Overcoming the Barriers to Cooperation: Intergovernmental Service Agreements

Interlocal cooperation through service‐sharing agreements has a long history, but its use has increased in popularity during the last 20 years. The decisions of local government units to collaborate through intergovernmental service agreements are best understood as a two‐stage process. The first stage, in which communities decide whether to consider interlocal cooperation, involves the nature of the immediate problem faced plus specific demands for performance and efficiency gains that can result from service cooperation. In the second stage, communities confront a question of institutional supply, and hence must overcome inherent bargaining and collective action issues in order to forge interlocal agreements. Heckman probit estimates of such complex relationships using data drawn from a 2003 ICMA survey suggest strong support for this model. The authors conclude by discussing the role of network relationships among local actors for reducing transaction costs and facilitating intergovernmental collaboration.     

Financing Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness: Use of Interlocal Cost‐Sharing

Before this study, much of the research on interlocal collaboration has focused broadly on interlocal service agreements, of which interlocal cost‐sharing is but one dimension. This study is one of the first to examine the nature of interlocal cost‐sharing agreements for a specific (and critically important) functional area. A mail survey of Florida city and county finance officers finds that the most common interlocal cost‐sharing partnership is between local general purpose governments rather than with local special purpose governments. The strongest incentives for interlocal cost‐sharing are (1) inadequate funding for emergency management in a jurisdiction's capital budget, (2) the perceived inadequacy of federal and/or state homeland security funding, and (3) greater faith in horizontal (local‐to‐local) than vertical (federal‐state‐local) intergovernmental agreements. The research also highlights the importance of asking fiscal condition survey questions in a more functionally specific manner rather than as an “overall fiscal condition” question.     

Regional Governance and Institutional Collective Action for Environmental Sustainability

This research investigates why various mechanisms of cooperation among local authorities are chosen using the theoretical lens of institutional collective action (ICA). The article analyzes 564 local collaboration agreements drawn from four urban regions of China to explain the choices of environmental collaboration agreements among cities. Examples of three forms of interlocal agreements—informal, formal, and imposed agreements—are analyzed. Ordinal logistic regressions are estimated to test which factors predicted by the ICA framework influence the form of collaboration selected. The results indicate that the involvement of national or provincial government, the number of policy actors involved, heterogeneity of economic conditions, and differences in administrative level among the actors involved influence how collaboration agreements are structured. Examining the choice of agreement type contributes to the understanding of interlocal collaboration and provides practical insights for public managers to structure interlocal collaboration.     

Institutional Collective Action and Economic Development Joint Ventures

There is high interest in economic development efforts involving cooperation or collaboration among metropolitan jurisdictions. To determine why some local governments engage in cooperative agreements while others do not, this paper investigates transaction obstacles, including bargaining, information, agency, enforcement, and division problems. The authors then advance an institutional collective action explanation for intergovernmental cooperation, focusing on the conditions under which these transactions costs are low. This work anticipates that the costs associated with interlocal cooperation are influenced by the demographic characteristics of communities, local political institutions, and the nature of regional government networks. Empirical analysis based on a national survey of local development officials provides support for several predictions from this model and identifies policy variables that, in turn, increase the prospects for cooperation, specifically through the development of informal policy networks.     

City Managers,Career Incentives,and Municipal Service Decisions: The Effects of Managerial Progressive Ambition on Interlocal Service Delivery

City managers play an influential role in brokering intergovernmental service arrangements on behalf of their jurisdiction, yet their motivations for doing so are not well understood. One argument, drawn from theories of bureaucratic entrepreneurship and ambition theory, suggests that cities with managers who are motivated to advance their careers will parlay more interlocal service delivery as means of capturing economic efficiencies. Such strategies serve to build their personal resumes of career achievements. An alternative argument suggests more altruistic motives, including a desire for increased social equity and valuing the common good of the region, compel city managers to pursue interlocal service arrangements. These competing theories are tested on 134 large municipalities, using survey data from the city managers of these jurisdictions, coupled with interlocal revenue and expenditure data for these cities. Results yield greater support for the first theory. However, progressive ambition possesses complex consequences for interlocal service delivery choices. Jurisdictions managed by city managers with career‐enhancement ambitions are more likely to sell services to other local governments. Yet, they are significantly less inclined to buy services from other jurisdictions, thereby underscoring entrepreneurship in shaping managers’ professional trajectories.     

