1 Introduction

Quasi-governmental organizations (QGOs) represent an important, yet often underappreciated, subset of what is traditionally conceived of as “government”. QGOs are characterized by some combination of attributes commonly associated with the public (which this study treats here as equivalent to government) and private sectors, and for-profit and not-for-profit modes of operation (a diagram of this is in Supplementary Information). Because this mix of characteristics blurs conventional views of what constitutes government, QGOs “hide in plain sight” in the governance landscape. Even among experts, the specific nature, function, and capabilities of these entities is often poorly or vaguely understood (Roberts and Schmid 2022). As this article will highlight, QGOs constitute solutions in overcoming the politicization and difficulty of achieving multi-level and sectoral stakeholder coordination barriers to effective climate adaptation governance.

Understanding the possibilities and limitations of QGOs is relevant for climate adaptation governance for two key reasons. First, the climate adaptation governance field is already becoming populated by growing numbers of quasi- and non-governmental organizations. Climate change induced risk affects both public and private stakeholders, at local, regional, national, and international levels. A significant literature has developed discussing how these groups may efficiently and effectively meet this multi-sectoral and level challenge. With the 2015 Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), nations committed to a system of governance that emphasizes bottom-up, multi-level climatic efforts to a greater extent than the top-down approach advocated in the earlier Kyoto Agreement (Keohane and Oppenheimer 2016; Castro 2020). Consistent with this polycentric perspective, greater attention has been given to and has emerged from the role played by sub-national public and private actors (Stokes and Breetz 2020).

Indeed, decentralized and experimental forms of organization for climate adaptation have taken hold, mixing modes of governance (hierarchies, markets, networks) in different permutations, e.g. public-private partnerships (between hierarchies and markets), co-management (hierarchies-networks), private-private (markets-networks). These forms have emerged not only within nations, but also between them, for instance as transnational municipal networks and international public-private partnerships (Schoenefeld et al. 2022). This has lent credence to theoretical predictions that countries’ climate adaptation governance would grow increasingly towards one composed of many formally independent groups making decisions (Ostrom 2010).

The Ostrom framework has been often used in environmental and climatic studies, but this study chooses to focus here on a different literature, the MLG framework, because it is more central to understanding the interaction between stakeholders in climate adaptation governance (Heinen et al. 2022; Partelow et al. 2020). In the context of climate adaptation, multi-level and multi-sectoral institutional actors have been the focus of attention in multilevel governance (MLG) framework analyses (Corfee-Morlot et al. 2011; Gupta 2007; Heinen et al. 2022; Hooghe and Marks 2003). The MLG concept can be defined as a “pluralistic and highly dispersed policymaking milieu where multiple actors participate at various political levels…[and] are mutually dependent through intertwined cross-level decision-making activities.” (Stephenson 2013; Ishtiaque 2021: 173). MLG has been used to understand how these interactions have advanced recent adaptation efforts in and across different nations (Adriázola et al. 2018; Barichella 2023).

The second rationale for focusing on QGOs is that they have the potential to help overcome coordination and politicization challenges that are known to bedevil climate adaptation governance efforts. The difficulty of coordinating numerous multilevel actors can inhibit effective adaptation outcomes. Barriers include the degree of fragmentation and complexity of the system, differing stakeholder interests, diverging climatic and non-climatic stakeholders’ goals, reactivity (as opposed to proactivity) to climatic change, lack of access to information and funding, and the inability to maintain stable and long-term commitments to planning and implementation (Shi 2019; Clar and Steurer 2019; Biermann et al. 2020; Fünfgeld et al. 2023).

The latter barrier has reflected the politicization of climate adaptation in the U.S., which has been characterized by conflict between interest groups from the local to national level, as well as the (albeit temporary) withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement at the international level (Koslov 2019; Rasmussen et al. 2021). Domestically, the consequences of politicization have included the reversal of climate mandates, termination of programs and organizations, and a general instability in U.S. governance efforts over time (Konisky 2020; Mildenberger 2021).

To counter the effects of politicization and difficulty of achieving multi-level or sectoral stakeholder coordination barriers, scholars have recommended e.g. improving access to accurate forward and backward-looking scientific information (such as risk projections); developing broad public support regarding the need for efficient and equitable action; improving interactions between multilevel actors and policy entrepreneurs that are strongly engaged, informed, and trusted; and tying climatic goals to non-climatic goals– recommendations that reflect those posited by the multilevel literature on barriers (Bergquist et al. 2020; Fünfgeld et al. 2023). These recommendations have been generally discussed within the context of conventional governmental and private sector organizations, or new combinations thereof, such as partnerships or networks. Virtually no work however has discussed the role that QGOs already play in dealing with non-climatic governance challenges, and how they might be used in the future for climatic purposes. By extension, the variation that exists in QGO design across different QGO categories has not been investigated as a means to overcome climatic adaptation barriers.

