Collaborative Governance

Belize is a hotspot for environmental conservation and natural tourism due to its ecological richness and unique coastal reef system, but growing foreign debt and the recent discovery of oil reserves have led to conflicts over the best use for the country’s natural resources.

With a grant from the Oak Foundation, PARCC launched this project to help strengthen the capacity of government and civil society organizations to constructively manage environmental disputes. Working in collaboration with faculty from the University of Belize, a program similar to PARCC's Summer Institute was created to teach skills in collaborative governance, negotiation, conflict management and dispute resolution.

Although academics often discuss and study the use of collaborative governance in public management, there are few empirical studies to show when and how managers choose to use collaboration as a tool.

Research for this project focuses on senior executive service members in the federal government in an effort to better understand why senior public managers choose to collaborate, what their perceptions are of the challenges and constraints, and what role personal skill and technology play. The results of this research will provide researchers an opportunity to see how theories of collaboration play out in real-world decision making.

Conflict and Collaboration: Better or Worse Relations (book project)

Citizenship and Deliberation Working Group (named a Center for Public Life by the Kettering Foundation)

Collaborative Experiment (examines group decision-making dynamics and their impact on collaboration)

Public Deliberation and Public Action: Assessing the Impacts of Deliberation on Policy Choices (a case study of a 21st-century town meeting)

Citizen Engagement and Empowerment in London: Creating Digital Neighborhoods (for the London Council's Capital Ambition program)