Intergovernmental Cooperation in the Provision of Public Safety: Monitoring Mechanisms Embedded in Interlocal Agreements

This article examines how monitoring mechanisms embedded in interlocal agreements (ILAs) are associated with vertical and horizontal intergovernmental relations. The authors hypothesize that ILAs established by local governments with higher‐level governments are likely to rely on a clearly specified set of rules to establish an administrative structure, whereas ILAs established by local governments with other local governments rely on associational benefits to ensure that policy preferences are aligned across multiple political boundaries. The article examines ILAs established by small town, county, and municipal governments in Denton County, Texas, for the provision of emergency medical, police, and fire services. Findings show that more than half of the ILAs specified a financial reporting system, but an almost equal percentage did not contain features requiring financial records to be available for audit by a third party. Quadratic assignment procedure correlation analysis confirmed the presence of cross‐monitoring mechanisms and showed that the patterns of ILAs tend to cluster around a geographic space.

Practitioner Points

• Monitoring mechanisms embedded in interlocal agreements (ILAs) matter, highlighting the important managerial functions played by frontline officers drafting ILAs.
• The rules embedded in ILAs are important not only for encouraging intergovernmental cooperation but also for reducing the risks associated with contract failures.
• With the increasing number of ILAs, local government officials need to consider various types of ILAs that are suitable to meet jurisdictional interests and policy preferences.

     

Non‐Governmental Monitoring of Local Governments Increases Compliance with Central Mandates: A National‐Scale Field Experiment in China

Central governments face compliance problems when they rely on local governments to implement policy. In authoritarian political systems, these challenges are pronounced because local governments do not face citizens at the polls. In a national‐scale, randomized field experiment in China, we test whether a public, non‐governmental rating of municipal governments' compliance with central mandates to disclose information about the management of pollution increased compliance. We find significant and positive treatment effects on compliance after only one year that persist with reinforcement into a second post‐treatment year. The public rating appears to decrease the costs of monitoring compliance for the central government without increasing public and media attention to pollution, highlighting when this mode of governance is likely to emerge. These results reveal important roles that nonstate actors can play in enhancing the accountability of local governments in authoritarian political systems.     

Governing Interlocal Cooperation: City Council Interests and the Implications for Public Management

Local government managers are described as key participants in the development of interlocal cooperation, but the interests of city councils in this process have gone largely unstudied. Here, the author addresses the theoretical importance of council-manager relations in interlocal public service cooperation. Three propositions identify areas of shared council-manager responsibility. Evidence from in-depth interviews with city council members is used to assess each proposition. While interlocal partnership has been described as a managerial activity, council members take an interest in network development and agreement assessment. Managers, on the other hand, give greater attention to public participation and education. The evidence refines assumptions about council-manager roles in the formation of cooperative agreements, with important implications for local government management.     

Do Political Similarities Facilitate Interlocal Collaboration?

This research examines the extent to which political similarities—that is, homophily between political actors at the local level—affect patterns of interorganizational collaboration in an emergency response situation. While the field of emergency management has focused on implementation‐oriented arrangements among key stakeholders, few studies have systemically investigated the creation and development of interorganizational collaborations led by political actors, especially following catastrophic events. The analysis reveals that a dyadic tie with political homophily boosts local responders’ ties with other agencies during emergencies. Findings indicate that political solidarity, formulated by chief elected officials of municipalities and council members, can broaden the scope of interorganizational collaboration by mitigating institutional collective action problems at the local level. This research presents a critical recommendation for emergency managers that interlocal collaboration for timely response to a disaster is attributable to political similarities that facilitate frequent interlocal interactions through formal and/or informal agreements.     

Self‐Organizing Policy Networks: Risk,Partner Selection,and Cooperation in Estuaries

Policy actors seek network contacts to improve individual payoffs in the institutional collective action dilemmas endemic to fragmented policy arenas. The risk hypothesis argues that actors seek bridging relationships (well‐connected, popular partners that maximize their access to information) when cooperation involves low risks, but seek bonding relationships (transitive, reciprocal relationships that maximize credibility) when risks of defection increase. We test this hypothesis in newly developing policy arenas expected to favor relationships that resolve low‐risk dilemmas. A stochastic actor‐based model for network evolution estimated with survey data from 1999 and 2001 in 10 U.S. estuaries finds that actors do tend to select popular actors as partners, which presumably creates a centralized bridging structure capable of efficient information transmission for coordinating policies even without any government mandate. Actors also seek reciprocal bonding relationships supportive of small joint projects and quickly learn whether or not to trust their partners.     