This paper therefore suggests that quasi-governmental organizations (QGOs) are a potential solution in overcoming two important MLG climate adaptation governance barriers, namely politicization and multi-level and multi-stakeholder coordination. An ongoing, but limited, literature focuses on U.S. QGOs operating outside of the climate or environmental domains. This article’s research objectives are to understand (i) what role U.S. QGOs have played already, and (ii) how they might help to reduce barriers to climate change adaptation policies in the United States. These objectives are important for two reasons. Firstly, increasing numbers of quasi- and non-governmental organizations are populating the climate adaptation sector, where governance barriers to effective planning and implementation include politicization and difficulty of achieving multi-level or sectoral stakeholder coordination. Secondly, U.S. QGOs were traditionally created to overcome these barriers in non-climate change or environmental fields.

To accomplish these objectives, this study examines six QGO case studies, operating in a variety of fields (not limited to the environment and climate change), at the sub-national U.S. level. This paper’s analysis does not aim to show what climate adaptation work current QGOs are doing or have done. Instead, it serves to show examples of governance design that could be useful for future QGOs to overcome the above climate adaptation barriers. This paper conceptualizes QGOs as organizations that have some formal legal relation to government, and blend public and private sectors characteristics and for-profit and not-for-profit modes of operation. This hybridity gives QGOs measures of administrative and financial independence from political influence and enables multi-level and multi-sectoral stakeholder interactions to potentially take place within a single organization. This may occur for instance through the use of unconventional monetary resources (e.g. gifts, donations and operational fees), structural characteristics (e.g. multimember, appointed, boards of directors, with staggered and extended term lengths), and sometimes large and rare combinations of members (from both the public and private sectors).

This article’s analysis involves evaluating a selection of these characteristics across six case studies. No authoritative listing is available in the literature of all the characteristics that define independence from politicization and allow stakeholder interactions. Therefore, this study selects seven commonly noted ones related to politicization, which are detailed below at the start of the case study analysis, plus board composition as a marker of multi-level and sectoral stakeholder coordination within the QGO leadership. In addition to these eight characteristics, this paper draws more broadly on insights from the QGOs’ history and context to highlight how well-designed QGOs can strengthen effective action by overcoming these two barriers.

This study’s analysis serves to identify key QGO design elements that scholars in climate adaptation may find useful to situate in future studies and discussions of governance. By illuminating the possibilities of QGOs for overcoming politicization and difficulty of achieving multi-level or sectoral stakeholder coordination barriers in non-climatic domains, this paper opens new avenues for considering their application to such challenges in the climate adaptation sphere. This study is based on a limited number of cases, so it avoids broad claims. However, the bridge this study provides here between the QGO and climate adaptation literatures will, hopefully, allow future, large-sample, studies to further map out the governance characteristics of QGOs and their applicability to the climate adaptation domain.

2 Quasi-governmental organizations

2.1 Conceptualization

Defining quasi-governmental organizations has proved to be an elusive task. Kosar (2011: 2) described quasi-government organizations as “entities that have some legal relation or association, however tenuous, to government; or to the terrain that putatively exists between the governmental and private sectors”. Koppell (2006: 12) defines (in the context of federal government) a hybrid as “an entity created by the federal government (either by act of Congress or executive action) to address a specific public policy purpose. It is owned in whole or part by private individuals or corporations and/or generates revenue to cover its operating costs”. Mead and Warren (2016) propose a gamut of characteristics that are typically associated with the public and private sectors, e.g. in terms of legislation (the private sector follows laws while the public sector creates them), ownership (private organizations are privately owned, while the public ones are “owned by the people”), mission accountability (the public sector reflects majoritarian values, while private institutions can reflect advocacy, individual expression, civic engagement), etc. These and other similar definitions make light of the continual difficulty scholars have had in unequivocally defining these organizations. For this study’s purposes, this paper proposes the following one: QGOs are organizations that have some formal legal relation to government and exhibit some combination of attributes commonly associated with the public and private sectors, and for-profit and not-for-profit modes of operation.

