Coercive and cooperative intergovernmental mandates: a comparative analysis of Florida and New Zealand environmental plans

Through analysis of two sets of regional plans prepared under cooperative and coercive intergovernmental mandates in Florida and New Zealand, this study examines variation in mandate design features and their influence on plan quality. New Zealand's cooperative mandate has greater flexibility and permits more discretionary action to regional councils, while Florida's coercive mandate emphasizes technical capacity building, strong but limited use of coercion and financial support. Key policy implications of this study concern the design of regulatory mandates, and how the two approaches can learn from one another. Florida's approach leads to stronger plan fact basis and regulatory policies in plans, but could benefit from New Zealand's key mandate strength of building subnational political commitment to advance plan-making. New Zealand's approach leads to strong goals, but lacks strengths of specificity in setting goals, technical capacity building, selected use of strong coercion and funding which are emphasized in Florida's mandate. Thus mandates that lead to high quality regional plans would represent a combination of the two approaches.