DIFFERENCES IN LEARNING PRACTICES AND VALUES IN NORTH–SOUTH CITY PARTNERSHIPS: TOWARDS A BROADER UNDERSTANDING OF MUTUALITY

This article addresses twinning between local governments in North and South, contributing to the past decade's discourse on institutional twinning in this journal. Local governments have increasingly become recognised as relevant actors in international development cooperation through city‐to‐city cooperation structures, which have been praised as an effective mechanism for local government capacity building. This article discusses the learning practices and the extent to which new knowledge is valued and adopted by twinning participants in both North and South and moreover whether learning benefits are mutual. In a study of three partnerships between Dutch municipalities and partner cities in Peru, South Africa and Nicaragua, 36 participants were interviewed. The findings reveal that learning in city‐to‐city partnerships is not mutual between North and South and that the benefits of ‘shared learning’—a rhetoric commonly used in the twinning discourse—are limited. Instead, other opportunities for mutuality arise for Northern municipalities from political and strategic benefits, such as staff loyalty and motivation. Mutuality in twinning hence deserves a broader interpretation than learning alone so that twinning benefits can be identified and maximised for both North and South, keeping cities interested and motivated. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Local Government Restructuring: Privatization and Its Alternatives

Local government restructuring should no longer be viewed as a simple dichotomy between private and public provision. A 1997 survey of chief elected township and county officials in New York shows that local governments use both private and public sector mechanisms to structure the market, create competition, and attain economies of scale. In addition to privatization and inter‐municipal cooperation, two alternative forms of service delivery not previously researched—reverse privatization and governmental entrepreneurship—are analyzed here. Logistic regression on the 201 responding governments differentiates the decision to restructure from the level and complexity of restructuring. Results confirm that local governments are guided primarily by pragmatic concerns with information, monitoring, and service quality. Political factors are not significant in the restructuring process and unionization is only significant in cases of simple restructuring (privatization or cooperation used alone). Fiscal stress is not a primary motivator, but debt limits are associated with more complex forms of restructuring. Restructuring service delivery requires capacity to take risks and is more common among experienced local officials in larger, higher‐income communities. Restructuring should be viewed as a complex, pragmatic process where governments combine public and private provision with an active role as service provider and market player. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness: A Field Experiment in China

A growing body of research suggests that authoritarian regimes are responsive to societal actors, but our understanding of the sources of authoritarian responsiveness remains limited because of the challenges of measurement and causal identification. By conducting an online field experiment among 2,103 Chinese counties, we examine factors that affect officials' incentives to respond to citizens in an authoritarian context. At baseline, we find that approximately one‐third of county governments respond to citizen demands expressed online. Threats of collective action and threats of tattling to upper levels of government cause county governments to be considerably more responsive, whereas identifying as loyal, long‐standing members of the Chinese Communist Party does not increase responsiveness. Moreover, we find that threats of collective action make local officials more publicly responsive. Together, these results demonstrate that top‐down mechanisms of oversight as well as bottom‐up societal pressures are possible sources of authoritarian responsiveness.     

An introduction to Decentralized Cooperation: definitions,origins and conceptual mapping

The term ‘Decentralized Cooperation’, coined in the 1980s, is interpreted differently by various organisations involved in development cooperation. However, there are points of convergence among these interpretations that suggest a common definition involving: (a) the lead actors (local governments), (b) an overarching objective (sustainable local development) and (c) the nature of activities carried out (exchanges and support). From a historical perspective, the origin of Decentralized Cooperation is two‐fold. On the development cooperation scene, the concept emerged when the array of actors involved in development projects widened as a result of major changes in aid themes and approaches. In the field of international relations between local governments, Decentralized Cooperation activities appeared as the scope of municipal twinnings also widened accordingly to involve partners from countries in development or in transition. Today, Decentralized Cooperation continues as an evolving concept located at the intersection of its two parent fields: development cooperation and international municipal relations. At this intersection, a fusion of experiences, resources and ideas is taking place. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

社区治理与社会管理体制创新——基于宁波市社区案例研究

当前我国的社区治理,不仅要求政府更有效地履行职能转型,而且要求公民社会积极成长并与政府合作共治。政府职能转型和公民社会成长是关系到社区得以有效治理和长足发展的重大问题,也是当今社会管理与社会体制研究的热点问题。本文采用案例分析的方法,基于宁波市的社区案例,分别从以需求为导向、以项目为载体的服务供给模式,多元合作治理．社会组织在公共服务的介入等三个方面进行实证研究。宁波市的社区治理实践既表明政府与社会合作共治的可能性和可能方式,又反映出在合作治理中政府的定位和行为方式,以及社会（主要指社会组织、个体群众等）参与社会管理的途径与方法。社区治理从微观层面对于推进社会管理体制创新具有积极意义,它体现出政府与社会的新型关系模式。社区治理推进社会管理体制创新应以转变政府职能和培育公民社会为前提,使政府与社会都成为社会管理的重要主体,并以政府与社会合作共治为核心。     

How does policy innovation diffuse among Chinese local governments? A qualitative comparative analysis of River Chief Innovation

