Learning from Local Government Research Partnerships in a Fragmented Political Setting

• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Author: Megan Mullin
• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13395

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

978

Megan Mullin

Duke University

Learning from Local Government Research Partnerships in a

Fragmented Political Setting

Abstract: Research partnerships between scholars and local governments offer promise to advance scholarly

understanding of local public administration and to improve the lives of people living and working in local

communities. Yet political fragmentation complicates the prospect of broader learning from these partnerships and

creates the risk that research partnerships will amplify disparities in local government performance. If scholars and

practitioners are attentive to these risks, they can design research to facilitate learning across local government settings.

Lessons from policy diffusion, program evaluation, and team science inform a set of recommendations for the conduct

of local government research partnerships and the distribution of results.

Evidence for Practice

• Scholars have long partnered with local governments on research projects that offer benefits for both

scholarship and the practice of public administration.

• Local government fragmentation poses two obstacles to broad learning from research partnerships: the

findings from a partnership might not generalize across settings, and many of the localities that could benefit

most are unlikely to access the findings.

• Following recommended steps for the conduct of local government research partnerships and the

distribution of results can help facilitate learning across local government settings.

Direct engagement between scholars and

local governments offers many potential

benefits on both sides. Governments can

learn what works in their community and others; they

can anticipate a broader range of policy effects that

extend beyond their immediate goal; and they can

consider time horizons or externalities that would not

have informed their decisions otherwise. Benefits to

scholars include introduction to the problems most

relevant for local government, even if they are not

priorities in the academic literature; exposure to the

practical constraints and impacts of local government

decisions; and enhanced ability to generalize and build

theories of administrative behavior and policy impacts

through the firsthand study of applications.

Recognizing these benefits, social scientists have

long partnered with local governments on projects

that bring together research expertise and local

government practice through participant observation

(Pressman 1975; Wolfinger 1973), technical and

programmatic support (Ferman and Hill 2004), and

experimental interventions (Arceneaux and Butler 2016;

Linos and Riesch 2020). Partnerships of this type have

received heightened attention in recent years because

of formalized initiatives in Philadelphia (Philadelphia

Behavioral Science Initiative), Washington, DC

(The Lab @ DC), and a set of cities affiliated with

the MetroLab Network to engage scholars directly in

creating more effective policies through place-based

interventions informed by social and behavioral science.

Although local governments may enter into research

partnerships primarily to address their own policy

problems, scholars and funders typically are interested

in building knowledge that can transport to other

settings. Political fragmentation presents an important

challenge to the broader goal of integrating research

with practice. A crucial consideration when drawing

lessons from research partnerships is their situation

in a particular local government context. Because

of the large number of local governments in the

United States and the wide variation between them

in capacities and responsibilities, results obtained

in one setting often will not generalize to others.

This is particularly true if the setting for the research

partnership is unusual, as is often the case. Even

if results do generalize, a challenge remains in

distributing information from research partnerships

to governments that could benefit from the findings.

Careful attention is needed to facilitate learning across

local government settings.

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 81, Iss. 5, pp. 978–982. © 2021 The Authors.

Public Administration Review published by

Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American

Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13395.

Megan Mullin is a political scientist

and the Dan and Bunny Gabel Associate

Professor at the Nicholas School of the

Environment at Duke University. She is

a 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and a

member of C-CoAST, a network of scholars,

government agencies, practitioners, and

coastal residents building capacity for

understanding human–natural interactions

in coastal systems.

Email: megan.mullin@duke.edu

Viewpoint Article