by Yixin Liu
Collaboration among local governments is crucial for tackling shared challenges like environmental management and economic development. Partisanship significantly shapes these collaborative efforts. In my recent paper, I investigate how partisanship affects local policymakers’ decisions to collaborate and whether political identity moderates the importance of key collaborative attributes like resource allocation, reciprocal trust, and policy outcomes. This work bridges gaps in the existing collaborative strategies literature by focusing on individual-level preferences rather than aggregated patterns.
This study sought to address two primary research questions:
(1) Does partisanship influence local policymakers’ willingness to adopt collaborative sustainable development programs?
(2) Does partisanship alter how policymakers weigh other collaborative attributes, such as trust or resource sharing, in their decision-making?
To test these questions, I designed a conjoint experiment targeting municipal officials across the United States. Participants were asked to evaluate hypothetical sustainable development programs proposed by cities with varying partisanship and collaborative attributes—such as the balance of resource contributions (resource allocation), the expected number of jobs created by the program (policy outcome), and past collaborations with the partner city (reciprocal trust). By randomizing these attributes, I was able to isolate the effect of partisanship while controlling for other factors.
The sample included 772 local government officials, representing a broad cross-section of U.S. municipalities. These officials represented 535 municipalities and covered offices from 49 states and the District of Columbia. I used my data to test two hypotheses:
Co-partisanship Hypothesis (H1): The collaborative program proposed by co-partisans will increase the interest of municipal officials in adopting it, compared to the same program proposed by out-partisans.
Conditional hypothesis (H2): The importance of resource allocation, reciprocal trust, and policy outcomes will weaken if the collaborative program is not proposed by co-partisans.
The co-partisanship effect was clear: Programs proposed by co-partisans were 12.75 percentage points more likely to be adopted than those proposed by out-partisans, supporting H1 (see Figure 2). Moreover, my analysis yielded support for H2. My results showed that the influence of collaborative attributes was indeed conditional on whether it was proposed by a co-partisan. For example, respondents favored programs that required lower resource contributions or had higher job creation potential, but these attributes were weighed less heavily when the proposal was made by a partner city in the out-party (see Figure 3). It is also important to note that the influence of partisanship was consistent across subgroups, suggesting its deep roots in political identity rather than professional roles or ideologies.
This study highlights the importance of understanding the role of partisanship in collaborative governance. Future research could explore the long-term impacts of partisanship on collaborative governance or expand the scope to other policy areas. Additionally, combining experimental methods with observational data could enhance our understanding of how partisan dynamics evolve over time in real-world settings.
You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at
Liu, Yixin. 2024. “ Partisan Collaboration in Policy Adoption: An Experimental Study With Local Government Officials.” Policy Studies Journal 52(4): 955–967. https://doi-org.echo.louisville.edu/10.1111/psj.12551.
About the Author
Yixin Liu is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics & International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. His research investigates cross-sectoral collaborative governance in environmental management. Prior to joining NAU, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He completed his PhD at Florida State University.
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