Richard C. Feiock

RATIONAL CHOICE AND REGIONAL GOVERNANCE

ABSTRACT: This article presents a “second-generation” rational choice explanation for voluntary regional governance. It identifies the interests that motivate interlocal collaboration and argues that voluntary agreements emerge from a dynamic political contracting process in which benefits exceed the transaction costs of bargaining an agreement. Explanations are presented for how specific community characteristics and formal and informal institutional arrangements reduce transaction costs of information/coordination, negotiation, enforcement, and agency. Based on the logic of this framework, sets of propositions are presented regarding how these contextual factors influence the transaction costs of cooperative actions. Evidence supporting these propositions is reviewed, followed by a discussion of implications of this second-generation rational choice theory for the study and practice of regional governance.

Metropolitan Governance and Institutional Collective Action

This article describes the institutional collective action (ICA) framework and its application to the study of governance arrangements in metropolitan areas by focusing on the tools of regional governance for solving ICA problems. Regional governance mechanisms are classified by their focus on either collective or network relationships. The role of these within these mechanisms is analyzed and the transaction costs barriers to the emergence of regional governance institutions are identified. The concluding discussion identifies the limitations of self-organizing mechanisms and develops a research agenda to investigate the emergence, evolution, and performance of regional governance institutions.

City Adoption of Environmentally Sustainable Policies in California's Central Valley

Problem: Sustainability remains “the current object of plannings fascination,” as Campbell described it in 1996, but it is unclear what causes local governments to adopt environmentally sustainable policies and whether they are effective once adopted. Purpose: The goal of this article is to explain why communities adopt environmentally sustainable policies. Methods: We develop an environmental policy sustainability index for 100 incorporated cities in Californias Central Valley using a combination of survey and archival data. We then use regression and cluster analyses to test which independent variables expressing three theoretical perspectives (Tiebouts public goods development model, Petersons fiscal capacity model, and Logan and Molotchs interest group/growth machine model) are best at explaining this index. Results and conclusions: The results suggest that sustainable policies are more likely to occur in cities with better fiscal health and whose residents are of higher socioeconomic status. These findings raise important questions about the relationship between developed and developing cities that were not raised in previous studies, which focused only on major metropolitan areas in the United States. Takeaway for practice: Our results suggest that small, less-developed cities will need substantial technical, financial, and planning assistance to move toward greater sustainability. Many medium-sized, more developed cities may also need technical assistance, but are otherwise capable of becoming more environmentally sustainable. Any new policies should not discourage the largest cities from continuing to pursue their current sustainability activities, but should pass the lessons they have learned along to smaller cities to help them change to more sustainable development trajectories. Research support: This research was supported by NSF Grant 0350817.

POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND CONSERVATION BY LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

In this article, the authors develop a political market framework to explain the circumstances under which Florid a counties will supply environmental public goods in the form of conservation amendments to county general plans. The framework emphasizes the role of local legislative and executive institutions as mediators of local policy change. Using count models and interaction terms, the analysis shows how the strength of real estate interests constrains the ability of professional county managers to pursue conservation policies. The findings reinforce the importance of developing theories of urban politics in which local political institutions are not transparent.

Self-organizing federalism : collaborative mechanisms to mitigate institutional collective action dilemmas

fragmented authority? This edited volume, Self-Organizing Federalism: Collaborative Mechanisms to Mitigate Institutional Collective Action Dilemmas, begins by asking this basic but significant question and seeks the answer in self-organizing mechanisms. The authors analyze the dynamics of emerging self-organizing mechanisms, the forces generating a variety of institutional solutions, and the resultant changes by applying a transaction cost approach to collective action problems. The primary argument of this book is that “collaborative self-organizing instititions provide an essential aspect of federalist systems of governance, and that their dramatic growth in recent decades signals both the increasing complexity of policy interactions in the global system and the adaptive ability of federalist systems” (p. 315). Studies of collective action based on transaction costs typically regard institutions as exogenously determined (Dixit, 1996). In self-organizing, on the other hand, institutions emerge in the organizing activities endogenously, thereby mitigating recognized institutional collective action dilemmas. The focus of the institutional collective action (ICA) framework is “the externalities of choices in fragmented systems in which decisions by one dependent formal authority do not consider the costs or benefits that these decisions impose on the constituencies and policy outcomes of concern to other authorities” (p. 6). The ICA framework draws insights from the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework (Ostrom, 2005:1990). However, this framework’s broad applicability is due to the fact that it usually focuses on broader institutions such as

INCENTIVES, ENTREPRENEURS, AND BOUNDARY CHANGE A Collective Action Framework

The authors develop an institutional choice framework to examine and interpret change in local boundaries and provide a single explanation for the use of varied instruments to create new boundaries or expand old ones. Boundary decisions are viewed as the product of actors’ seeking particular outcomes within a context of existing governments and established rules governing boundary change. Selective costs and benefits, rather than collective costs and benefits, are most likely to provide incentives for institutional entrepreneurship and collective action. Such a framework is valuable because it integrates the fragmented literatures on local boundaries, provides a linkage between boundary choices and policy outcomes at the local level, and can guide empirical research into the causes and consequences of boundary change. This framework can provide the foundation of a more general model of institutional choice and institutional entrepreneurship.

Testing Competing Explanations for Policy Adoption: Municipal Solid Waste Recycling Programs

Cities were the source of a substantial amount of policy activity regarding recycling during the 1980s. This paper explores a set of variables, based on alternative conceptions of municipal policymaking, to explore differences between cities adopting residential curbside recycling programs and cities not adopting such policy changes. Probit analysis finds empirical support for explanations of policy adoption based on need, party competition, fiscal capacity and interest groups organization.

Metropolitan Government and Economic Development

Academic and political debate regarding the desirability of metropolitan government has focused on the provision of public goods. Although efficient production of services is of great importance, the consequences of metropolitan government for economic development have remained unexplored. The authors assess the development impacts of city-county consolidation by examining the attraction of manufacturing and retail/service firms for nine consolidated governments from 1950 to 1993. The annual growth in manufacturing, retail, and service establishments in the county before the merger is compared to the record afterward. No support emerges for the idea that consolidation enhances economic development.

Examining Local Government Service Delivery Arrangements Over Time

While scholars of local service delivery arrangements are fully aware the process is dynamic, research has tended to take the form of cross-sectional studies that are inherently static in nature. In this article, the authors model the determinants of production mode accounting for past delivery decisions. They find, not surprisingly, that there are strong inertial effects; previous delivery mode is a strong predictor of the current service delivery arrangement. More interestingly, the impact of the transaction cost nature of services on production choice is conditioned on past decisions, such as the extent of contracting and the type of vendors used. There is also evidence that contract management capacity and the competitiveness of the contracting environment are influential.

A Quasi‐Market Framework for Development Competition

This article describes a quasi-market framework to integrate the diverse perspectives on local government development competition found in the economic development literatures. Within this framework local governments seek to obtain positive externalities associated with economic growth through the provision of services and inducements to private firms in exchange for commitments of employment and investment. Efficient pursuit of economic development is impeded by market and government failures. Better understanding of how the quasi-market for economic development works promises to enhance our understanding of the relationships between economic and political demands and local development with important implications for evaluation of local growth policy and development competition.