Measuring success in devolved collaboration

Abstract

In recent times, legislatures and domestic courts are increasingly requiring the use of “devolved collaboration” to manage and protect community resources. As a result, a growing emphasis on participatory mechanisms of resource-based decision making emphasizing “place-based” collaborative processes has emerged in many countries. Such processes involve stakeholders from the public and private sectors who consult together in order to arrive at shared goals regarding resource use and planning. Such collaborative processes arise from a growing dissatisfaction with top-down centralized “announce and defend” decision making policies. Yet, devolved collaboration is not without its challenges Scholars have identified that devolved collaborative processes must not be indifferent to social, structural, institutional disparities in order for it to realize its potential for equitable decisions. In response, this paper suggests structural improvements to the current process of unanimity-based devolved collaboration which includes the use of majority vote in cases where unanimity is not possible, and offers a set of principle-based measures or indicators that can be used at the community level to help assess whether benchmarks of equitable participation are being achieved at the local level.