It is well‐documented that interlocal learning and competition could drive policy innovation diffusion. However, their interconnection in non‐western regimes as China is less explored. Utilizing the method of qualitative comparative analysis on the case of River Chief Innovation, this article intends to explore the multiple conjunctural causation of Chinese policy diffusion and the impacts of central recognition. Our findings suggest that interlocal learning and tournament could intimately stimulate Chinese policy diffusion through different combinations. Different governments would adopt innovation for various reasons in a continuum of diffusion mechanisms, involving the technical learning, the championship‐induced learning, the mandate‐induced learning, and the innovation tournament. Hence, despite the ongoing centralization under Xi, space for local spontaneous learning remains. We also find that central recognition could activate the interlocal tournament and extend the diffusion continuum to the tournament side. Therefore, it facilitates policy diffusion toward governments that lack learning motivations and promotes the local implementation of central preferences.     

Competitors and Cooperators: A Micro‐Level Analysis of Regional Economic Development Collaboration Networks

Predispositions and orientation toward cooperation or competition with other jurisdictions can play a critical role in implementing regional collaboration. By examining collaboration at the micro level, this article investigates how individual factors, including perceptions of cooperation and competition, as well as institutional and environmental factors, are related to regional collaboration. In particular, the authors assert that competitive motivation may support the emergence of regional governance mechanisms. This article explores the relationships between competitive/cooperative motivations and interlocal collaboration networks based on a network survey conducted in the Orlando, Florida, metropolitan area. The authors apply a quadratic assignment procedure regression analysis to examine how dyadic conceptual ties of cooperation and competition, along with the effect of community characteristics, affect policy network structures for economic development. By comparing estimated coefficients with sampling distributions of coefficients from all of the permuted data sets, the regression results indicate the influences of perceived competition/cooperation on the network exchange.     

Local actors and international regionalism: The case of the Sea of Japan zone

The Sea of Japan Zone (SJZ) is an area that has been shaped essentially by transnational relations between the localities of western Japan, northeastern China and the Russian Far East. The emergence of this new type of space, based on interlocal cooperation, is a significant aspect of what could be called the ‘new’ regionalism, i.e. the polymorphous and multicen‐tred movement that is affecting international relations today as opposed to its more rigid version of the late 1950s. The shape of the new regionalism reflects the transformation of international relations in general: this particular regionalization process, that gave shape to the SJZ, is linked to the transnationalization of local actors. The idea of creating the SJZ, in the late 1960s, was first an external answer (interlocal cooperation) to an internal problem (uneven development in Japan). It became a reality some twenty years later as Russian and Chinese localism eventually converged with Japanese localism. Despite important domestic differences the need for local actors around the Sea of Japan to look outside for better development conditions made the synergy possible. It produced a new regional entity that needs to be defined and, for that purpose, that could be compared to other transnational zones in East Asia or even in Europe. Their common characteristic appears to be a functional approach to regional cooperation.     

Network structure and collaborative innovation processes—A comparative analysis of two elderly service networks in Shanghai

How does the structure of government‐funded service networks affect the process of service innovation? We have conducted a comparative analysis of the structure and processes of collaborative innovation of 2 government‐funded community‐based elderly service networks in Shanghai. We have found that in consistent with the literature, a network that has a network administrative organization structure is better able to manage the process of service innovation in a way that balances the need to achieve government policy goals on the one hand and the imperative to facilitate bottom‐up citizen participation on the other. Surprisingly, contrary to what prior studies have suggested, we have found that a network in which a lead organization plays a dominant role, despite its more centralized process of service innovation, is often able to deliver a variety of high‐quality and low‐cost services addressing citizens' needs. With the leadership provided by the network lead organization and its close affiliation with the street‐office government, the network has been able to solicit government support. Such a hierarchical yet responsive state‐society relation has emerged as a result of the coalescence of a corporatist state legacy and an increasing pressure for local governments to seek citizens' support in service delivery.     

THE INFLUENCE OF E‐GOVERNMENT ON ADMINISTRATIVE DISCRETION: THE CASE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN EGYPT

One important but often understudied area of research in public administration is the effect of e‐government on administrative discretion. This article examines e‐government factors that influence administrative discretion through a survey of local governments. The focus of this study is on Egyptian local governments, which are using e‐government to modernise public service delivery. Through a survey of administrative officials in these governments, this study found evidence that e‐government factors of collaboration and organisational change influenced administrative discretion. Other common factors noted in the literature such as size of the local government and demand by citizens for e‐government did not register an effect on administrative discretion. The results of this study imply that local governments should do more to enhance e‐government to reduce administrative discretion, especially in the area of increasing collaboration. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.