Seeing no evil? Social vulnerabilities, collective inference, and organizational divergence.
This article examines the relationship between social vulnerabilities and the attention paid to them by local governments. Drawing from collective action and cognitive theories, we conceptualize planning as an organization-level inference process of selecting strategies to minimize gaps between expe...
| Published in: | Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory Vol. 36; no. 2; pp. 205 - 219 |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Apr2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=193631224&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 193631224 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 10531858 172N jtl: Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory issn: 10531858 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Apr2026 vid: 36 iid: 2 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 193631224 10.1093/jopart/muaf034 ppf: 205 ppct: 14 formats: tig: atl: Seeing no evil? Social vulnerabilities, collective inference, and organizational divergence. aug: au: Deslatte, Aaron Stokan, Eric Chung, Juwon affil: Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Bloomington, 1315 E. Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, United States Department of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, 427 Public Policy Building, Baltimore, MD 21250, United States su: Institutional cooperation Urban planning Institutional environment Bayesian analysis Hazards Inferential statistics Risk management in business sug: subj: Institutional cooperation Urban planning Land Subdivision Administration of Urban Planning and Community and Rural Development Institutional environment Bayesian analysis Hazards Inferential statistics Risk management in business keyword: active inference collective action theory copyrightHolder:Public Management Research Association copyrightYear:2026 inLanguage:en local government publisher:Oxford University Press sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf034 social vulnerability active inference collective action theory copyrightHolder:Public Management Research Association copyrightYear:2026 inLanguage:en local government publisher:Oxford University Press sameAs:https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaf034 social vulnerability ab: This article examines the relationship between social vulnerabilities and the attention paid to them by local governments. Drawing from collective action and cognitive theories, we conceptualize planning as an organization-level inference process of selecting strategies to minimize gaps between expected and desired futures. Responding to public administration scholars who have called for advancing theories of managing risks, we examine whether local planning processes are responsive to community disadvantages and how the administrative arrangements and coordination efforts of local governments influence this sensitivity. In doing so, we highlight a phenomenon labeled organizational divergence , in which a collective's perceived community disadvantages differ from reality. Examining climate action, economic development and sustainability plans, combined with survey and spatial data on environmental burdens for 462 municipal governments, we find evidence, using a multiphase Bayesian analytic strategy, that institutional designs which empower professional city managers increase the probability cities will engage in broader types of planning but decrease the odds they will prioritize social vulnerabilities. However, these cities are more likely to minimize divergence relative to mobility and water-related vulnerabilities. Conversely, greater functional coordination across governmental units increases the probability of prioritizing vulnerabilities in planning but also increases organizational divergence. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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