What Drives the Performance of Collaboration Networks: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Local Water Governance in China.

Can Cui,Hongtao Yi

doi:10.3390/ijerph17061819

Abstract

Local water governance is challenging given the significance to public health and the difficulties to manage it in a fragmented administrative system. A collaboration network is a popular governance tool in local governance to cope with functional fragmentation problems and institutional collective action (ICA) dilemmas. Empirical works are needed to examine the outcomes of such governance networks, especially in the context of environmental governance. With fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this article seeks to evaluate the outcomes of collaboration networks by investigating the influence of network structures on local water governance performance in China. Based on empirical analyses on a dataset of twenty local water governance networks implementing the Water Ecological Civilization Pilot Project in China, the findings suggest that a high overall bridging and bonding of social capital and a low network density are important determinants of effective collaboration networks. This study has policy implications for the design of local collaboration networks in facilitating effective environmental governance.

Highlights

Fragmentation among government units and across jurisdictions poses serious challenges to local governments in their collective efforts to promote effective regional governance [1]
Focusing on the twenty cases of the Water Ecological Civilization Pilot Project implemented since 2013, this study evaluates the effectiveness of these local collaboration networks informed by social capital theory and network performance research
The following section presents the theoretical framework based on which we evaluate the performance of collaboration networks, linking social capital theory with network structures and network performance

Summary

Introduction

Fragmentation among government units and across jurisdictions poses serious challenges to local governments in their collective efforts to promote effective regional governance [1]. Such challenges are termed as institutional collective action (ICA) dilemmas [2]. One of the mechanisms adopted to alleviate these dilemmas is for policy actors to form collaboration networks. These networks become effective governance tools to deliver public services and implement government policies through reducing functional and horizontal fragmentation by alleviating the information cost, bargaining cost and enforcement cost incurred during policy implementation [1]. With the recent advancement in data collection and analysis methodologies in network studies [9], scholars have pushed the boundaries of the performance evaluation of collaboration networks both theoretically and methodologically [10,11,12]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion