Achieving Consensus in Public Decision Making: Applying Interest-Based Problem Solving to the Challenges of Intergovernmental Collaboration

Abstract

This article examines how interests can be used to guide collaborative public decision making in an intergovernmental setting. A brief overview of the governance challenge at the local level in the United States is provided first, highlighting the unorganized nature of the domain of interlocal relations. At the local level, the need for regional solutions to public policy problems has been a major challenge for policy makers over the past decade. Jurisdictional and locality-based interests have demanded a new set of intergovernmental management skills in interlocal relations. The interest-based problem-solving process is then delineated, focusing on the application of a collaborative approach in a regional, interlocal context. Interest-based problem solving was applied in a novel way to the problem domain of interlocal relations in a setting that includes four municipalities and 13 unincorporated areas. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of using interest-based collaborative processes in regional public decision making.