Self-Organizing Federalism: Collaborative Mechanisms to Mitigate Institutional Collective Action Dilemmas

This book investigates the self-organizing responses of governments and interests to the institutional collective action (ICA) dilemmas of particular concern to students of federalism, urban governance, and regional management of natural resources. ICA dilemmas arise in fragmented systems whenever decisions by one independent formal authority do not consider costs or benefits imposed on others. The ICA framework analyzes networks, joint projects, partnerships, and other mechanisms developed by affected parties to mitigate ICA decision externalities. These mechanisms play a widespread but little-understood role in federalist systems by reshaping incentives in order to encourage coordination/cooperation. The empirical studies of urban service delivery and regional integration of regional resource management address three questions: How does a given mechanism mitigate costs of uncoordinated decisions? What incentives do potential members have to create the mechanism? How do incentives induced by the mitigating mechanism affect its sustainability in a changing environment and its adaptability to other ICA dilemmas?

Richard C. Feiock's current research on the roles of networks and local institutions in land use governance is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. His previous books include Institutional Constraints and Local Government (2001), City-County Consolidation and Its Alternatives (2004), and Metropolitan Governance: Conflict, Competition and Cooperation (2004). His work appears in leading journals, including Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Journal of Politics, and the American Journal of Political Science.

John T. Scholz's current research analyzes the problems of developing and maintaining cooperative solutions to collective action problems, emphasizing the role of policy networks, private partnerships, and collaborative government programs in resolving collective problems involved in resource management. His work has been supported by numerous grant awards from the National Science Foundation and appears in leading journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and the American Political Science Review. He co-edited Adaptive Governance and Water Conflict (with Bruce Stiftel, 2005).