While the above definitions appear relatively broad, further precision has been hard to achieve. Part of the problem rests on how to define each underlying term (e.g. “public”) without blurring it in the process (e.g. private sector non-profits, as defined by the IRS, provide public goods like education, safety, and charity). Another is that of the confusion associated with inconsistent nomenclature for quasi-governmental organizations. The 2021 U.S. Governmental Manual lists the Smithsonian Institution and the Legal Services Corporation as Quasi-Official Agencies for instance. And the latest 2017 Census of Government details that subnational QGOs called special districts may also be termed authorities, boards, corporations, commissions, or even (if particularly closely associated with county or municipal government) subordinate agencies– alternative names that can be applied to non-QGO, temporary, or private forms of organization (USCB 2019). Special districts can be defined as “independent, special-purpose governmental units that exist as separate entities with substantial administrative and fiscal independence from […] local governments.” (USCB 2019: 5). Examples include school, fire protection, or water supply districts. More information about these QGOs is available in Supplementary Information.

2.2 Elements of independence

Beyond the confusing terminology, recognizing which organizations are QGOs can be, on the one hand, facilitated by government classification, e.g. the quasi-official agencies at the federal level, or special districts at the subnational (Selin and Lewis 2018). For other cases where the government doesn’t explicitly provide this classification, they can be identified based on whether they have characteristics that give them a greater degree of independence from the executive branches of government than traditional governmental entities possess. A complete listing of these characteristics has also proved elusive, though authors have suggested some pertinent ones: for-cause provisions that prevent the removal of organizational leadership except under cases of criminal infraction or neglect of duty, a board of directors structure instead of a single agency head, tenures that are specified (i.e. members don’t “serve at the pleasure” of elected officials) and that exceed those of elected officials, staggered terms (to prevent political shakeups of the agency directors), requirements that boards have a balanced proportion of members from different political groups, quorum requirements that enforce majoritarian decision-taking, authority to litigate without going through the executive branch’s Department of Justice, exemption from mandatory executive branch reviews of budget proposals, legislative materials, administrative rules, and congressional testimony, and funding sourced outside of government appropriations (e.g. through fees, donations, bond issuance), etc. (Datla and Revesz 2013; Selin 2015; Selin and Lewis 2018).

QGOs may have some, but not necessarily all, of the above indices of independence at a given time. To consider a few characteristics, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for instance is a federal energy provider QGO founded by Congress that has a nine member board of directors with specified five-year terms, can litigate matters independently, and virtually funds almost all its operations from bond issuance and electricity sales (as opposed to government appropriations). However, TVA has no removal protection for its board members, no board membership partisan balance requirements, and no authority to bypass congressional review of its legislative proposals, budget submissions, and congressional testimony. Independence indices may combine in different ways for different forms of QGOs, although it is unclear whether there is a pattern (Datla and Revesz 2013; Richardson 2019).

Scholars have suggested a variety of rationales to explain why elected officials would endow a QGO with elements of political or financial independence. Some suggest that they are used as instruments to overcome limitations that the executive may place on monetary borrowing by pure governmental organizations (often invoked in the case of New York state quasi-government), institutionalize coordination and agreements between separate governmental entities (like bi-state agencies), establish an organization with characteristics associated with businesses (which may be perceived, as compared to bureaucracies, to be more lean and efficient), or reduce the politicization of a policy function (Koppell 2006: 6; Kosar 2011; Mead and Warren 2016; Roberts and Schmid 2022).

Reducing political and financial control over these institutions however is synonymous with saying that their democratic accountability to elected officials, and by extension voters, is lessened. Explaining why QGOs may be endowed with varying permutations of political and financial independence characteristics presumably depends on the specific socio-political context and evolution of the organization in question (Doig 1993; Peters 2018). Perceptions of excessive independence of certain QGOs at points in time have led to efforts to reduce it by increasing oversight and accountability mechanisms (Mitchell 1992). Nevertheless, despite some perceptions to the contrary, quasi-governmental organizations are not immune to being terminated, merged into another organization, or having their freedoms curtailed through legislation (Kosar 2011).

Despite the uncertainty about which organizations exactly qualify as QGOs, and about how numerous they are, scholarly work has tried to create taxonomies of QGOs by situating them along a kind of “linear” spectrum between pure governmental and pure private sector organizations; while acknowledging that the blurring between public, private, for-profit, and non-profit makes this approach complex at best (Greve et al. 1999; Koppell 2006; Kosar 2011; Mead and Warren 2016). In perhaps the most developed effort to date (which happens to apply to federal QGOs), Kosar (2011) proposes the following listing, ranging from closest to the government to most private-like: quasi-official agencies, government-sponsored enterprises, federally-funded research and development centers, agency-related nonprofits, venture capital funds, congressionally chartered nonprofits, and instrumentalities of indeterminate character. Another similar categorization procedure seeks to place QGOs into four discrete spectrum categories: governmental, quasi governmental, quasi nongovernmental, and private; although this is more frequently used for discussions of QGOs in other nations, where the meaning of quasi-government may be different depending on each nation’s administrative structure (Kosar 2011).

