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.