The Adoption of Collaborative Governance Institutions: The EPA-States Performance Partnership Agreements (PPAS)

Abstract

Collaborative governance, defined as the processes and structures that engage people across the boundaries of organizations, has evolved as a common strategy in the public administration literature. There is little systematic research that examines the extent of collaborative governance, in particular, that between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state governments. This article examines what factors influence the adoption of Performance Partnership Agreements (PPAs), considered as collaborative governance between the EPA and state governments. This study uses a logit model, applying an Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, which explains the outcome in the process of how rule-in-use, community interests, and physical, social, and economic characteristics affect the values of the predictors characterizing action arenas, which, in turn, lead to different outcomes. This study found that for rule-in-use, social capital as an informal institution is positively related to the adoption of PPAs. For community interests, the strength of environmental interest group(s) (e.g., white population) influences the adoption of PPAs. The empirical findings of this study are meaningful to understand collaborative governance between the EPA and state governments through an IAD framework, showing that various institutional arrangements, community interests, and physical and social variables affect the adoption of PPAs in terms of collaborative governance.

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