Thinking Harder About Outcomes for Collaborative Governance Arrangements

Abstract

In recent years, a growing number of scholars have urged greater intellectual effort regarding the outcomes, or impacts, being produced, or not produced by collaborative governance arrangements. Some progress has been made with “process” and “social” outcomes, outcomes affecting systemic collaborative capacity, the identification of second- and third-order consequences, and in refining approaches to incorporating and measuring real world environmental improvements. But what about other creative, important, and potentially useful governance outcomes that may well be unique to collaborative governance arrangements? Are we measuring all of the important things? We put this hypothesis to the test by examining four successful cases of collaborative governance in four Western states. The research, by discovering and developing three new types of governance outcomes—enhancing agency resources, developing and transferring technology, and going beyond compliance—suggests that our current frameworks for thinking about and measuring outcomes produced by collaborative governance arrangements are necessarily incomplete.