Governments, group membership, and watershed partnerships.

摘要

This study addresses the convergence of governments, group membership, and watershed partnerships in the Lake Erie basin. A theoretical framework for studying the impacts of government on collaborative environmental management (Koontz et al. 2004) is employed to analyze the goals and activities of six representative watershed partnerships and their environmental and social outputs, and to investigate the impact government actors and institutions have on watershed partnership activities and outputs. Results suggest government impacts on partnership issue definition, resources for collaboration, and structure and decision processes are affected by differences in membership profile (government-centered, citizen-centered, or mixed-membership) and land use (rural or urban).