Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

While communities on the East Coast of the US are already experiencing the effects of climate change, scientists project that sea level rise, increased precipitation, and record-breaking extreme weather events will devastate the region in the coming decades. The absence of a federal strategy in the U.S. for climate change adaptation leaves state and city governments with vast discretion to undertake climate change adaptation measures. Yet cities may be unable to adapt to climate change without external assistance, especially in states like Florida, where the state leadership has not bought into the need to provide political and financial support to local governments. Fragmentation of authority in federalist systems has largely resulted in small jurisdictions that are incapable of delivering public services in an efficient manner. Collaboration allows cities to pool resources and work across boundaries to ameliorate wicked problems such as climate change. As a term, collaborative governance refers to the process of crafting inter-organizational solutions to issues that cannot be solved by single organizations alone.

Scholars of public administration have developed a vast body of literature on collaborative arrangements. However, we still know little about why and how collaborative governance may lead to improved policy outputs and outcomes. Using the case of climate change adaptation in cities in Florida and New York, this study seeks to contribute to the better understanding of collaborative governance and its effects on public service provision. The main research question is: Does higher collaborative activity lead to better policy outcomes? The central hypothesis of this study is that higher collaborative activity with various stakeholders will lead to better outcomes of climate change adaptation. To answer the research question, the study uses quantitative methods and utilizes survey data, administered to municipal governments and secondary data sources.

The implications of the study are two-fold. Theoretically, it contributes to the extant collaborative governance literature by shedding more light on the link between collaborative governance and policy outcomes. The study utilizes objective measures of climate change adaptation outcomes. Objective measures are important since most work to date exploring the link between collaborative activity and associated outcomes has relied primarily on perceptual measures. Perceptual measures may provide biased findings, since public managers are invested in their organizations and may overestimate their performance. In terms of practical implications, it is expected that the results of the study will inform policymakers and public administrators at all levels of government. It will also provide valuable insights about how various stakeholders, such as residents, nonprofits, and academia, contribute to adaptation outcomes. Finally, I provide implications and suggestions for further research.