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Introduction
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Over the last twenty years, watershed management associations have sprung up
around the country. Focused on a collection of environmental issues within a geographic
area defined by a watershed, these groups bring together environmental activists, public
officials, corporations, and volunteers to repair and preserve water and land within the
watershed. In some ways, watershed management associations are rooted in an American
tradition of communitarianism and voluntarism.
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People organize groups to address
collective problems within their community, with or without government involvement.
The nature and activities of these organizations also places them in the tradition of civil
society,
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the environmental variant of which has been called civic environmentalism.
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A second way to view watershed management associations is to think of them as a
type of public-private partnership involved in administering policies in the watershed. In
this conceptualization, voluntary organizations may assume responsibility for public tasks
either under contract to a government agency or not. If so, how are the nongovernmental
organizations connected to government? To the extent that watershed management
associations substitute for government, in what ways are they held accountable?
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Do
they work? At stake here are standards of effectiveness and whether these organizations
measure up to them.
These two approaches are distinct, derived from two different approaches to
watershed management associations. The former draws on analyses of civil society,
while the latter draws on public administration and policy analysis. In this paper, I
address these theoretical issues by examining watershed management associations in
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I wish to thank Katherine Valasek for her contributions to this project. The project was funded in part by
a grant from the Harding Public Policy Program, Drew University.
Convention