my comprehensive exams. This is not a "do in a month" goal but a general goal with a deadline of early February. This is broken into four subgoals, which consist of the prewriting for each subject area I need to cover in my exams.

10-20 pages of prewriting each for the following:
- Public Policy
- Public Management
- Bureaucracy
- Methods

Then there is the goal of getting that paper published. This is low on the list, but needs to happen:
- Write CV
- Submit CV and Paper

I have some grading to complete next week, but overall I really want to stay on top of this, and will continue tracking here.

20,000!

Today I finished my mandatory writing for deadlines. This would be a good time to re-evaluate goals, which I will set as my goal for tomorrow. As stated yesterday, I ended up binge writing a lot these last few days, with yesterday and today cresting 2000 words to make the deadline. I don't want to continue that, but it worked out.

The quality of my writing has plummeted I think. But at this point it is really about mass production. I can polish the writing later if it warrants pursuing the ideas. This is the next step. But hey, with the exception of pre-writing for comps, my ACWRIMO goals were accomplished, albeit 5 days after the end of the month.

Onwards and upwards!

Today: 2161
Total: 20945

Binge!

Deadlines will push you to crank out words, that's for sure. Difference here is that I am only writing during the work day. So it is a bit different from previous writing sessions.

I am thinking that this binge, while not a great approach in general, is better than previous binges. I worked throughout the day, with a general pace the whole time. I felt the anxiety of writing, but didn't feel the dread. I just had to put words on the page. They may not be great words, and the ideas are not perfect, but without them being out down on the page I cannot get them evaluated any further. In addition, I work them out when they are put down in sequence.

The big trick here is to pick up the next bit of writing on Thursday after this is due. If I can stay as productive I will really be able to bring this mess forward. No need to binge after tomorrow, but my next goal is simply this: write after the next project is due.

Today: 2782
Total: 18784

Not all goals must be met

Well December has arrived and my total did not do much more than pass the halfway point to my writing goal for the month. You may also have noted a gap in my blogging at the end of the month. Well, I didn't write those days, but I did have my hands full. I had a ton of grading to get done, which definitely took priority. Yes, I could have kept writing, but it was not to be.

I am continuing my blogging and tracking as an attempt to form a habit of this, especially through the holidays. Today I got in another good chunk of writing for my next assignment, so running totals continue!

Today: 829
Total: 16002

15000!

Today was dedicated to almost entirely brainstorming and reading about my next project. I worked for about three hours on reading, getting books form the library, and working out my ideas on voluntary sector failure. It is hard because there is a lot of work out there about why government and the market messes up but little on the nonprofit sector and when they fail. Mostly because it is small and there are other mechanisms if the voluntary sector fails it is like your city league baseball team losing a match. Bummer for you but this isn't the majors.

But the big news is that with two days left I broke the 50% mark! I am at 15,173 words, which is 50.5% of the way to 30,000. So I won't make 30k. I still have a paper due in a week, so we'll see how long it takes to get there.

Today: 993
Total: 15,173/30,000

Stop blaming others

Today I missed my scheduled time to write, rescheduled, missed it again and then wrote at the end of the day. Today I had no other scheduled obligations but I did have a lot of annoying little errands that needed to be run. Instead of writing then going and doing them I put it off and put it off. It is only my fault, even though I felt pressure to do these other things.

I apparently left two pieces I needed to read at the office so I had to refocus my work. That being said I got some work done on my next paper, and met my goals for today.

Today: 382
Total:14242/30000

Another day

After the binge you rarely feel up for more. But when deadlines rear their ugly heads you have to get back to it. In the past I have felt a great need to move away from a project once binged out. This time I feel more open to revisiting the topic and improving it. If anything this is an indication of some degree of success in making writing mundane. I have no clue if it will stick, but I hope it will.

Today I have to knock out a page on an article and then start the next paper. My goal is 1000 words today for both.

Edit: Went well and hit my target, starting my new paper and finishing my summary.

Today: 1236
Total: 13860/30000

Finished early?

Well, if something is due on Sunday and you finish before dark on Sunday, is that early? I finished a very drafty draft of my paper for my independent study, which also doubles as a new dissertation proposal draft and approach. No more typing.

Yesterday:1919
Today:1988
Total: 12624

Binge away

A quick note before I go to sleep. Keeping it mundane and writing for an hour a day has not gotten me to a place where I was able to avoid binge writing or complete my project ahead of time. Maybe if I had a decent idea of what I was trying to do in September and started then. Doesn't matter. Yesterday was a pathetic 200 word day, in the evening after a bunch of family and car stuff. And today, the day before the deadline, was 2000 words. This paper draft is due tomorrow, and I am still an easy 1500 words away from a readable draft.

Sleep must happen. And there are more family obligations tomorrow.

Total will be updated when I have a chance. But I know I passed 10k today.

Vacay no way

Today was the day before thanksgiving. I really hit the mundane today, but in a good way. Rather than get really manic with the new ideas I developed I decided to just jot down what came to me and move on. To be honest I had some of the better breakthroughs on this today than I have up to this point, but rather than hyper focus and try to work it all out here and now I wrote them down where they should be in the draft and kept building. It was not a big day for words, but I did get 770, and my draft went over 2000. I will probably keep going later, but I have other things I need to take care of this afternoon.

Today: 770
Total: 8501/30000

and then Today...

My earlier post outlined what happened yesterday, and what I wanted to/needed to address today. I successfully started building my draft, grabbing the low hanging fruit and trying to crank out words. It wasn't tremendously productive, but if I had pushed for 4000 words today that would have been pretty binge. I also continued work on the new conference proposal, but I was unable to capture the words written on that. Considering the amount of time I spend reading and researching, drafting and altering I think the next time I do this I might work from pomodoros, or a measure of time rather than word count.

Today: 1244

Total: 7731/30000 (or just over 25%!)

Yesterday

So yesterday I did not post. But I did write! I swear! Actually I got a small amount of work done on my research questions for my outline and I drafted a conference paper proposal that appears nowhere on my goals list. Sure it was not a priority but it needed to be done since the deadline is soon. So yesterday with the drafting and the other drafting grossed about 600 words. Will update for today later, have a 1000 word goal I am aiming for.

An aside, rather than bemoan and regret what I didn't do this weekend, I am simply appreciating what I have done since then.

Yesterday: 600
Total: 6487/30000

More on the Mundane

I mentioned in an earlier post the intent to make writing mundane and therefore taking much of the anxiety out of it. I think there is a further benefit from mundane productivity. When my written ideas are challenged I am much less likely to get defensive over them if the process of writing them was mundane rather than "inspired". That's the drawback of the inspiration-driven binge writing process. What comes out of it must be golden, because it is draining, resource intensive, high risk and in some ways manic. Instead, if the action of clarifying communication in the written form is common place, then the examination, criticism and editing of those ideas are less tied to identity and esteem. That is not to say that the connection disappears. The difference is one of degrees, and in the matter of cranking out words, the degrees matter.

