An official website of the United States government
Project Overview Jurisdictional boundaries of governmental agencies often do not align with the geographic or social boundaries of the policy issues they are tasked with addressing. This spatial mismatch is especially common in relation to natural resources and the environment. Where it occurs, achievement of policy goals may require coordination across jurisdictions, which can lead to mutual benefits. Yet, governmental agencies may view coordination as costly or as leading to a loss of autonomy. This project examined coordination decisions made by local level governmental agencies in California, as they formed Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) and subsequently coordinated development of their first groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) under California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). The project addresses the question of how agencies make decisions and manage interactions when under a coordination mandate that allots agencies the discretion to decide how to coordinate. More specifically, it investigates:What factors influence decisions regarding the geographic extent of and parties involved in development of new formal agencies for groundwater management,How do concerns about the potential risks of coordination affect the choice of coordination mechanisms,How does the structure of agency interactions affect their achievement of the objectives of the coordination mandate, andHow do agencies make sense of a coordination mandate and how does that sense-making process influence the decisions agencies make when deciding how to respond to the mandate?
more »
« less
The relationship between how agencies work together and coordinated outcomes: a configurational analysis
Abstract Coordination mandates are used to steer collective action between local government agencies. When higher levels of government allow agencies to choose how to work together, the organizational forms and institutional arrangements they adopt likely influences their ability to achieve mandated coordinated outcomes. How group-level interactions influence achievement of coordinated outcomes is not well understood. California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) provides opportunity to shed light on this topic. SGMA is a state-legislative mandate that requires local agencies who share groundwater basins to undertake groundwater sustainability planning. The mandate affords agencies leeway in deciding how they engage with one another so long as they meet multiple requirements for coordinated outcomes. Drawing on institutional theories of collective action and ethnographic data collected from 2018 to 2022, we employ multi-value Qualitative Comparative Analysis to examine how configurations of organizational forms and institutional arrangements adopted by agencies in eighteen groundwater basins influenced their achievement of coordinated outcomes. Our findings highlight the importance of adopting collaborative institutional arrangements. Yet, the specific configuration of collaborative institutional arrangements varies depending on the type of coordinated outcomes agencies are mandated to achieve. These findings point to the need for mandates to require adoption of collaborative institutional arrangements, the specific configurations of which will be dictated by the requirements of the mandate.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1824066
- PAR ID:
- 10499389
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory
- Volume:
- 34
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1053-1858
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 255-269
- Size(s):
- p. 255-269
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Path Dependence, Evolution of a Mandate and the Road to Statewide Sustainable Groundwater ManagementSGMA is a landmark transition in California water policy. For local governments engaged in managing at-risk groundwater basins, SGMA brought a transformation of responsibility and authority. These changes reflect a continuation of California water policy, rather than a disjuncture. This policy analysis describes the changing role of state government in groundwater management in California, explaining that role, including the passage of SGMA, through the lens of path-dependent policy evolution. We identify three phases in state groundwater policy: initially the State enabled, subsequently the State incentivized, and with SGMA the State mandated local action. Later phases built upon previous ones and added to existing state policies rather than replacing them, resembling an evolution within the constraints established by earlier decisions. The changing role of the State in California groundwater management demonstrates how initial decisions can push policy along a trajectory, within which there remain opportunities for adjustment and change.more » « less
-
With the passage of its 'Sustainable Groundwater Management Act' (SGMA), California devolved both authority and responsibility for achieving sustainable groundwater management to the local level, with state-level oversight. The passage of SGMA created a new political situation within each groundwater basin covered by the law, as public agencies were tasked with self-organizing to establish local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs). This research examines GSA formation decisions to determine where GSAs formed, whether they were formed by a single agency or a partnership, and whether agencies chose to pursue sustainable groundwater management by way of a single basin-wide organization or by coordinating across multiple organizational structures. The research then tests hypotheses regarding the relative influence of control over the resource, control over decision making, transaction costs, heterogeneity and institutional bricolage on GSA formation decisions. Results indicate mixed preferences for GSA structure, though a majority of public water agencies preferred to independently form a GSA rather than to partner in forming a GSA. Results also suggest GSA formation decisions are the result of overlapping and interacting concerns about control, heterogeneity, and transaction costs. Future research should examine how GSA formation choices serve to influence achievement of groundwater sustainability at the basin scale.more » « less
-
State and federal governments use governance platforms to achieve central policy goals through distributed action at the local level. For example, California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) mandates local policy actors to work together to create new groundwater management institutions and plans. We argue that governance platforms entail a principal-agent problem where local decisions may deviate from central goals. We apply this argument to SGMA implementation, where local plans may respond more to local political economic conditions rather than address the groundwater problems prioritized by the state. Using a Structured Topic Model (STM) to analyze the content of 117 basin management plans, we regress each plan’s focus on core management reform priorities on local socio-economic and social-ecological indicators expected to shape how different communities respond to state requirements. Our results suggest that the focus of local plans diverges from problem conditions on issues like environmental justice and drinking water quality. This highlights how principal-agent logics of divergent preferences and information asymmetry can affect the design and implementation of governance platforms.more » « less
-
This research article investigates the causes and consequences of municipal institutional arrangements for the provision of resilient critical infrastructure in municipalities. The study explains how the municipal organizational robustness and external institutional dynamics moderate the relation between capacities, leadership, and local government investment decisions. We examine hypotheses on moderating effects with regression methods, using data from 345 Chilean municipalities over a nine-year period, and analyzing the evidence with support of qualitative data. Our results reveal that municipal organizational robustness—operational rules, planning, managerial flexibility and integration, and accountability—is the most quantitatively outstanding moderating factor. The evidence leads us to deduce that efforts to support local governments in the emerging policy domain of resilient critical infrastructure require special attention to the robustness of municipal institutional arrangements. The results are valid for countries where the local governments have responsibilities to fulfill and their decisions have consequences for the adaptation. Since one of the objectives of the Special Issue “Bringing Governance Back Home—Lessons for Local Government Regarding Rapid Climate Action” is to explore how action is enabled or constrained by institutional relations in which the actors are embedded, this study contributes to achieving the goal.more » « less
