Collaboration and the Bureau of Land Management: Differential adoption of community-based approaches to public lands planning in the West

Community-based collaboration is the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) preferred approach to land use planning. While some BLM field offices have successfully adopted collaborative planning, others have struggled with its implementation or not yet tried collaborating at all. This dissertation examines institutional, contingency, community capacity, leadership, and group relations theories, and the New West thesis to consider factors that motivate and inhibit BLM field offices from adopting a collaborative planning approach. A two-staged, multiple method research strategy was designed to examine the differential adoption of collaboration. Stage 1 consisted of a survey sent to BLM field staff in all 146 field offices to provide a comprehensive picture of where collaboration is being used. Field offices responding to the survey (n=89) served as the sample frame from which four case studies were drawn for Stage 2 of the study. In this stage, BLM staff and stakeholders were interviewed in field offices selected for their adoption or non-adoption of collaboration and their location in the New or Old West. The survey data supports the New West thesis, showing that adoption of collaboration is more likely in field offices located in counties experiencing population growth, with diversified economies and high levels of community capacity (human capital). This finding, however, does not explain all the variation in the use of collaboration, since some Old West field offices are adopting collaboration and some New West field offices are not adopting this planning process. The case study data clarifies this discrepancy and provide support for the community capacity and leadership theories. The case studies showed that field offices are likely to adopted collaboration, regardless of being in the New or Old West, where there is a visionary leader working in communities with high community capacity (social capital). The ability of BLM field offices to adopt community-based collaboration seems especially hindered by overbearing procedural and legal requirements, ineffective leadership, and low social capital.