I fumbled this week hard. Last night I was awoken after two hours of sleep by back spasms that made it almost impossible to breath without agony. I finally got back to sleep around 430, to awake at 6. With no sleep I ended up at the Docs office to figure things out. I am off to a chiropractor on the off chance of the elusive and mythical "quick fix" so I can focus, sleep and ride my bike in the Tour de Tucson tomorrow, and write more when I get home. Will update with numbers then.

Today: 287
Total: 5887/30000

First missed day, slow progress

Yesterday was blown by student meetings and departmental scheduled events and demands, alongside an electrician who didn't finish the job. Today was a good pick it up, namely because I finished the outline that was due this afternoon. The word count isn't grand but it is a finished outline at this point.

Today: 453
Total: 5600/30000

I want to note that the consistency of last week made a difference. It would have been harder to get moving on a Thursday after a week of nothing if I hadn't gotten the practice in last week. Consistency is good, as well as momentum. I am definitely fighting to maintain productivity through the next week and half and see how Thanksgiving will make things challenging. The schedule is still the key.

Long Weekends

I successfully avoided the binge-writer's habit of mass writing on a long weekend. That being said I missed writing entirely this weekend. Since I am writing daily outside of these times it is not nearly as damaging of an act of procrastination as it would have been otherwise. But I am hurting for words at the almost halfway point.

Today: 390
Total: 5147/30000

Outlining

Today I began my outline for next week. Outline are inherently less words than real paragraphs. That, along with a narrow window for working today, is why I only hit 203 words. As this expands and fills in the numbers should increase.

This week was not great. I did not hit my goals two of the five days, and only had one day where the words really piled up. I am going to be working this weekend, and Veteran's day will be a normal writing day for me. Here's to better work next time!

Total: 4757/30000

Four Digits!

For the first time this AcWriMo I hit 4 digits on my output! This is a good step, but it is clear that I am not consistently outputting more than one thousand words in an hour at this point. I still have a lot of unformed ideas hat require research. My writing will continue this afternoon, but I wanted to report the results of my specific scheduled writing time. My goal was 1500 for today, a big jump from previous goals. I didn't hit it but I feel good about what I did accomplish.

Today: 1,306
Total: 4554/30000

Two Birds

With only eight days until the deadline for an outline of my proposal I needed to dig further into learning. At the same time there are comprehensive exams looming over my head. Today I dug into two articles that fed both mouths. The ACF framework has long dealt with policy-oriented learning, but it tends to be about the large, federal level policy changes and approaches rather than about how people deal with things locally and nearby. I read up on and took notes on a rather new piece by Adam Henry and colleagues attempting to explain the emergence of coalitions as collective action driven by shared beliefs, and an old article (1988) on Advocacy Coalitions and Policy-Oriented Learning. Today I got 807 in.

Total: 3248/30000

Edit: I was unable to continue writing yesterday, so the total remains the same.

Distractions

Today my writing period was at home for the first time since last Thursday. The dogs were an annoying mess. Our new pup keeps grabbing construction supplies and destroying/scatering them all around the yard regardless of where I hide or secure them. That and an appointment after the designated hour made the whole thing less successful.

That being said I still got some work done. I chased down some work on Simon's contribution to policy sciences and the discernible divide between Simon and Lasswell. Reading essays on the state of ideas from the late 1950s to the early 1980s provides some interesting context for where we are now.

Either way, my goal of 500 words was not met. I only got to 184. I am continuing writing today but outside of the scheduled time, and will report an eventual number tomorrow.

2441/30000

Decisions and Learning

Today I dive back into the work of Herbert Simon and the Carnegie School to figure out how collaboratives might alter theories of decision making and learning based on bounded rationality. This research pertains directly to my dissertation and grant proposals on collaborative learning.

I have also made progress on the submission to the AZ Environmental Law Journal. I need to write a CV for the first time. It will be interesting to try and list my accomplishments but I think it will be a valuable exercise in skill inventorying. More opportunities for words!

Today's goals: 500 words, in drafting on Bounded Rationality, and a CV draft.

Result: 654 words.Total 2257/30000

Making it Mundane

Here's to my attempts to make writing mundane. Yesterday my goal was 500 words and I hit 896. Today my goal is another 500, specifically on the cross-sector partnership paper.

Having completed my writing period I have written 707 words for a total of 1603/30000.

#ACWRIMO

After a hiatus I am back. It is November, and I have made some progress on what I am going to examine about collaboratives. But first, I want to introduce my overhaul of the writing process. November is Academic Writing Month. Academic writers all over the world are making pledges to produce a certain quantity of academic writing this month in hopes of boosting productivity, practicing writing more diligently, and avoiding the slog of winter break writing and the promise of long breaks to produce that do not happen. One major component of this is to make goals and progress public. Well, here are my goals world!

For AcWriMo, I am setting the goal of 30,000 words.

This will include all forms of writing, outlining, pre-writing and drafting. Beyond this number goal, the form the words will take will include:

- A new draft of my collaboratives and fire mitigation grant and dissertation proposal, this time focusing on collective learning

- A paper on the failure of the voluntary sector and collaborative partnerships between nonprofits and the government sector

- Three answers to past comprehensive exam questions from my major area, Public Policy

- Not word-count specific, but I also intend to get my Water Mangers Use of Weather Data paper submitted at the AZ Law School Environmental Journal

I am tracking my writing in terms of time spent and words written on a google spreadsheet, linked here. I plan on updating my progress here. I will post a link to each blog post on facebook for accountability. Thanks Brandy for the idea from the poem a day posts she did in October for that idea.

I want to share a book I learned about on The Thesis Whisperer called How to Write a Lot by Paul Silvia. Silvia talks about making writing a mundane task, one that you engage in daily just like teaching or showing up to a meeting. He breaks down some barriers commonly used to avoid writing and describes a simple process for just doing it. The trick? Set a schedule. Write during that time, and do everything that you would normally do to prepare for and research writing during that time as well. As with most goals, starting small makes sense. I am scheduling an hour a day to do nothing but write no matter what. Those times are Monday, Wednesday and Friday 11-noon, and Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-10:30. Hopefully those blocks of time will grow. I will not read for class, meet with students, wander and think or have the TV, radio or podcasts on in the background during those times. I will not be checking email, my phone, or playing with the dogs during those times. I will be writing or preparing to write at those times. And when the time is over and I am out of ideas or momentum, I am free to do whatever else needs to be done. The promise of the book is that most people are surprised at the volume that emerges when as little as 4 hours a week are blocked out in this way. Well, here's a test of that promise.

So here's to AcWriMo and productivity!

Networks and Collaboratives

I will return to why I am doing this later. As I wrap up an online class I am teaching these posts will be less frequent.

Networks are a big deal in Public Administration, Policy, Sociology and Management studies these days. The informal, social connections among individuals and among organizations can create some interesting emergent qualities at the local, regional and network-wide scales. When speaking about collaboratives it is important to distinguish them from networks and understand how studying each can inform the other area.