2.3 QGOs in multi-level governance

It is worth noting that QGOs are part of a generally fragmented U.S. governance. Substate governmental entities (counties, townships, cities) represent 99% of all government in the nation, though this fragmentation varies across different states as a function of legislative laws in place, administrative traditions, and local-level experimentation (Peters 2018; Goodman 2019; OECD 2019). And in the shadow of government, at the federal level alone, there are potentially more than two hundred QGOs; while at the sub-national level, the number of special districts alone are estimated at more than thirty-eight thousand, or roughly 43% of all local government (USCB 2019). Estimates of other quasi-governmental entities are difficult to come by, though likely are overshadowed by the number of special districts.

The absence of a comprehensive database of all QGOs, and particularly of those that undertake climate change efforts, impedes a clear understanding of the work that these types of organizations have completed to date. Generally, it appears the use of U.S. quasi-governmental organizations for climate adaptation efforts has been limited to date. At the local level, various quasi-governmental special districts (e.g. in charge of water management, land conservation, energy provision) have begun to engage in climate adaptation discussions, planning, and funding– notably in collaboration with other municipal and regional actors (Bennett and Grannis 2017). These efforts have remained sparse however, with funding being a particularly limiting factor (CSDA 2022). Interestingly, these efforts have emerged in states like California or Washington, with populations and policies that are already supportive of climate change work; as well as in Florida where this support has been more uneven or absent.

QGOs specifically dedicated to climate adaptation or mitigation have been an even rarer occurrence, though not entirely absent. Within the last decade or so, states within the Northeast U.S. in particular, and among some municipalities (NYC, Washington DC), have created a number of “green banks”, i.e. entities that look to finance, and help catalyze private investment in, both mitigation and adaptation measures (CGC 2023). Examples include the Connecticut Green Bank, or Hawaii Green Infrastructure Authority. On the whole, investment by U.S. green banks since 2011 has reached roughly $2 billion (or $7 billion, including private sector co-investment)– though this appears to have mostly been applied to mitigation measures. On the heels of this quasi-governmental climate investment, proposals for the creation of a federal green bank have also arisen, yet without success to date (Rives 2021).

3 Methods

This study is based on a set of six cases– six because each one illustrates one of the six broad categories of QGOs that have been identified in the literature, i.e. subordinate agencies and areas, special districts, public utilities, public corporations, not-for-profit corporations, and non-profits (Kosar 2011; Mead and Warren 2016; USCB 2019). Within each category, this study chose the particular cases to study by optimizing for three criteria: (i) variation in QGO independence characteristics across the whole set (e.g. if a nonprofit and a public corporation showed few differences, another example of one or the other was searched for), (ii) prominence of the organization (more information is typically available for well-known cases, e.g. the PANYNJ), and (iii) whether they operate in a climatic or environmental field. For the first criterion, variation was a goal of this paper, to illustrate what possible designs exist in the QGO sphere. The QGO literature also sometimes makes mention of “typical” governance characteristics associated with a category (McNabb 2016; USCB 2019). When that was the case, this paper picked a QGO typical of its category. When it wasn’t the case, this study used the second and third criteria of the optimization search to pick a QGO. This latter process is subjective, but sidesteps the current impediments to other approaches that would require systematic and comprehensive classifications of QGOs nation-wide. Unfortunately, this large-scale classification has not yet been attempted in the literature, would involve choices that are still debated among QGO scholars, and consists in a difficult process of data and historical information gathering. Due to these difficulties, this study restricted the dataset to one case study per commonly-noted QGO category.

For each of the six cases, this paper chooses to review eight characteristics: seven common characteristics that are believed to increase QGOs’ administrative and financial independence; plus an eighth characteristic that may enhance QGOs’ multi-level and sectoral stakeholder coordination (Selin 2015). These characteristics are (i) the number of board of directors members governing the organization, (ii) whether the members are elected or appointed to the board, (iii) the members’ appointment or election term lengths, vi) whether the members’ terms are staggered, v) what conditions exist for the members’ removal from the board, vi) the number of members needed to constitute a quorum and vote to push through an action, vii) what financial resources are available to the organization for its survival, and viii) the composition of the board of directors, in terms of public and private sector members. This study used original case study material (QGO founding legislations, bylaws) as well as secondary sources (prior research, external reports, QGO website information) to collect the data on these eight characteristics.

This paper also collected data on the historical context of the six QGOs’ formation that pertain directly to the above eight characteristics; and obtained information about what climate adaptation or mitigation activity the climate and environmental QGOs have conducted, when available. For both the historical context and climate change activity, this study manually collected available information from primary and secondary sources: the QGOs’ own websites, academic research, and external reports. Using the above data, this study assessed the eight characteristics and the cases’ history and climate change activity. This approach follows the example of other survey literature on governance institutions (e.g. Mildenberger 2021).

