The Inclusion Trade‐Off: Comparing the Design and Functionality of Collaborative Governance Forums
通过比较美国亚利桑那州四个水用户协会的包容性标准，发现限制性论坛促进内部协调溢出，而包容性论坛促进外部区域合作，管理关切会干扰这一关系。
ABSTRACT Environmental challenges require collaboration across jurisdictions, often through forums or intermediary spaces for repeated interaction. A persistent forum design question concerns inclusion criteria, or which actors should be included. Ecology of Games, public choice, and collaborative governance detail various costs and benefits of expanding inclusion, but less attention has been paid to specific variations in inclusion criteria. To address this, we conduct a comparative case study of four water user associations in Arizona, U.S. that either restrict participation to a certain sector and/or to those holding specific water rights. We assess how inclusion criteria impact participants' perceptions of various dimensions of forum functionality, considering management concerns that may confound the relationship. Drawing on a survey and semi‐structured interviews of forum participants, we find that more restrictive forums benefit from an internal spillover of high coordination to other capacities that require increased buy‐in (e.g., lobbying) while more inclusive forums can create an external spillover of broader regional cooperation as participants interact with more diverse users. Management concerns, particularly the relative concern for groundwater versus surface water and financial resources, confound this relationship. Our findings provide new theoretical and practical insight into how inclusion rules affect forum functionality in complex governance systems.