Networks, as I just noted, represent a set of actors (either individuals or organizations functioning monolithically) and the connections between them. Initially the study of networks emerged as an attempt to go beyond simple two-actor relationships. A lot of research has been conducted in the field of organizational theory on inter-organizational behavior. This addressed questions regarding when and why organizations link together, share information, cooperate, or engage in joint ventures. This investigation was limited to direct connections between pairs of organizations. Beginning a few decades ago the research expanded to looking at weak links between organizations, or links created when two organizations are not tied directly to one another but are both linked to a third organization. Thus began the expansion of interorganizational research into how the overall patterns of links between actors influences individual actor behavior. In the area of public administration it was found that some network structures deliver services to the community better than others.

There are some key characteristics of networks I want to point out. First, they are informal. Networks are not built as a whole with an overarching agreement placing each actor in a specific position. The links between individual actors may be formal (like a contract) or informal (they are willing to share information with each other). The entire network structure emerges from these individual choices and actions. This leads to the second quality. The structure of a network, unlike an organization or contracted arrangement, is unintentional. There is no entity designing networks. Imagine if Zuckerberg picked your friends on facebook for you in order to maximize your social life. That isn't how it works. No one has a picture of a network in their head and then attempts to create it. If some third actors could mandate links between two other actors to influence the overall structure then this might eventually be possible. Connections between others is possible, but it requires that the third party be connected to the other two. It is like getting your significant other to connect to your friend's significant other on a social network. You can possibly make that happen through your existing connection to these people. The emergent pattern is not designed. It all happens one link at a time.

Collaboratives are very different than networks, specifically along the lines mentioned above. All actors who are involved in a collaborative share something with all the others. That is part of participating. The people involved may have other links but the collaborative brings all parties together to try and connect them all to each other. They are intentional. This group of actors are all present for a reason, and they build a structure of interaction with an end in mind. If you are on a community sports team you may be connected to each other informally through social connections. But this coming together on a team is intentional. There is a game to win. Each player may be involved for different reasons and have different levels of commitment to winning the game. There is a known, intentional connection between the actors and the roles that actors play within the group are in some way defined (formalized). The emergent pattern is designed and intended, much like building an organization or establishing a contract.

There is a lot of potential overlap in these concepts. Collaboratives could be studied as networks, focusing on specific types of links or ties between the actors involved. Individuals may be trying to build a network that benefits their position, recruiting and formalizing relationships with some intentional outcome. But conceptually they are distinct. This allows for an understanding of how informal, unintentional patterns of connectivity can result in different actors joining and engaging in a collaborative institutional arrangement. It also allows for an investigation into how intentional collaborative arrangements influence aggregate networks beyond those participating.

I am curious how network theorists imagine the application of what they research. The government can create incentives for some actors to connect with others, influencing network patterns. They cannot dictate the actual result. It is challenging enough to try and influence individual action let alone the aggregate behavior of a class of actors to a point that an intentional pattern of linked actors emerges.

Regardless, networks of actors can be a very important component of understanding collaborative institutional arrangements. I will be delving into much more of this during the upcoming semester and will follow up with what I learn.

Why am I doing this?

I thought it might be valuable for me to work out why and how I ended up interested in forest plans and collaboration. It is a not-too-windy road, but I wanted to get it down somewhere for two reasons. First, I just wanted to work it out myself. Second, it might be a valuable bit on information for grant applications and proposals, a "why this" answer for job interviews down the line. We asked a number of faculty position applicants why and how they ended up studying what they did. If I know the answer clearly it might improve my chances later on. Who knows?

It is strange that growing up in Southern California, deep in the middle of LA County, I would have a love of the outdoors.I can attribute that to my parents. We were frequent campers and hikers even while living in a very urban setting. I can distinctly remember my first backpacking adventure in the Sierras. I was around 9 years old. We hiked up to a lake and caught our dinner. There is still a part of me that always craves rainbow trout cooked in a skillet over a single burner stove. Nothing could ever possibly taste so good.

I was a Tiger, Cub and then Boy Scout. It didn't seem to matter to me that I was these things, but I did gain a lot of skills in orienteering, backpacking, canoes, pioneering (this one was the knot tying merit badge) as well as first aid before I was in Junior High. It was just what I did in my free time and it didn't really matter whether I did it or not. I just could do these things and was regularly exposed to the wilderness.

Then we moved to the mountains of Arizona. I was not a big fan of leaving the city, though at the time I didn't realize the opportunity I had. Rather than driving hours to get to the forest I only had to cross the street. There were thousands of uninterrupted acres of forest right behind my house. I biked to school on a path that  now would be considered amazing single-track trail. My new scout troop hiked the grand canyon every few months. Still, it was just what I did, not something I sought out or ever considered to be a job or career.

I became an Eagle Scout at the last possible minute after five years as the next to highest rank. It didn't interest me terribly and I knew I had time. I went to college for physics and astronomy, looking far away from the forest I lived in. I ended up with a degree in Political Science because policy and government interested me more than particles and stars. And that made me a great waiter. Then I found out I could get a job working in the forests I used to hike in, and joined a conservation corps. This was my first inkling that I might be able to combine what was always an important, yet regularly dismissed, part of my life with a career.

Wicked Problems and Cooperation

Today I reviewed the Rittel and Webber 1973 piece on planning and wicked problems as well as skimming through Craig Thomas' Bureaucratic Landscapes which details the unmandated cooperation between agencies to increase and protect biodiversity in California. Both provided some valuable insight.

The Wicked Problem piece is a highly regarded paper that develops a concept that is used very frequently today, especially in environmental management circles. The concept is built out of the lack of solutions and whole-society utility failures of the great society and war on poverty programs. Turns out we could not engineer our way out of these issues. Many of society's problems are beyond the capacity of mechanical solution. Simply defining the problem and locating it become highly controversial and invoke challenges and conflict.

One source of these problems is social heterogeneity. Advanced societies have not conformed to a standard set of values and preferences. Instead their differences have increased. Many different publics exist within a society with different preferences and beliefs. When a problem is shown to have many possible solutions, and those solutions depend upon the definition and location of the problem, and the outcomes of the solutions themselves are hard to measure or observe and are rife with normative assessment, the true/false dichotomy to choose solutions in engineering is replaced with a good/bad value-laden one. These values are fought over between the publics and professional administrators and planners cannot be deferred to for technical solution.

Fire is definitely one of these problems, as is biodiversity. We don't want fire, but without fire fire is worse. We want endangered species but we also want socioeconomic activity and accessibility to our public lands. These situations of tradeoffs between different definitions, locations and solutions of problems are wicked indeed. Collaboratives are described as better ways to handle these problems. But as Koontx and Thomas point out, this does not mean that they actually are.

The one other interesting point I wish to share at this point from the Thomas book is the declaration that mandated coordination is less effective than unmandated coordination. This question is interesting in that in Colorado community wildfire prevention plans (CWPPs) are mandated at the county level along with a collaborative approach. This might be an interesting experiment for investigating the difference between mandated and nonmandated collaboration. The constitutional level rules about collaboration can influence outcomes further down the line.

