Evaluating watershed partnership in California: Theoretical and methodological perspectives

Public policymaking and implementation in the United States are increasingly handled through consensus-seeking partnerships involving multiple levels of government and most affected stakeholders. Focusing on watershed-based partnerships, this dissertation explores the promises and pitfalls of collaborative resource management.; Chapter 1 systematically reviews the empirical literature on factors affecting conflict resolution in watershed partnerships. The review identifies several practical suggestions for designing successful partnerships. It also reveals modest empirical support for two theoretical frameworks relevant to partnership structure and function: the Alternative Dispute Resolution framework and the Institutional Analysis and Development framework.; Chapter 2 tests two competing hypotheses regarding federal environmental laws and their affects on collaborative watershed management. According to an analysis of the geographic distribution of all 150 watershed partnerships in California, partnerships are more likely to occur in watersheds with (1) relatively high water quality, (2) high property values, and (3) high levels of Clean Water Act TMDL implementation. The latter result supports the hypotheses that federal environmental law can catalyze partnership formation.; Chapter 3 evaluates three common shortcuts for studying diverse stakeholder groups. These shortcuts entail interviewing or surveying (1) only the coordinator of the group, (2) only one category of stakeholder, or (3) only participants in the group while excluding knowledgeable non-participants. Each shortcut led to significant biases when tested in a survey administered to 25 watershed partnerships in California.; Chapter 4 identifies eight types of partnership success, and suggests techniques for measuring each type using interviews and surveys. Data from 23 partnerships in California indicate that valid measures of success can be devised for studies that compare multiple partnerships in a systematic fashion. However, collaborative resource management is often a slow and deliberate process, and final judgements on the success of an individual partnership should be withheld until approximately the fifth year of operation.