Institutional analysis in the evaluation of the northwest economic adjustment initiative

An important part of the Northwest Forest Plan was 1.2 billion dollars of community development assistance made available to northern California, Oregon, and Washington through the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative (NEAI). The NEAI developed a complex institutional structure to eliminate regional administrative gridlock and enable workers and families, businesses, communities, and tribes that depended on forest product-based economies to regain or improve their economic and social well-being. As part of an evaluation of NEAI that included 31 community case studies, institutional analysis gauged how the initiativeʼs institutional and organizational structure affected program implementation. This paper examines how the institutional analysis complemented the community case studies, the use of Schneider and Ingramʼs policy design framework as a tool for describing and assessing the initiativeʼs institutional design, and the lessons learned from the overall evaluation.