Analyzing Collaboration among Neighborhood Organizations

• In Event: Where We Live: How Neighborhoods Shape Civic Engagement

Abstract

A key question in the study of urban governance concerns whether, on balance, neighborhood-level institutional arrangements support productive civic engagement or instead reinforce existing patterns of fragmentation, segregation, and parochialism in American cities. This study draws on Feiock’s Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework to provide insight into the circumstances under which neighborhood and homeowner associations collaborate with other neighborhood organizations and with local governments to solve neighborhood problems. The analysis draws on data from 2013 and 2019 surveys of neighborhood and homeowner associations in Little Rock. Preliminary analysis of the 2013 data suggest that collaboration among neighborhood organizations is common, particularly for neighborhood associations and for homeowner associations with a broader range of functions and that are organizationally complex. This finding suggests that neighborhood associations and other emergent forms of neighborhood governance may be less limited in forming collaborative arrangements than we might anticipate.

Author

• Michael C. Craw, The Evergreen State College