Political Organization and Conflict and Regional Governance Structures

While governance and the role that governance can play in affecting a region are important, I do not believe that governance can do anything but manage regional problems. I am not saying that good governance is impossible but that great governance is nearly impossible considering the political conflicts inherent in managing such a large endeavor. The piece on organizations as political entities intimately describes how collaboration and conflict are inseparable ingredients in all organizations. The article intimates that well functioning organizations have some cohering or coalescing affect on their employees that ensures that the pull of collaboration is, at least somewhat, stronger than the pull of conflict. For one, I would put forward that most employees identify with the firm for which they work ahead of other firms: “I work for the Sierra Club”. The problem that I see as inherent in the organizations that make up regional governance structures are that almost none of the decision-making actors identify with the regional organization for which they are working: “I am a member of the city council of Berkeley,” rather than, “I am an ABAG board member”. This orientation of identity away-from regional governance structures, I believe, is one of the reasons that there are so few regions that have great governance.

This is why I don’t think that regional governance will ever be able to solve regional problems as effectively as some a combination of governance and government. The piece about the history of regional government initiatives in the Bay Area left me wanting for more information. Why have all the regional government (large or small) failed to pass the State Legislature? Which initiatives came the closest to passage and why did they still fail? While California will never have land use controls similar to Oregon there are other States like Washington, Maine, and Maryland where State Legislatures have passed laws that enable and enforce institutional arrangements that make ‘thinking regionally’ a basic tenet of certain governmental policies. Before we can design effective regional governance structures for California I think we need to compare best practices from other states with the failed regional initiatives from California’s past in order to bridge the political gap. Until the State creates regional institutions that more effectively balance collaboration and conflict in regional governance structures California will be doomed to solving regional problems rather than creating functioning, efficient, and livable regional places.