Yaffee et al 1996

I won't title posts like this, a citation,unless  the article or book is of particular import. Yaffee et al is one of those pieces that plays such a major role in the literature that I want to flag when I write about it. This article is actually a report for the federal government on the implementation of ecosystem management.  What the authors found when researching this new management strategy is that collaboration plays a major role in what managers consider success. This is one of the first timezone the environmental policy literature where formal collaboration appears as a primary driver of success and helped prompt the developments in studying watersheds and estuary collaboratives that were the empirical setting of many of the articles I have discussed.

This article is so early it does little more than describe the results of a survey. In doing so it establishes a.nice set of concepts that may or may not be connected in successful ecosystem management.

In order to understand how ecosystem management and collaboratives are connected I need to talk about the former. Ecosystem management attempts to correct the historical tendency of separate management activities being redundant, interfering with one another or negating each other. By looking at a issue or management activity's target as part of an entire ecosystem this piecemeal, one dimensionally optimized, narrow scope approach could be changed. When managers start to think that way it becomes clear that traditional job, division, organization or even sector cannot anticipate the breadth of implications of many management activities. Collaboration between individual actors, agencies and sectors becomes an important component of successful management.

This shows how the emergence of collaboratives is tied to problems too big for traditional hierarchical separate management. One of the proposed causes of collaboratives is problems that cannot be addressed by an existing entity even while that entity has responsibility to solve it. Other causes include the existence of networks or sponsors encouraging collaboration and the environment is particularly rife with uncertainty. Bryson, Crosby  Sand Stone in the previously mentioned 2006 PAR issue propose these three situations as precursors to collaboration.

This approach of what causes collaboration is different than the approach of Koontz and Thomas take in this same issue. They ask if given collaboration as a management choice when should it be taken? This prompts an investigation into the differences between the forms of management to see where outcomes improve with collaboration.

These three articles along with others not mentioned here have brought me to the point of asking the question, "How do different causes leading to collaboration (uncertainty, mutisector failure or sponsorship and existing networks) result in different forms of collaboration? And in turn what are the different outputs and outcomes from these different forms of collaboration?"

This will need much revision but this overall investigation into the process of understanding collaborative environmental management and governance may prove quite promising.

Best Laid Plans

I took a short aside to prepare some data for a paper I am coauthoring with Edella Schlager and Tanya Heikkila for the 2012 APSA conference. While I intended to keep investigating Swimming Upstream instead I found a new set of readings that are as valuable as the core readings from that book I already covered. 

On suggestion from Kirk Emerson I am working through a 2006 Special Issue on Collaborative Public Management of Public Administration Review. This collection tackles both theoretical and practical matters of collaboratives, especially matters of government. This issue is the original publication of the subject  of one of my earliest posts, the Koontz and Thomas article on outputs of collaboratives.

This issue has a lot of very closely similar yet still competing conceptualizations of collaboratives. The definition used in the introduction by the editorial team is 

Collaborative public management is a concpet that describes the process of facilitating and operating in multi-organizational arrangements to solve problems that cannot be solved or easily solved by single organizations. Collaborative means to co-labor, to cooperate to achieve common goals, working across boundaries in multisector relationships. Cooperation is based on the value of reciprocity.

This is differentiated from participatory governance:

Participatory governance is the active involvement of citizens in government decision making. Governance means to steer the process that influences decisions and actions within the private public and civic sectors. 

This is a very different distinction than has been suggested elsewhere. The first is implied to be about implementation. Problems are actively solved with multiple organizations. This process of solving problems then has its own set of governing arrangements. Therefore collaborative governance can have participatory and nonparticipatory governance and participatory governance can oversee collaborative and noncollaborative management. 

This division seems to sync with the operational/collective choice/constitutional level divisions from Ostrom and IAD work. The actual management is operational. The governance is collective choice. What makes this messy is that a lot of collaboratives tend to set their own rules while simultaneously engaging in management activities at an individual and collective level. This distinction in other parts of the literature seems to be one of process versus outputs. Questions of how collaboratives govern themselves are about process and what they do operationally is a matter of outputs. This doesn't adequately address the situation because there are aspects of process that are framed by governance rules at a higher level that should not be confounded. 

This set of articles sets up a very nice conversation about collaboratives and where the literature is. I am actively seeing some hypotheses and research questions emerging and I am hoping that I can start posting some of those very soon. More PAR tomorrow. 

Swimming Upstream 2

Today we look at two empirical tests of the theories from an earlier chapter of Swimming Upstream by Sabatier et al. These two chapters focus on beliefs and social capital. The first is by Mark Lubell and the second is by William Leach and Paul Sabatier.

These tests do not emerge as clearly as claimed from the theory chapter that precedes it. Lubell's chapter looks at transaction costs, from the institutional rational choice theories of collaboratives, but heads straight down the road of beliefs and the advocacy coalitions framework. It seems to be attempting to find some common ground between them but mostly relies on theories of the ACF. The hypothesized model is built in a way that suggests that factors that reduce transaction costs lead to an interaction with policy beliefs that in turn influence secondary collective choice beliefs. It is these collective choice beliefs, such as the level of scientific uncertainty and understanding, trust and dominance of the agenda, that in turn influences behavior and agreements between stakeholders.

Transaction costs -> collective choice beliefs
Policy beliefs -> collective choice beliefs
But also
Transaction costs -> policy beliefs, but not really.

But it is only in the case of disagreement about the watershed that transaction costs might "mediate" the effects of policy beliefs. See, the policy beliefs are not going to change as a result of collaborative arrangements. Their influence over collective choice beliefs however may be influenced. You don't trust people with whom you don't share policy beliefs. This is the devil shift. This shift might be mediated by institutional arrangements but not overcome.

So where does that fit into the mix of theories presented? Lubell argues it is a hybrid of TCE and ACF. This is the basis of the collective action belief. This hybrid seems to oversimplify TCE. The argument is simply that certain institutional arrangements create lower transaction costs for certain situations. Collaboratives may be a better fit than not collaboratives and therefore have lower transaction costs. This will result in stakeholders believing they have lower transaction costs. There is no variation in the collaboratives, only presence and absence. This is a valid approach of course. However it is rather limited in actually using transaction cost theory. There is nothing about the collaboratives as institutional arrangements that make them have lower transaction costs. They just fit better. This leaves the article pretty much only looking at how the presence of a collaborative results in potentially different beliefs. This is just the ACF, as the ACF has a spot for constraints and resources of subsystem actors. The stakeholders are subsystem actors and the presence or absence of a collaborative is just a different set of resources. This may be because of transaction costs, but we don't know because they aren't measured or specified.

The second article is not an attempt to hybridize theories. It goes right after theories of social capital and how collaboratives might create it. It is well done certainly and I can see why it is highly recognized in the literature. The major question is one of endogeneity: does trust lead to success or does success lead to trust? It is an interesting model that shows the result of age has an influence, demonstrating the possibility of a repeated prisoner's dilemma or other game-theoretic model. The collaborative creates a space in which initial attempts to come to an agreement result in reciprocity which builds into trust. The necessity of action prompts the initial reciprocity and then later trust allows for the possibility of more complex agreements. This is not necessarily what is being argued in this social capital theory but there are certainly similarities and I would like to build on them.

