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.