4 Results– six sub-national QGO designs

In Supplementary Information this paper provides general information on the categories of QGOs discussed in this article. In the following, this study presents a synopsis of six QGO case studies (in Table 1), focusing on eight governance characteristics indicative of independence from politicization and capacity to coordinate stakeholders (an expanded description is also available in SI). As mentioned earlier, the cases were chosen on the basis of multiple criteria and more broadly illustrate each of the six categories of QGOs highlighted in the literature. To illustrate more fully the evolution of these QGOs– which might serve as a guide for future climate organizations– this section also highlights some of the historical context of their formation that bears most directly on the eight governance elements. In addition, this section provides some information about what climate adaptation or mitigation activity the climate and environmental QGOs have conducted, if available. The following results aim to highlight examples of governance design (i.e. combinations of the eight characteristics) that could be useful for future QGOs in overcoming the (i) politicization and (ii) difficulty of achieving multi-level or sectoral stakeholder policy coordination climate adaptation barriers.

This study avoids broad claims– these characteristics enable, but do not guarantee, QGOs’ ability to overcome these barriers. In some ways, QGOs are linked to or controlled by politicians, e.g. the latter can terminate the former. Below, this section notes instances in which some of the cases became politicized, or in which politicians and QGO members have interacted in ways that cast a doubt on QGOs’ impartiality and independence. More broadly, QGOs are not perfect. As mentioned in Sect. 2.2, QGOs have on occasion committed improprieties, i.e. illegal or morally questionable behavior, that likely emerged as a result of their independence. Describing these instances is beyond the purview of this article.

Table 1 Summary table of eight independence criteria for the six QGO cases
Full size table

4.1 Climate QGOs

4.1.1 New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation

The New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation (NYCEEC) is an example of a not-for-profit corporation, or “local authority”. Its aim is that of “lessening the burdens of government and protecting the public interest by implementing the greenhouse gas reduction plans of The City of New York, including… the provision of funding and financing to property owners… the installation of renewable energy systems…, the development and aggregation of demand for such funding and financing through education, marketing, and outreach efforts, the coordination and development of related workforce development activities, and the promotion of innovative energy initiatives” (NYSOAG 2017). Because of these activities, the NYCEEC is also frequently referred to as a green bank.

More specifically, the NYCEEC focuses on helping NYC reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 80% by 2050. Both with its own funds and in partnership with other groups, the NYCEEC provides a variety of instruments to do this, e.g. mortgage and equipment loans, energy service agreements, and credit enhancements. From its energy efficiency and clean energy financing activities, it estimates it has (NYCEEC 2022): reduced CO2 emissions by 1 million metric ton, increased the energy efficiency of 356 buildings by 25.5 million MMBtus, and invested 433$ million for clean energy projects (counting co-funders’ capital). The NYCEEC’s projects have also looked to achieve non-climatic goals in conducting this work. Increasingly, it has focused on providing financing for low and moderate-income households (approximately 85% of projects concern this demography). And it has also helped create an estimated 4,709 jobs in the process.

It is important to note that the NYCEEC was founded in 2010 as part of a broader set of actions facilitated by Mayor Bloomberg’s widely trusted climate policy entrepreneurship to reduce NYC’s climate change risk– e.g. the creation of the NYC Panel on Climate Change, an independent scientific and decision-support advisory body (Hölscher et al. 2020). The NYCEEC is one of the first examples of a green bank; that is, a public organization that provides investment capital to facilitate adaptation and mitigation initiatives. It is, in addition, particularly rare as it operates at a municipal level (EPA 2018). Other foundational green banks were created around that time as well, including e.g. the Connecticut, New York, Hawaii, Vermont Green Banks; though these are all, as the names imply, state-level banks. The NYCEEC is notable in that it was created to support New York City’s Sustainable Energy Program– but was set up so as to have a high degree of latitude in its operations. The Corporation was initially founded as an element of city government; capitalized with federal grant money from the Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) program. However, in 2012, NYCEEC was filed with the IRS as a non-profit public charity; and in 2013, the board members (including Mayor Bloomberg, serving in ex-officio capacity) amended the corporation’s bylaws to make it fully independent of New York City.