I am going to continue with Swimming Upstream for a few more days and hope to be able to start generating some alternative theories and ideas that I will put up as I go along.

Swimming Upstream 1

Today I cracked open the book Swimming Upstream by Sabatier, Focht, Lubell, Trachtenberg, Vedilitz and Matlock. It is an applied social sciences look into watershed collaboratives and how they look and work. It is heavily cited as one of the summative works on collaboratives and trust building. I wanted to see how this work perceives and specifies collaboratives and what theoretical approaches the authors take. Luckily these two items are easy to find.

On the first matter the collaborative is not clearly defined conceptually outside of the actual observable watershed collaborative partnership. This emerges from the basis of the research being specifically on this type of entity rather than on general theory building. The collaborative here has some clear distinguishing characteristics that tie in nicely with other definitions:

• Informal
• Include government and nongovernment actors
• Develop management plans

• Long-term (5 to 10 year affairs)

• Little legal authority
• Forum for negotiation where outputs are turned over to member agencies for formal legal action

• Complement and transform traditional agencies. Do not replace these agencies
  

This list makes them something different than other collaboratives discussed but in line with these authors' other works. The mandatory inclusion of both government and nongovernment actors is one notable distinction. Whereas other authors tread around the differences in collaboratives that are heavily public or private this sticks both in there no matter what. I believe this is a positive step in working out what collaboratives are and how they work. I think of high importance is that they have little legal authority, exist in parallel with agencies and other command and control structures (or alongside them in a polycentric federal arrangement), and include both these actor types. If the concept that includes these items sticks then there is more likely to be traction on other issues. 

Next is how they pick out collaboratives in different theories of collective action. Chapter 6 tackles this. The authors compare Institutional Rational Choice theories (Ostrom's CPR theory, though they call it IAD incorrectly, and Lubell's Political Contracting Theory based heavily in Transaction Cost Economics) with Social Networking theory based in Putnam's social capital work and their own Advocacy Coalition's Framework. They appear to like their own a lot, but more on that later. As can be seen in the title of this blog, the institution stuff is what interests me. 

This book's approach to Ostrom and Lubell's work generated some ideas in my head. First they claim that collaborations are a form of collective choice body, in that their outputs determine some of the rules framing operational level action. Specifically they call the "management actions" of collaboratives operational rules. This seems to fundamentally contradict their definition of collaboratives. If collaboratives have little legal authority and exist alongside traditional agencies without replacing them then they cannot be making operational level rules. Rules require legal founding and basis. They don't have to be formally written down, but they do need to have consequences. If the collaborative has no ability or authority to sanction actors at an operational level then they are not making rules.

On the other hand the authors define "informal norms" as shared prescriptions typically enforced through individuals using reciprocal strategies, with punishment meted out through withdrawal of cooperation or social sanctions. These would definitely be a possible way that collaboratives influence operational actors. It creates a parallel institutional arrangement whose outcomes are prescriptions (how the agencies should act and how other members should behave) whose only enforcement is social stigma or withdrawal from cooperation. There is no legal authority. There are no sanctions placed on violators from above. 

These most likely do not perform as well as self-governing arrangements. There is clearly a remaining command and control entity in this mess with the agencies remaining the same and authority over land unchanged. So why do they exist? Where do collaboratives emerge as opposed to self-governing arrangements? How do they perform in comparison? These are some definite questions that emerge from this book. I am going to follow up with other chapters and ideas from Swimming Upstream over the next few days and try to tease out some theory and hypotheses. 

Going back a bit - Different Collaboratives

In the post from last week on Moore and Koontz' typology of collaboratives I discovered a piece by Steelman and Carmin (2002) that was the beginnings of that typology. This piece actually went much further in the description of the differences in collaboratives than Moore and Koontz and includes another aspect: how the collaborative was formed.

Not The Cheat River in West Virginia.

Steelman and Carmin look at two different watersheds that have Community Based Environmental Management (CBEM) in place to deal with mining pollution in rivers. The two watersheds are the Animas in Colorado and the Cheat in West Virginia. Both have problems from mining pollution and tailings harming portions of the watershed. Both have CBEMs that have substantive and social outcomes. They came about in different ways, resulting in different resources allowing them to reach their goals.

This analytic approach selects on the dependent variable (both the outcomes are positive) but looks for equifinality, or different roads to the same outcome. Gary Goertz speaks to this qualitative approach in his 2006 book Social Science Concepts. I think the authors here did some interesting things in choosing an equifinality approach but am left with more than some questions.

What were the two paths to success described here? One was bottom-up through community-directed grassroots action and another was top-down through an agency-directed process. Interestingly the Moore and Koontz article leaves out the details about the formation of the group and instead focuses on who runs the group once established. The process described here, in which the initially involved actors being community or agency changes the resources available and as such the path to success, is more about where the collaborative emerges from.

The bottom-up approach, where active members of the community banded together to accomplish something, began with human resources and networks, built a decentralized structure that was very inclusive, gained legitimacy and eventually recognition that received financial resources allowing for success. The top-down approach, where an agency recognized a problem and appointed people to the CBEM to address it, had expertise, technical and financial resources from the outset that allowed it to gain network and other resources but never legitimacy. Both resulted in success.

The questions I have about this are about the use of the concept of resources to trace this whole process. Thinking of structure as a resource that can be centralized or decentralized seems to collapse it too much. Having people, money, networks and legitimacy all be "resources" that the organizations gained in different orders seems odd. The conclusions are muddled up in this distinction. But regardless the approach of examining how two different CBEMs reached similar outcomes along different paths in this way acknowledged more variation in independent variables than the other studies I have examined thus far. The ideas here are worthy of building upon more. I look forward to seeing more emergence and longitudinal approaches to collaboratives coming soon.

Outputs from Collaboratives

Having banged our heads against the wall about what collaboratives are for a while I am taking a break to look at two different papers on what actually comes out of collaborative endeavors. Koontz (2003) and Lubbel (2004) both ask if anything actually happens when a collaborative acts. Koonts asks questions about differences in plans and whether or not the plans are lowest common denominator to accommodate the disparate interests involved in the collaborative endeavor or if major changes emerge. Lubbel asks if collaborative efforts actually increase cooperation within a community or if they just create symbolic policy, another way of saying just making those involved feel good. Neither of these studies results in good and interesting developments for collaboratives and variation between them. But they do give some good ground on how to progress in studying them.

Koontz provides an interesting analysis that asks if differences in the institutional arrangements (he calls process variables) results in differences in plans. Process variables consist of a number of factors internal to the collaborative such as how the group selects members, how they make decisions (consensus, majority), what resources the collaborative has access to and how widely representative the group is. Also controlled for are contextual variables such as the level of community concern, level of pre-existing networks, existing rules and current land use and urbanization.

His results do not show significant influence of any process variable on the contents of a particular plan in this case. The plans had 4 levels of "sophistication" (meaning development, not normative value) including length, meeting standard requirements, number of policy recommendations and completed recommended but not required analyses beyond the basic requirements. None of these varied based on process variables he measured. Instead context seemed to matter, with the content and length of plans being more in response to developing communities or communities on the borders of developing and growing urban areas. Threat prompted action. 

