Abstract
Collaborative governance has increased in popularity and relevance in recent decades and the term has been used to refer to a wide variety of arrangements involving state and non-state actors. As governments recognize the need to work across administrative, sectoral and jurisdictional boundaries and communities continue to demand greater involvement and influence over public actions, there is a need to understand how collaborative forms of governance are shaping the performance and practice of public administration. These questions are particularly relevant given that collaborative governance has been shown to take place within a legacy of laws and policies that hinder or are in tension with collaborative principles. There is a need to ask: How do public managers and staff shape how decisions are made and public actions are carried out? How do these changes in governance arrangements influence management outcomes? Furthermore, there is a need to elaborate on the opportunity for change in such governance models to develop a more comprehensive theory of the drivers and mechanisms of institutional change within formal organizations.
This dissertation addresses these questions by focusing on the USDA Forest Service, a federal land management agency responsible for managing 193 million acres of public land. The Forest Service provides a unique lens for understanding institutional change in part because it was founded on Progressive Era reform principles of apolitical administration of policies carried out by a cadre of professional foresters. By many accounts, the Forest Service has struggled to adapt as the goods and services desired by society from public lands have evolved to include a broader suite of values. In this way, the challenges faced by the Forest Service and the mechanisms and drivers of change provide a window into the tensions between traditional bureaucratic principles and those principles espoused by collaborative governance.
Using a mixed methods approach, this dissertation examines the impact of collaborative public participation processes on national forest administration, governance and management outcomes in Idaho, a state located in the northern Rockies region of the United States. In doing so, it elaborates state-centered collaborative governance as a distinct model in which bureaucratic actors play an outsized role. Taken together, this dissertation explores the mechanisms and drivers of change in the governance of national forests in a region with distinct institutional and resource legacies and community characteristics. The studies explore how bureaucratic actors’ practical actions and values mediate organizational culture and institutional voids, enable change in management outcomes and contribute to the governance transition, more broadly.