From a political perspective, it’s worthwhile noting as well that Bloomberg and the other NYCEEC’s board members’ decision to separate the NYCEEC from NYC’s government in 2012, both administratively as well as financially, was reportedly based on the idea that this would help it to sustain its work indefinitely (Muir and Bose 2020). Indeed, turbulence in other local “green banks” in the U.S. is not unheard of, and may have been a motivating factor, particularly for organizations operating in the politically controversial space of climate change. The Connecticut Green Bank for instance, considered to be among the most independent of these types of institutions, was itself the target of the state government’s diversion of part of its operating funds as the state looked to reduce its budget deficits (Ahn 2017).

4.2 Environmental QGOs

4.2.1 San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission

In the western U.S., the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (SFBCDC) represents an example of a quasi-governmental subordinate agency of the California Natural Resources Agency. The SFBCDC’s mission is to protect and improve natural waterways and lands around the Bay Area, and promote the public’s enjoyment of them; essentially through permitting powers related to individuals or agencies wanting to fill, extract or make substantial changes to water and land structures within its jurisdiction. To do so, it relies on an unusual governance arrangement which essentially approximates the structure of a multi-level compact comprised of members of the federal, state, and local government (Scott 1963, 104); modeled after the Delaware River Basin Commission (created only two years before the SFBCDC, in 1961). The study commission that proposed this governance arrangement also recommended that the commission should “have authority superior to that of private interests, city and county governments, and must be subject only to extraordinary veto by the state and federal governments”, i.e. a high degree of independence granted legally and fiscally (e.g. through taxation and eminent domain).

The SFBCDC has taken steps to integrate climate change adaptation into its broader environmental project planning and implementation. It has worked on developing climate adaptation planning through workshops with Bay Area stakeholders concerning their proposed modifications to the BCDC’s Bay Plan (the BCDC’s guiding policy document), partnerships with academia and research institutes to map out potential sea level rise impacts, and forming an initiative (Bay Adapt) to establish a regional agreement on sea level rise resilience principles and actions. The BCDC also developed an internal Climate Change Program, which consists in a variety of initiatives. Perhaps the most impactful has been carrying out amendments to the Bay Plan. These have included: requirements for carrying out sea-level rise risk assessments, regulations designed to make new projects resilient to mid-century sea-level rise projections, suggestions to give vulnerable species and habitats special consideration for preservation efforts, developing a regional sea-level rise adaptation strategy in conjunction with other multi-level governmental entities in the Bay Area to help protect sensitive ecosystems and shoreline resilience, and encouraging a case-by-case evaluation of each reviewed project’s benefits, resilience, and adaptation capacity while the strategy above is being developed, etc. Recently, the BCDC co-authored a report estimating the cost of a project to protect the Bay Area from sea-level rise at more than $110 billion by 2050– an undertaking the city of San Francisco is currently consulting on and starting to address (Rogers 2023).

More broadly, it is important to point out that the SFBCDC has benefitted from including a representative of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) as a permanent member of its board of directors. This link with the USACE has provided the SFBCDC with federal-level planning and evaluation resources that are perhaps best equipped to provide planning in response to climate change exacerbated sea level rise (Rasmussen et al. 2023). These resources have access to localized ranges of the detailed impacts within alternative coastal risk futures across the U.S.

Finally, this study notes an instance in which the SFBCDC likely became politicized. In the 1990s, the California senator and governor attempted to terminate the BCDC. Although the attempt failed, the BCDC subsequently adopted many changes in response to these politicians’ criticisms, i.e. speeding up the permit application review process, and reforming some of its regulations (Smith and Pendelton 1998).

4.2.2 The Palm Beach Soil & Water Conservation District

The Palm Beach Soil & Water Conservation District is an example of a broader category of organization (Soil and Water Conservation Districts) whose mission involves informing U.S. residents about methods of natural resource protection and land management practices. Perhaps contrary to expectations, the organization has not included climate change concerns in this informational campaign (like other conservation districts in Florida). The Palm Beach case is an example of a quasi-governmental non-profit organization.

Soil and Water Conservation Districts are a rare type of QGO aiming to implement a form of federal-state-municipal governance; directed originally from the federal level. Helms (1990) suggests that the original idea for the Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCD) came from M.L. Wilson, the under-secretary of the USDA in 1935. Wilson viewed the newly-created Soil Conservation Service (of 1935)– which, in the aftermath of considerable soil mismanagement in previous decades, aimed to educate farmers on better soil use techniques through demonstration projects– to be insufficient to deal with the practical financial and technical limitations that farmers would face in applying the SCS’s lessons (Helms 1990: 13). As such, Wilson imagined that something more than education was needed to truly address the problem, and was reportedly inspired by the example of water conservancy districts as a governance and organizational solution (pp. 14). In essence, the envisioned system was one that would be able to deal with soil, as well as water, conservancy through (i) local-level units of government, and (ii) delegation of resources and decision-making to those units– a model he drafted as the Soil Conservation Districts Law. This legislation was passed by Congress in 1937, and it encouraged the creation of these SWCDs at the local state level. Indeed, Florida, as well as forty-seven other U.S. states, also amended their legislations to promote the development of these organizations at sub-state levels. The Palm Beach Soil and Water Conservation District is thus one of many SWCDs existing across the U.S.