This leads well into the Lubbel piece, because while the outputs of the collaboratives he studied included plans, the dependent variable was actually changes in cooperative behavior of people in the estuary or consensus about policy. This study did not look at variation within collaboratives. Instead it looked at variation between estuaries with collaboratives and those without to see what difference the collaboratives made, if any. One possible set of outputs from collaborative endeavors are symbols to assuage uncertainty and threats felt by stakeholders. In the above study threatened communities may engage in collaborative efforts simply to feel better about the situation and not actually change anyone's behavior. The results are interesting and very limited. 

Lubbel's results show that in cases with a collaborative group making a plan cooperation was no higher than in those without. The difference was in consensus. The theory he proposes to explain this comes from the Advocacy Coalitions Framework, where actors' core and secondary beliefs mediate almost every action. He explains the results as changes in secondary beliefs rather than changes in behavior. 

Tying these two together seems to show that more effort is put into collaboratives that feel threatened, and that threat is assuaged by the endeavor itself, not by changes in behavior resulting from a plan, increased trust or better networks. Luckily both of these studies are limited in their generalizability and only attempts at expanding theory. It is still a fruitful area for investigation on what, if anything, do collaboratives achieve.

The previous two typologies

Leach, Pelkey and Sabatier (2002) and Moore and Koontz (2002) both develop typologies of collaboratives. Leach et al use the breadth of the issues being studied as the primary difference. Moore and Koontz use a classic public/private dichotomy. How do they compare? Would the groups defined fall into the same categories in both? Which is most helpful and why?

First, Leach et al's typology includes participants and place in the policy cycle as secondary characteristics of their types that are primarily driven by the breadth of the issues being addressed. The only true overlap that cold be compared between the two is who is included. Looking at the description of participants only the Advisory Committee type does not have to include a government entity, though the project sponsor selects the participants. The remainder use a logical AND for government entities being represented. This is not necessarily different than Moore and Koontz as they focus on who directs the collaborative endeavor, not who is involved.  This is a rather short path nowhere in comparing the groups.

Taking another approach it appears that Moore and Koontz has groups that do not fall into the categories of Leach et al. Citizen directed groups with a focus on policy change do not easily fit into the types described by Leach. It is possible that these groups would fit into the Stakeholder Partnership except for the participant requirement of multiple federal, state and local agencies. The Citizen-directed group would appear to be around for every stage, could involve a wide number of issues but at the same time be excluded on the basis of being too forceful in their methods of pushing for policy change. The differentiation of private versus public directed might suggest another division within the stakeholder partnership type that depends on participants and methods.

Another interesting comparison is that Leach et al's types all appear to be government directed save for the full stakeholder partnership. Public hearings, advisory committees and negotiated rulemaking procedures are all government directed. Public hearings is one group I noted in the last post that questions the use of the concept of "directed" in Moore and Koontz' typologies. Public hearings are collaborative endeavors that are government-directed but do not necessarily involve more than one government. I would need to investigate further but I would venture the guess that public hearings are not the way that governments collaborate with other governments. I would be interested to see if a state hearing was attended by or had an official representative of a county or local government take part through voicing their opinion. I believe there are different forums for that process. That being said there are advisory committees that include representatives from other governments nested within their jurisdiction, such as townships in a county or neighborhoods in a city.

What do we gain from these typologies? First, it is clear that neither is exhaustive. If one had to be picked that was more exhaustive than the other the simpler public/private/hybrid type would be the best. But the other qualification for typologies is that the distinctions are clear. While less exhaustive the use of breadth of issue seems to create a more clear set of distinctions than the "directed" concept.

I gain the notion that both the definition and typology of collaborative are both still up in the air. There are more types that I want to investigate and may come back around to it later.

Another Typology

Yesterday's post on Leach et al.'s types of collaboratives focused on four different types of collaboratives. These differences were based primarily on the breadth of issue being discussed, precipitating who was included and what part of the policy cycle they were in. Today's article looks at an earlier typology that is based simply on participants, posing a distinct difference from the Leach article. Today I outline the Moore and Koontz article and next time I will compare their typologies.

Today's article is a research note by Moore and Koontz (2002). This article explicitly strives to create a typology of collaboratives and investigate their defining characteristics. Their approach is based on who is included in the collaborative as an independent variable and a dependent variable of  different accomplishments by these different types. Notably this examination builds from recommendations by government guidelines on creating collaboratives and a piece I will cover next week by Steelman and Carmin about who should be included in different collaboratives based on what they want to achieve.

Group composition is the primary variation between these types of collaboratives. The possible groups are government agencies or citizens. More broadly (and I would like to see how this extends) the differences are along the lines of government and private interests. A group can be made up primarily of government interests, primarily of private interests or some combination of both. This gives us three categories: government directed, citizen directed or hybrid.

Before looking at their dependent variables they use to demonstrate that there is valid differences between these categories I want to note that this difference was based not on who was directing the collaborative but on who the vast majority of participants were. It is very possible, for instance, in the rule-making procedure from Leach et al that only one government entity is involved and a vast majority of those included are private interests. This group is directed by the government but would fall into the citizen-directed category based on this specification.

Without further analysis or comparison of the typologies we move on to the dependent variable, accomplishments. There is a notable amount of discussion of the selection of accomplishments as a measurable and valid thing, a topic I should address later on. Here the accomplishments that arose in open-ended discussion and coded were the creation of a management plan, group development and sustainability, and increased public awareness.

These three accomplishments were linked with different collaborative types as shown in this table

Management plan	Hybrid (stat sig)	Cooperation is nontrivial with the differences between agency and citizen perspectives (Thomas 1999).  Requires input from a lot so Hybrid best. (This is really weak)
Group development and sustainability	Both Hybrid and Government- directed (stat sig)	These are more recently formed? This is the reason? Ok… So because they are young their simple continued existence is success. These findings found agency and mixed include more disparate interests.
Increased awareness	Hybrid and Citizen-directed (kinda stat sig)	May be due to the lack of importance agencies place on awareness of citizens even while purporting to educate. They really want to influence policy makers.
Forcing change to policy	citizen directed (not stat sig)	May be due to citizen-advocacy and politics

We see plans coming out of hybrids, survival out of young and awareness out of non-government. 

The question that emerges is if these are actually different entities. If age is the primary driver of concerns of sustainability then who is included is only determined by age, and composition is a trivial variable. Increased awareness is another odd one. Hybrid falls into both, which is messy and prevents clear distinctions. Last is forcing policy change, and this is particularly messy.

First, this is not statistically significant. Secondly, one quoted focus group participant noted that awareness was not an accomplishment because what they were really striving for was getting elected official buy-in. Is this not forcing policy change? It seems that both attempt to engage in policy change, albeit through different channels. This is reinforced by Moore and Koontz's discussions about the difference in methodology rather than intention, with citizen groups more willing to be direct and agencies wanting to be more subtle. Lastly agencies are prohibited from engaging in certain activities. So what is the real difference between the collaboratives then, and what does this typology do for us? 

