Hollowing the Infrastructure: Revolving Loan Programs and Network Dynamics in the American States

O’Toole, Laurence J.

doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.jpart.a024308

Cited by 27 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Some analysts have argued these patterns require fundamentally different forms of management (Mandell 2001), while others have sought to sketch key research questions that should be addressed by scholars (McGuire 2002). "Treating networks seriously" is likely to involve these and many other kinds of research questions, and the answers are only beginning to emerge (O'Toole 1997).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Desperately Seeking Selznick: Cooptation and the Dark Side of Public Management in Networks

O’Toole

Meier

2004

Public Administration Review

207

144

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Most literature on public-sector networks focuses on how to build and manage systems and ignores the political problems that networks can create for organizations. This article argues that individual network nodes can work to bias the organization's actions in ways that benefit the organization's more advantaged clientele. The argument is supported by an analysis of performance data from 500 organizations over a five-year period. A classic theoretical point is supported in a systematic empirical investigation. While networks can greatly benefit the organization, they have a dark side that managers and scholars need to consider more seriously.Research and popular literature on networks and public management has burgeoned during the last several years. The bulk of this literature frames the emergence of networks in terms of a tendency or necessity to use multiple linked social actors, often multiple organizational actors, to achieve collective purposes. Corollary attention, unsurprisingly, has been directed at logically related issues such as how to manage networked arrays, how to measure and improve network performance, and how to understand network operations through empirical theory. With this attention to networks and management has come an implicit notion among researchers, albeit not necessarily among practitioners, that network development, use, and performance are topics that carry little direct political importaside from the obvious point that the performance of networks might itself be of interest to a broader public.The inadvertently depoliticized analysis of networks in recent research has neglected issues that should be part of the research agenda. We outline ways that networks and network management point toward significant political issues. We then focus on one political dimension of networks and their performance: the likelihood that, rather than being neutral producers of collective goods while enmeshed in a broader environment, network managers respond to the stronger and more politically powerful elements of their surroundings, thus magnifying the tendency toward inequality already present in the social setting. This dynamic-what we call the "dark side" of managing networks-has largely been unexplored by network researchers. Such patterns, however, should not be unexpected. The reasons are explicit in longstanding streams of research that have been ignored in the work done thus far on networks. We report some empirical results that give considerable credence to the dark-side hypothesis. In so doing, we argue there is a need for systematic study of the political aspects of networks and their management. Networks and Network Management: The Functionalist PerspectiveA major outpouring of research on networks has issued forth during the last decade or so. Characterizing the full array of studies is almost impossible, in part because researchers have used the term "network" in many different

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confidence: 99%

Desperately Seeking Selznick: Cooptation and the Dark Side of Public Management in Networks

O’Toole

Meier

2004

Public Administration Review

207

144

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Avenues for routine participation were institutionalized in two ways: new structures or expanded participation in existing structures. These two approaches may have different implications for intra-and interorganizational dynamics during implementation, particularly the challenge of coordination among different collective decision making forums (O'Toole 1996). In interviews, there were some indications that the structure recommended in the Lake Champlain case may prove to be more robust than that recommended in the Delaware Estuary case, a possibility to be evaluated as implementation progresses in the two cases.…”

Section: Decision Process Effectivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stakeholder Involvement and Decision Quality: Cases of Interstate Basin Management

Cowie¹

2000

proc water environ fed

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Participatory approaches to watershed management, including stakeholder involvement initiatives, have increasingly been advocated as a way to improve management of water resources. These approaches seem to hold particular promise for complex issues, including management of interstate water bodies. Individual initiatives, however, vary widely and this variation has implications for both decision-making processes and results.This paper presents case studies of watershed planning in three interstate basins: the Delaware Bay, Lake Champlain, and the Merrimack River watersheds. In each of these, recent initiatives involved an array of stakeholders in substantive roles in development and implementation of watershed plans.Planning for the Delaware Bay was initiated under the federal National Estuary Program. In 1988, USEPA and three states convened a Management Conference charged with development of Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan, a process that was ultimately completed in 1996. Watershed planning for Lake Champlain was initiated in 1990 by an act of the U.S. Congress. This act established a Management Conference that completed a comprehensive plan for the U.S. portion of the basin in 1996. For the Merrimack River, USEPA initiated a bi-state planning effort in 1992, convening a Management Committee that completed a comprehensive watershed plan in 1997.Case studies of these stakeholder involvement initiatives were designed to evaluate three factors: 1) the structures for participation in watershed planning, 2) the effectiveness of decision processes, and 3) the changes in policy and management programs directed as a result of decision making. Data sources included in-depth interviews with key participants and staff, a mail survey, and documentation of decision making (e.g., draft and final management plans).Results highlight two aspects of the structure for participation as important in the design and evaluation of stakeholder involvement processes: the breadth of participation and the degree of authority. Results also indicate that different structures may promote different types of results.In these cases, broader participation was associated with more effective decision processes. That is, broader participation should not be assumed to be an obstacle to effective decision making. Rather, it may lead to decision processes that are more effective from competing dimensions, that meet more of the competing demands on environmental decisions.

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“…Second, the policy shift to SRLPs is likely to have exacerbated any inequities present in the CGP. Third, conducting a cross-state comparison of the SRLP is more difficult due to differences across the states in the implementation of their SRLPs (Johnson, 1995;O'Toole, 1996). 4 Finally, it is important to know if the CGP created historical inequities that may need to be addressed by the SRLP.…”

Section: Objectives Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…POPULATION The EPA's Strategy (1994), other EPA reports (1991,1993), and other research (e.g., O'Toole, 1996) suggests that small (i.e., low population) and rural communities have trouble obtaining grant and loan funding. This is an important concern because approximately 67% of communities reporting financial needs were located in small communities serving less than 10,000 people (EPA, 1997).…”

Section: Independent Variables: Population Community Wealth and Minmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environmental Justice and Water Pollution Control

Imperial

1999

Public Works Management & Policy

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This study examines the third goal of the Environmental Protection Agency Office ofWater's Environmental Justice Strategy that focuses on providing equal access to environmental infrastructure for all citizens, including those located in disadvantaged communities. One way to ensure equal access is through the equitable distribution of funding pursuant to the Clean Water Act. This article examines whether disadvantaged communities received a disproportionately low share of the funding or had a lower probability of obtaining construction grants. The article also examines 9,854 grant awards in the 48 contiguous states at the county level during the period 1983 to 1992. The results indicate that counties with relatively small populations had more difficulty obtaining construction grants. The effect of income and minority composition was more pronounced in small communities. High-income communities did better than poor communities in terms of both the share of awards and the probability of receiving grants. The results also indicate that a county's minority composition was inversely related to the probability of obtaining a grant but positively related to the share of grant awards.

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Hollowing the Infrastructure: Revolving Loan Programs and Network Dynamics in the American States

Abstract: ABSTRACT

Cited by 27 publications

References 5 publications

Desperately Seeking Selznick: Cooptation and the Dark Side of Public Management in Networks

Desperately Seeking Selznick: Cooptation and the Dark Side of Public Management in Networks

Stakeholder Involvement and Decision Quality: Cases of Interstate Basin Management

Environmental Justice and Water Pollution Control

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