4.3 Other QGOs

4.3.1 Knoxville Utilities Board

The Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB) is a public utility aiming to supply a variety of utility services (e.g. electricity, water, gas, wastewater treatment) to the population of Knoxville, Tennessee. Its governance exemplifies a particular model of governmental public utility, i.e. an independent city agency– as opposed to other U.S. public utilities, which often operate as city departments, city-owned corporations, municipal utility districts, or joint powers agencies (Homsy 2020). The KUB aims to provide apolitical management in utility service provision; and also, importantly, emerged from within the engaged and scientifically informed culture diffused by the Tennessee Valley Authority (Neuse 1983; Hamilton 2020).

This paper hasn’t found an example of politicization of the KUB. However, by their own admission, some KUB board members have previously kept close contact with the Knoxville city mayor and council — despite the organization’s original mission to be apolitical. The board members justify this saying “that’s just good politics and good business” (Baer et al. 2001: 25).

4.3.2 Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) is a public authority, in the category of special districts. Its mission is primarily one of overseeing regional transportation infrastructure in the New York and New Jersey port areas; and more specifically, of helping to meet the transportation needs of the two states in terms of accessibility, efficiency, and regional economic development. PANYNJ was thus founded through an interstate compact between the two states.

Members of the PANYNJ have been on occasion politicized. The most recent example is perhaps the so-called 2014 Bridgegate scandal– PANYNJ employees, acting under the political influence of then-NJ governor Christie’s influence, temporary closed highway lanes as political retribution (Zernike 2015). In the 1970s, inappropriate behavior occurred between a port authority commissioner and then-NJ governor, Brendan Byrne — e.g. the governor would fly on PANYNJ transportation for private and public business (Blumenthal 2008). Doig (1993) provides more information about instances of politicization at the PANYNJ.

4.3.3 The Regents of the University of California

The Regents of the University of California (i.e. the university system’s official organizational and directorship name) is an example of a public corporation endowed with a public trust. Its mission is that of administering the system of schools’ endowment, managing land properties owned by the organization, and governing university educational policy in all its facets. Although it was reportedly inspired by the model of the University of Michigan at the time of the U.C. founding (through the California Organic Act of 1868), its governance is relatively unique. The University of Michigan had a board of directors (whose members are also referred to as “Regents”), and a degree of political independence similar to that proposed for the California system (Douglass 2000). Beyond its governance, over time, the U.C. system and its resources have been an important element in informing the Californian public and enabling persistent support for state and substate conservation and climate change measures (Mazmanian et al. 2020).

This paper notes that the U.C. Regents have not always been immune to politicization. In 1970, the board succumbed to a political pressure campaign waged by then-California governor Reagan to start charging tuition to students. Reagan leveraged student unrest and the state’s financial support for the U.C. system to push this policy change through, as a way to gain favor with conservative voters (Nations 2021).

5 Discussion

This study proposes that understanding quasi-governmental organization design characteristics is important in potentially overcoming MLG climate adaptation barriers related to politicization and difficulty of achieving multi-level and sectoral stakeholder coordination. This paper highlighted QGO examples from climate-focused, environmental, and “other” domains. For all these QGOs, it is beyond the scope of this article to suggest here that the QGOs’ founders set these organizations up in order to overcome the climate adaptation barriers mentioned above. The climate work conducted by climate-focused and environmental QGOs is described here to illustrate as much as possible some of the overlap existing between QGOs and climatic concerns (and their application to other environmental goals). Put together, this study proposes that all the cases serve as examples of governance design (i.e. combinations of the eight politicization and coordination characteristics) that could be useful for future QGOs. This paper builds up this argument by comparing the different QGO designs in the following discussion.

Comparing the specifics of the six cases, this study begins by noting that changes in the characteristics of QGO independence do not appear to vary in a systematic way as a function of the legal status or type of QGO– a conclusion other scholars have reached as well, as previously mentioned (Greve et al. 1999; Koppell 2006; Kosar 2011; Mead and Warren 2016). Quasi-governmental organizations, such as subordinate agencies, whose nomenclature would at first suggest a close link with government (i.e. government maintains significant control of the agency) can in reality exhibit measures of independence that even fairly independent organizations (e.g. nonprofits) might not have. Comparing the SFBCDC (a subordinate agency) to the Palm Beach SWCD (a non-profit) for instance, this paper notes that the former has a greater number of appointed individuals on its board of directors (as opposed to elected), these directors have potentially unlimited term lengths (as compared to fixed four-year terms, similar to most elected officials’), and access to a variety of potential funding sources extending from grants, donations, rents, royalties, and public monies (versus only gifts and donations). Likewise, there may also be blurring of characteristics in the other direction– the SWCD is formally organized in a relatively independent non-profit structure yet has board members who are entirely elected by the district members it serves.