Next time I will compare this typology to Leach's and hope to gain some traction on this matter.

Stakeholder Partnerships

Still trying to define coalitions. Here's one article's approach.

The road of understanding collaboratives is rife with multiple definitions. These multiple definition can coalesce into different types of coalitions. One type identified early on in the last decade was the stakeholder partnership. An article on watershed partnerships in California and Washington by Leach, Pelkey and Sabatier (2002) classifies some forms of collaboration based on the breadth of issues, types of participants and the stages of the policy cycle they work through. This table provides the breakdown:
When narrowed down from the most general definition of collaboration some bounds can be placed on the concept. Stakeholder partnerships, as defined by Leach et al here, is defined primarily by the breadth of the issue or issues that brings people together into the partnership. This breadth in turn determines the participants and the stages of the policy cycle the collaboration is engaged in. The defining characteristics of a stakeholder partnership are:

• Broadly defined issue area
• participation by multiple levels of government
• indefinite duration
• exists for the full policy cycle
• integrated approach to a suite of interrelated problems
• geographic theme (like a body of water or region)
• final outcome is to reach an agreement on one or more specific policies or projects
• intermediate outcomes may include research, education, public outreach, trust-building, grant writing
• strive to include all local, state and federal agencies that may have relevant regulatory or service-based responsibilities

This is all great, and particularly vague. I am not sure how it is that these partnerships are granted any formal policy making power, nor what the definition of policy is in this case. What are the actual outcomes? Well agreement appears to be the primary one. Delving into the specification of the partnerships in their study we can see that this seems to be a major component.

To be included in this study partnerships had to:

• Meet at least 4 times a year
• focus on managing one or more streams, rivers or watersheds
• had to have diverse membership including one state or federal official, one rep from local government, and two opposing interests such as a resource user and regulator or environmentalist.

I note two items on this list because I think they reflect on the loose definition of partnership. First, the requirement that they focus on managing a body of water. Is management the equivalent of policy making? What is management of a river? Is it use, setting rules for use, monitoring use, or all of the above? Seems to confound many things and certainly can go beyond policy making. Second is the idea that the groups had to include opposing interests. This was passed over quickly in the definitions but seems rather important. 

If the primary outcome of a partnership is agreement, and there is a requirement that opposing interests must be included, does this make a partnership a form of conflict resolution? Not necessarily, but it does muddle the water quite a bit regarding the definition. What determines whether interests are opposed or not? If it is solely on the role then there are many instances where there may not be actual opposition. 

Why not focus on partnerships as an attempt to bring together different disparate interests to come to an agreement surrounding the management of a resource? Is this too specific? This broadens opposing interests, narrows policy and management. I am not sure. 

More importantly, and to be addressed later on, is where does a partnership come from? There sees to be some inferred problem that lacks agreement that must exist prior to the emergence of a partnership. What then leads these particular stakeholders to enter into this arrangement? Why not ignore it, do what your agency/firm/self want to do and what is best for you? There must be some form of overarching situation that leads to this involvement. Of course this could just be legislation requiring cooperation. But there is a bigger question here because the people involved are not mandated to be there (save possibly from some agencies or from the possibility of getting some funds). 

I have a feeling these are questions I will continue asking throughout this summer.

Walls

This collaboratives stuff is driving me nuts. I am still not sure what exactly is being discussed in the literature. I am going to continue pursuing this with a broader focus, drawing from a bunch of different perspectives and try circling around the concept until I can get it.

In the meantime it looks like the NSF has funded what may have been the equivalent to my dream research project. Toddi Steelman at NC State, along with a number of other researchers, created the Fire Chasers project going all the way back 10 years ago. This project launched a number of the articles I have examined about fire and community response over the last few months. I did not realize they were all a part of the same effort. Now knowing that something similar to what I want to do was funded is both great in that I know that it can be funded but unfortunate in that the NSF has already poured so much into a similar project.

In the meantime I am going to track down that grant and check it out. Should provide some excellent guidance.

An aside: how are fires named?

<excuse>

Family wedding all weekend. Busted.

</excuse>

Last week a feriend asked via text if I knew how fires were named. I answered with a guess that it had something to do with the name of the location where the fire is first spotted. I decided to take this simple question to relaunch the blogging effort after a missed weekend.

According to this interview with Tom Lavagnino, a fire information officer from California, fires are named by the firest agency to spot them, and usually are identified by the nearest geographic feature. This doesn't mean that the naming is accurate. What becomes more important over time is that the identifier is consistent across agencies than the actual closest geographic landmark.

When fires merge they become complexes and are renamed. This is a reequirement of how fires are fought. Two separate fires with their own names are fought by different ncident command systems. If the fires become physically close enough that they cannot be managed separately they become a complex. The separate entites that fought the fires then merge into a singe command structure.

That's the answer. Nothing so fancy or ordered as the naming of hurricanes and tropical storms. I might look at how other countries name their fires later on.

Collaborative outputs

<excuse for not posting yesterday>

Family in town

</excuse>

From my first post on collaboratives I came up with a set of questions to address in the coming days. The first I am tackling is what are the various outputs from collaboratives. Koontz and Thomas (2006) who were part of the last post's question on what collaboratives are, inquire about what we need to know about environmental outcomes from collaboratives. They list a number of outputs from collaboratives that others have studied. I begin there. They pointedly ask if collaboratives as a policy choice result in different outcomes than other approaches, and what those differences are. 

They provide a list of environmental outputs and outcomes and the data collection methods that have been used to measure them in the following chart:

The outputs range from the creation of documents such as plans and reports, to operational activities such as specific projects completed, to changes in policy, to changes in the management practices of participant and non-participating organizations, to programs started. The variation in outputs is broad. 

There may be other outputs from collaboratives such as norms and social network changes that are not on this list due to the constraint of environmental outputs. Tomorrow I will look into what those might be.

 

Collaboratives

Putting my work on the economic concepts aside for a while I now turn to the form that many communities use to organize and plan: collaboratives. The question for today is what does the literature on collaboratives define the concept as?

The empirical thing I am trying to get a handle on through this is the groups of community members, city employees, agency representatives and businesses that come together to create plans and collaborate to handle broad or specific problems within their communities and environments. These groups are more frequent and advocated for these days, notably in the form of community wildfire protection plans in wildfire response policy. These plans have no statutory force yet may be successfully improving wildfire response in communities across the United States.

Right out the gate the lack of specificity of this concept is troubling.  Emerson, Nabatchi and Balogh (2011) tackle the concept as collaborative governance. They propose a framework of  governance that tackles broad contextual variables, the environment and internal dynamics that make up governance. The most important part of this for me is the part that only shows up as a dotted-line box somewhere in the middle: the governance regime.

The CGR is the system for "public decision making in which cross-boundary collaboration represents the prevailing pattern of behavior and activity." Their definition is highly tautological. Collaborative Governance Regimes have public decision making with a prevailing pattern of cross-boundary collaboration.  In this article the system that frames the collaborative regime as well as the dynamics within the regime get multiple pages of development. The CGR heading has a single short paragraph in it. They systems a regime is situated in and the dynamics inside the regime matter. But what are the characteristics of a CGR and how do they vary? 

Koontz and Thomas (2006)  call this phenomenon "multisector collaborative arrangements". This particular piece is about the challenges and importance in knowing about the environmental outcomes of collaborative management in comparison to market or hierarchical management structures. The players in the arrangement in their definition should include "grassroots" and "bottom-up" actors even while governments are playing a 

"variety of roles". One role they focus on is the provision of funds to collaborative groups. The historical focus is on processes and normative arguments for collaboration. But I am still not sure what they are and what role they function.

It is easy to imagine a situation where agencies and watershed councils claim collaboration in order to get more money. What remains to be asked is what actual role do these collaboratives have in making policy? Do they have power? How do their decisions matter?

The obvious way to define a collaborative then is based on what it is not. A collaborative (process, governance regime) is one where there are multiple voices in a conversation about decisions including those that are not a part of a single central government (employee or elected official). That is a broad category. If the county and city are involved in a process then it might be considered a collaborative in Emerson et al's definition. 

Rather than go much further down this rabbit hole I want to set up multiple questions that I will be asking about collaboratives than emerge from this initial discussion.

• Do some collaboratives make policy?
• What are the outputs from collaborative processes?
• Is there a difference in the literature between a collaborative that is a recognized public (governmental) entity and those that are not (private, nonprofit)?
• What is a collaborative? No, seriously this time.
• Part 3
• When are collaboratives a strategy (not a rule or norm) and when aren't they?

No answer 1

This second question is one that I will have a harder time answering and so will investigate as a thought experiment:

Is wildfire mitigation nonrival?

This questions stems from the previous question. Public goods are both nonexludable and nonrival. Unlike the concept of externalities they are rather well defined. The characteristic of nonrivalry is not absolutely black and white. (neither of the concepts that make up a public good are, but here we focus on the concept of rivalry). The source from the previous post defined public goods almost solely on their lack of rivalry. A good is a public good if the total amount of the good provided was consumed by every individual who consumed it. This is opposed to a private good where total consumption is the sum of the amount consumed by each individual. If the amount produced is 100, and multiple single individuals are able to consume 100 each, then the good produced is a public good due to the fact that it is nonrival.

This is the messiness of it all. Wildfire mitigation, if provided intentionally for a community as a whole, can be nonrival according to this definition. However, treatments to reduce wildfire hazard are spatial. They occur at specific locations in the landscape. People who are exposed to wildfire have property at specific locations within the landscape. The location of the treatment and the location of the property determine the reduction in hazard for a property. So if mitigation is provided generally in the form of treatment in specific locations the consumption of the mitigation is determined by the location of the property and the mitigation. The sum is somewhere in between a sum of consumption and the total amount produced. This is messy.

I was attempting to understand this as a matter of spatial externalities in previous work. As noted in the previous post, externalities are not necessarily public goods, and vice versa. If this is a matter of a continuum of public good rivalry then there are other major questions at hand rather than that of spatial externalities.

The concept that my advisor used to distinguish variation in the public good depending on location was one of quality. This is a challenging notion for me. What is quality? If a good is provided at 100 units, and location a gets 100 and location b gets 80, then is it truly quality, or quantity? If we assume the good is absolutely nonrival, then the quantity by definition cannot vary. The only thing remaining is good quality.

So, if the reduction in individual loss that results from the provision of a public good such as wildfire mitigation varies from location to location, is it nonrival? I don't know.

Public Goods and Externalities

The inaugural question is this: What are the distinctions and relationships between positive externalities and public goods?

First, what are each of these concepts separately? Public goods, using the typology developed by Elinor Ostrom, has the features of being neither rival nor excludable. A good is rival if one person gaining benefit from it prevents another from gaining benefit from it. A good is excludable if it is relatively low cost to prevent another from accessing it. The combination of these two characteristics make public goods unique. It is high cost to prevent others from accessing the resource and the benefit any one person receives from the resource is not reduced by another gaining benefit.

Positive externalities are benefits generated by people engaging in production that cannot be exclusively claimed  by the person producing. In stricter definitions the goods in one person's output vector is included in another person's input vector without compensation or control by the government.

The prompt for this question emerged from a problem I encountered in specifying how to conceptualize voluntary hazard response. If someone does something to help themselves, and in the process creates benefits for others, then the concept is clearly an externality. If multiple people act to provide a general benefit for many including themselves then it is a public good. They seem related. Individual action creates benefits for others. But they are clearly separate concepts in other ways. What is the link?

My investigation led me to this piece by Holtermann from Economica in 1972. After initially defining both the above he immediately states that "not  all  external outputs  are public  goods." A good can be captured by many or by just one person. It is a characteristic of the output, not the source, that defines the good. Public goods production can indeed have externalities themselves that are not public goods. The provision of defense can create benefits in other countries under the umbrella of our defense that can be internalized by that country. The public good of in-stream flow generated from a group upstream can allow for personal capture and benefit of an actor downstream.

The answer I find is both complicated and simple. An externality is any good or bad output that others include in their input. Public goods are described by their own characteristics, not from their source and destination. Many things provided without human intervention are public goods. Air is a public good not generated by individuals. Therefore public goods are not reliant upon or all externalities.

However if a public good is going to be intentionally provided it will be the result of actions that generate externalities. If I pay for the army then my output is on my own and others' inputs as benefits. But externalities can be public goods unintentionally provided for.

So the conclusion I end on tonight is that externalities can be public goods and public goods can be generated as externalities, but neither is a necessary condition of the other.

Beginning

In the great tradition of programming, hello world!

My name is Carl, an environmental policy graduate student at the University of Arizona. I am starting this blog as an opportunity to maintain writing productivity and address questions in my many areas of interest. My intention is to post daily. The post will take the form of posing a question to myself and finding some answers, or at least some information on the subject to move me along in my understanding.

This process is modeled on a post I read last week on lifehacker about ways to be more productive through blogging. The idea is that if you write a bit everyday with some parallel focus then there will be an aggregate of value. In my graduate program there are disparate and dissonant assignments that might be forced into the box of my interest but they are rarely timed well and require meeting the expectations of a class or particular professor or discipline. Up to this point my free writing has consisted of notes on different books and articles as they pertain to different papers and presentations. Here I will be attempting to change this up. I will begin with a question and attempt to answer it.

The subjects tackled in my posed questions will most likely fall in the vein of institutional analysis in the context of community wildfire response (hence the name "Institutional Inquiry"). My work and interest in policy is situated in the work of Elinor Ostrom on solving common pool resource problems through local self-governance. My advisor, Edella Schlager, was one of her students and has continued developing work in this area especially in the area of water policy. I have collaborated with her on a number of projects and am moving into a period of building my own area of interest. This blog will be playing a major role in this self-guided process.

Rather than continue a long introductory post with more information about my interest I will rely on future posts to demonstrate them. Thanks for visiting!