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.