The United States' increasingly fragmented and decentralized policymaking system produces inefficiencies and gridlock, with an increasing reliance on states and especially on localities. Encouraging localized, self-organized policymaking is one way that local governments respond to delegation and the renewed dependence on local institutions. This collaborative style of governance depends on a policy's stakeholders to not only participate in policy formulation, but in many cases, implement and evaluate the policies as well. This dissertation analyzes both the possibilities within and the limitations of collaborative governance as observed in watershed management; a policy area dominated by self-organizing stakeholders, while still suffering from many of the problems associated with collective behavior. Until recently, studies of collective behavior focus on existing institutions or individual characteristics, such as trust, to overcome collective action problems. Comparatively, the work on how these two elements interact to influence behavior remains underdeveloped. With network data from regional surveys and laboratory experiments I show that the formation of social capital--that element so critical for mitigating the inefficiencies of a fragmented political system, differs according to the resource exchanged, existing institutional structures and the actors participating in the policy arena. Upon completion, this dissertation will advise project managers and others like them on the most successful organizational structures, conditional on the task at hand and the characteristics of actors in their organizations so that they might extract maximum gains from exchange. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2012. / October 18, 2012. / collaboration, cooperation, coordination, network, social capital / Includes bibliographical references. / John T. Scholz, Professor Directing Dissertation; David J. Cooper, University Representative; Jason Barabas, Committee Member; Richard C. Feiock, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_183326 |
| Contributors | Whiteman, Meredith (authoraut), Scholz, John T. (professor directing dissertation), Cooper, David J. (university representative), Barabas, Jason (committee member), Feiock, Richard C. (committee member), Department of Political Science (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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