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Abstract
Agreements to share services often require approval by local elected officials. I argue that decisions in favor of collaboration depend on officials’ perceptions of an agenda for collaboration, their assessment of the terms of collaboration, and their opinion of potential intergovernmental partners. Using these three dimensions of variation I construct a typology to explain elected officials’ decisions about collaboration with other governments. The typology enables me to hypothesize about the conditions under which collaboration does, or does not, occur.
To test these hypotheses I conducted in-depth interviews with a random-sample of fifty local elected officials in Michigan. I compare the interactive effects of perceptions of intergovernmental partners and the terms of collaboration in case studies of four communities’ discussions about collaboration in police dispatch. In another set of case studies I analyze land-use and officials’ decisions to conditionally transfer land from one jurisdiction to another. The case studies involved analysis of interviews with twenty one local administrators and elected officials as well as examination of documents and newspaper reports.
My research provides detailed descriptions of the formation of collaborative agreements, and first-hand reports from the elected and administrative personnel involved in local policymaking. I find that a positive stimulus, or agenda status, is a necessary condition for collaboration. Additionally, positive terms of collaboration and a positive stimulus, or positive perceptions of intergovernmental partners and a collaborative stimulus are jointly sufficient for collaboration. Thus, collaboration on service production is most likely when all three dimensions are positive, but collaboration can occur when the terms of collaboration are negative, or when perceptions of intergovernmental partners are negative, as long as the other two dimensions are positive. The random-sample interviews and case studies provide the opportunity to analyze “negative cases” of collaboration. Contrary to existing research, I find that positive perceptions of intergovernmental partners often develop during the process of negotiating and adopting an inter-local agreement, rather than acting as a causal pre-condition for collaboration.
