Ejecución de Pique Estación Walker Martínez

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he potential for interagency collaborative capacity is much more prevalent than its actualization. Hence the cases I examined for this book are unusual. For at least a brief period of time, they existed.

What prevents ICC capacity from even getting off the ground, in most cases, is the unwillingness of potential partners to contribute resources. The first half of this chapter explores the variety of motiva- tions to withhold or block the contribution of resources. The second half considers the opposite set of motivations: why potential partners might indeed be willing to contribute, and how smart practices might aug- ment this willingness.

Looking through variance-analysis lenses, one might say: add u p all the forces (motivations) pushing for collaboration, subtract the sum of the forces (including constraints) resisting collaboration, and predict that, other things being equal, the greater the positive sum (or the smaller the negative sum), the greater the likelihood of reaching some threshold of effective ICC capacity. Craftsmanship theory would add to this an important amendment: when estimating the magnitudes of the various forces, adjust appropriately for the enhancing effects of smart practices on the positive side and their diminishing effects on the nega- tive side. It would also add: be aware that the forces of both sorts are varied and subtle, admitting the possibilities of much creativity and plausible rhetoric in some actors' efforts to bargain with, manipulate, and persuade potential allies and enemies.

The resources of greatest consequence, and on which I shall focus, are these:

Turf. By "turf" I mean the domain of problems, opportunities, and

actions over which an agency exercises legitimate authority. Sometimes "turf" is literally land, as in the case of timber land controlled by the U.S. Forest Service. Sometimes it is a potential client population, such as everyone diagnosed with tuberculosis in some geographical area, or a communitywide function, such as public school education. Sometimes it is the behavior of other public agencies, such as the expenditure prac- tices of municipal agencies which, for the comptroller's office that over- sees these, counts as turf.

Autonomy. I mean this in the sense of freedom to make decisions and

take actions without prior agreement by partners or the need to furnish excuses to them after the fact.1

Money. Money might come from an agency's budget. Or it might

come as "new money" granted by a foundation or by the legislature or raised as a result of successful commercial activity.

People. By this I mean the quantity and quality of manpower needed

to make the ICC function at an acceptable level, taking account of its stage of development. I include here all the intangible resources that people can contribute to ICC development, such as enthusiasm, intelli- gence, technical expertise, creativity, time, and commitment.

Political standing. Typically, this is accorded an ICC by the political

community in which it functions, in particular by the official and unof- ficial leaders of the community.

Information. By this I mean all kinds of information, including what-

ever is relevant to the management of particular cases (such as clients, firms, or geographical areas), interpretation of aggregate trends or pat- terns, and gossip or "intelligence" about political developments, among others.

The Variety of Protectionist Purposes

In the preceding chapter I observed that protectionism played a role in the evolution of important policymaking and policy-implementing institutions. Protectionism breeds unwillingness to contribute re-

1. James Q. Wilson (1989, pp. 181-85) more than almost any theorist of bureaucracy postulates autonomy as the primary bureaucratic goal. He regards turf protectionism as merely an expression of the desire for autonomy. In my treatment it is that but much more as well.

sources to an ICC as well.2 Consistent with the discussion of purpose in chapter 2,1 distinguish three types of protectionist purpose: careerist, bureaucratic, and value-oriented.

The varieties of protectionist purposes are often fused. For instance, people sometimes protect bureaucratic turf because they wish to protect the agency's mission, which they value because of the public interest, because it serves their careerist purposes, and because turf protection- ism is implied by their bureaucratic roles. One of these purposes may have preceded the others, to be sure, but after a time they will all have reciprocally reinforced one another to the point that subtle distinctions about primacy become irrelevant.

Even in cases in which the underlying distinctions remain—perhaps because the variety of purposes prescribe conflicting courses of action— it may be useless for an observer to try to penetrate the underlying real- ity. Because careerist and bureaucratic purposes are often disapproved, individuals do not admit to outsiders, such as academic researchers, that they are present. They do not necessarily admit them to themselves, or even understand them. Bureaucratic purposes such as budget or turf protection are often rationalized as inevitable imperatives of political life, which indeed they are. Rationalization of careerist purposes in terms of bureaucratic imperatives or value commitments is also common.

Self-understanding is further complicated by the fact that such pur- poses are often subtle and are mediated by estimates of empirical con- tingencies. Consider, for instance, the mixture of assessments and pur- poses evident in the inner ruminations of Johnson, a division chief in a large environmental regulatory agency:

If our agency picks up this new collaborative task in accord with the wishes of Thompson, the governor's aide, this could bolster

2. H o w prevalent are problems caused by protectionism? My o w n interviews suggest they are very prevalent. So does Sandford F. Borins's analysis of 217 semifinalists in the Ford Foundation/Kennedy School of Government Innovations Awards program, which identified 512 instances of obstacles to innovation as reported by the applicants. Borins (1998, p. 67). Ninety-two of these he coded as "bureaucratic," which I take to be, in his usage, a virtual synonym for "rigid" or "protectionist." This slightly exceeded "inade- quate resources" as the main source of identified obstacles (p. 89). Borins does not explic- itly say whether the bureaucratic obstacles were disproportionately concentrated in the 61 percent of his cases in which holism, and therefore interagency relationships, w a s at issue, but this can be inferred from his examples (pp. 67-68).

the status in our agency of Roberts, Thompson's long-time pro- fessional associate, whose philosophical views are antagonistic to my own. Although I favor the stated aims of this particular col- laborative venture, I doubt that the design details, insofar as I can understand what they really are, give it good odds of actually pro- ducing worthwhile results. Whether a newly inflated Roberts would treat my unit's budget and that of my professional allies within the agency fairly would depend on how visible his actions would be outside the agency and on how much he feels restrained by his own sense of fairness—the nature and depth of which is presently unknown. It also depends on what policy situations turn up in the next few years that would tempt him to try to alter the status quo dramatically in favor of his professional ideologies. My own career prospects would probably not suffer—and they might even be enhanced were I to be seen by my allies as an effec- tive counterweight to Roberts.

If Johnson decides to oppose Thompson's wishes, to what degree is she motivated by value, bureaucratic, or careerist aspirations? And what exactly is the character of any of these? What if we observe that Johnson decides to go along with Thompson's wishes? If the decision turned on a slightly different calculation of the empirical contingencies, the mixture of purposes could well be the same as if she had decided to oppose them, and yet the outside observer could easily be misled about the underlying nature of Johnson's purposes and about the inferred strength of the various forces acting on Johnson.

In chapter 7 we shall see how the difficulty of inferring the nature and strength of purposes bedevils potential partners' calculations of one another's trustworthiness. They also bedevil any observer's inter- pretations, including my own, of why and how organizations are reluc- tant to contribute to collaborative efforts.

I offer no personal judgment of approval or disapproval of purposes, nor of the mere fact of organizations' reluctance to contribute to ICC development, whatever the purposes. I might be readier to have a per- sonal judgment, and to recommend it to readers, were I confident I could disentangle multiple purposes and unmask rationalizations. But even in that case, there would be little point in doing so because I have much less interest in judging people and the forces that surround them than in understanding them and helping readers to do the same.

Value-Creating Purposes

Value-creating purposes come in a variety of forms. What they have in common is the perception that protecting one or another aspect of one's institution or agency maintains or creates public value.

M I S S I O N - R E L A T E D RISK-AVERSIVENESS. One of the most powerful

In document BASES TECNICAS DE LICITACION TRAMO 1 (página 88-91)