Administrators’ and Elected Officials’ Collaboration Networks: Selecting Partners to Reduce Risk in Economic Development

• Published date: 01 November 2012
• Date: 01 November 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02659.x

S58 Public Administration Review • November | December 2012 • Special Issue

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 72, Iss. S1, pp. S58–S68. © 2012 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2012.02659.x.

Richard C. Feiock is the Augustus B.

Turnbull Professor of Public Administration

at Florida State University. His books

include City–County Consolidation and

Its Alternatives (M. E. Sharpe, 2004);

Metropolitan Governance: Conf‌l ict,

Competition, and Cooperation

(Georgetown University Press, 2004); and

Self-Organizing Federalism (Cambridge

University Press, 2009). His current work

is supported by the National Science

Foundation and the Lincoln Institute for

Land Policy.

E-mail: rfeiock@fsu.edu

In Won Lee (corresponding author) is

assistant professor in the Department of

Public Administration at Dankook University,

South Korea. His research focuses on

urban management and policy, local

public f‌i nance, collaborative governance,

energy and sustainable growth policy,

and interorganizational and intersectoral

management. His work has appeared

in Public Administration Review,

Policy Studies Journal, Urban Affairs

Review, Internal Review of Public

Administration, and other journals.

E-mail: in1lee04@dankook.ac.kr

Hyung Jun Park is associate professor

in the Department of Public Administration

and Graduate School of Governance and

director of the Institute of Governance

and Policy Evaluation at Sungkyunkwan

University, South Korea. His research and

teaching interests are public policy analysis,

collaborative governance, regulatory policy

and institutional design. He has written

articles on collaborative governance,

local economic development policy,

regulatory policy, social network analysis

and institutional collective action. He has

published articles in English and Korean in

Public Administration Review, Urban

Affairs Review, American Review

of Public Administration, and Public

Management Review.

E-mail: hjpark72@skku.edu

Richard C. Feiock

Florida State University

In Won Lee

Dankook University, South Korea

Hyung Jun Park

Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea

Networks play an important role in collaboration, but

previous work has not examined the dif‌f erent roles of

elected and appointed of‌f‌i cials in these networks.  is

article investigates local economic development policy

networks to address (1) the extent to which the structure

of relationships ref‌l ects the ef‌f orts of actors to ef‌f‌i ciently

collect and process information or to enhance credible

commitment; (2) the extent to which dif‌f erences in incen-

tives and risk aversion lead to dif‌f erences in politicians’

and administrators’ networks; and (3) how similarities

and dif‌f erences between local governments af‌f ect their

network relationships. Exponential random graph analy-

sis of local governments in the Orlando, Florida, metro-

politan area demonstrate that local government actors

forge tightly clustered networks, consistent with the desire

to address commitment problems. Although administra-

tors have more expansive networks, there is little evidence

of dif‌f erences in network patterns for administrators and

elected of‌f‌i cials. Similarity of economic problems and dif-

ferences in population also promotes collaboration.  ese

f‌i ndings are linked to the competitive nature of economic

development.

Networks among both elected of‌f‌i cials and

administrators are crucial to local gover-

nance, but the dif‌f erent roles of elected and

appointed of‌f‌i cials in these networks are not well

illuminated by extant research. Frederickson describes

formal and informal networks

to coordinate services as

populated by local government

administrators:

To cope with the mismatch

between jurisdictional

boundaries and problems,

public administrators at all

levels of government practice

administrative conjunction.

Administrative conjunction

is best understood as area

wide formal and informal

horizontal and vertical

linkages and patterns of cooperation between

public service professionals representing area

wide jurisdictions. Public administrators

practice conjunction with their professional

counterparts out of a deep understanding that

many public problems can only be dealt with

ef‌f ectively through jurisdictional cooperation,

and out of a strong sense of jurisdictional inter-

dependence. (2002, 5–6)

Other scholars have focused on networks among

elected of‌f‌i cials. For example, Feiock, Steinacker, and

Park (2009) report that mayors’ informal networks

inf‌l uence the formation of joint ventures for economic

development, and Zeemering (2009) examines the

motivations of city council members. Several studies

of metropolitan governance have observed dif‌f er-

ences between elected and appointed of‌f‌i cials in their

propensity to engage in interjurisdictional collabora-

tion, but they do not identify the dif‌f erences in how

administrators and elected of‌f‌i cials structure their net-

work relationships or explain these dif‌f erences (Feiock

2004; Frederickson 1997; Wood 2006). Frederickson

argues that “[p]olitics—campaigns, elections, of‌f‌i ces,

titles—are jurisdictional, autonomous, and only

slightly interdependent. Administration is, by com-

parison, highly interdependent.  is interdependence

has resulted in extensive conjunction and remarkably

organized patterns of self-coop-

eration” (1999, 708). In a study

of the willingness of elected

and administrative of‌f‌i cials to

cooperate on an information

technology innovation, how-

ever, Matkin and Frederickson

(2009) report f‌i ndings that

contradict this thesis, show-

ing that executive of‌f‌i cials are

more inclined to cooperate than

legislative of‌f‌i cials.

In this article, we argue that

both political and administrative

Administrators’ and Elected Of‌f‌i cials’ Collaboration

Networks: Selecting Partners to Reduce Risk

in Economic Development

By linking the dif‌f erent incen-

tives of managers and elected

of‌f‌i cials to specif‌i c network

structures that enhance either

information ef‌f‌i ciency or trust

and commitment, we are able to

test hypotheses about the struc-

ture of collaboration networks

and the choices of partners that

managers and elected of‌f‌i cials

make.