There is also flexibility within the QGO governance structure with respect to the coordination of directors. The NYCEEC for instance has a number of board members that is variable, between five and twenty. In addition, the term length for its members may also differ– for ex-officio individuals this is dependent on their office’s specific appointment duration, while for the “elected directors” this is three years (though unlimited reelection is possible). The University of California is also an example of a QGO with some flexibility in terms of the length of its Regents’ tenure. Among its twenty-six members, there are (i) seven ex-officio, like the governor, who have terms determined by usual political cycles (i.e. four years), (ii) eighteen members with long twelve-year appointments (which suggests a much greater degree of freedom from political influence than the ex-officio individuals may have), and (iii) one student regent with a short one-year term.

In terms of stakeholder coordination, the QGO case studies illustrate a variety of different structures to link multilevel and sectoral actors. This ranges from relatively simple organizations like the KUB or the SWCD, that are governed by a few elected or appointed members drawn from a particular district or county (noting that the KUB even excludes public sector officials from appointment); to those like the NYCEEC that have some proportion of elected directors from NYC, in combination with members of city government (the director of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, plus a City employee designated by the mayor); to models that institutionalize intergovernmental governance like the bi-state PANYNJ’s leadership constituted of even distributed groups of appointed commissioners (six from each state); to large and moderately complex groups like the U.C. Regents, which is constituted of ex-officio officials from state government, appointed individuals from any part of the general public, and a stakeholder from the university itself.; to highly multi-sectoral and level QGOs like the SFBCDC led by members of the general public, municipal representatives, an inter-municipal water quality control board, county representatives, various state bodies, and federal agencies.

Explaining why these different QGOs have the specific governance characteristics that they have– for instance, why some particular public or private groups are given one or more seats at the board of directors’ table– would require an in-depth historical analysis that exceeds this paper’s purpose. Nevertheless, it appears that the particular context quasi-government emerges from bears a mark on organizational design. The Palm Beach SWCD emerged from a federal-led initiative to create a localized system (as opposed to the previous top-down approach, which was seen as being ineffectual) to diffuse best practices in agricultural management, with supervisors drawn from the very same district they would seek to help inform. In NYC, concerns that the NYCEEC’s administrative position within City government could hamper its climate work– as a result of changes in mayoral attention towards climate change– led its board to reorganize it as a nonprofit. And the SFBCDC for instance was the product of strong bottom-up entrepreneurialism to get a wide variety of different stakeholders involved in what is inherently a highly multi-jurisdictional problem of better protecting and improving the San Francisco Bay waterways and lands.

Put together, these results suggest that among the examined QGOs, some could be most useful to overcome either the politicization or difficulty of achieving multi-level or sectoral stakeholder coordination climate adaptation barriers, but none are an optimal solution to both at the same time. It may be the case that a QGO that this study has not reviewed here constitutes such a solution, but it is beyond the scope of this article to speculate about what that QGO design would look like.

Some QGOs in this study’s set would be best suited for multi-level and sectoral stakeholder coordination in particular. The SFBCDC is perhaps the best example of this with its board composition consisting of a wide range of actors from the public (from federal to municipal) and private sectors (members of the public). While other QGOs in the set approach the number of board members present in the SFBCDC– twenty-six in the U.C. Regents, or up to 20 in the NYCEEC– no other organization in the set incorporates that kind of variety of decision-makers. On the other hand, other QGO designs have little to no impact in overcoming coordination challenges. A provision dictates that no public officials can be appointed to the KUB’s board for instance– thus strongly limiting coordination with members of public agencies. A similar situation is present for the Palm Beach SWCD, although no provision is explicitly mentioned.

A more complex problem is understanding which of this study’s QGOs designs best overcomes the politicization barrier. As mentioned, political influence is manifested along the various independence characteristics this paper discussed, though it’s not necessarily clear what “net” independence would be incurred from varying combinations of them, for instance if a QGO has unlimited board member terms lengths but member removal conditions are lax (“serving at the pleasure” of a given politician), or if it has access to a wide variety of financing sources but is situated within an organization structure (subordinate agency, for instance) considered less independent. This is an expression of the earlier observation this paper made that QGO independence characteristics do not vary “linearly” with legal status– which the comparison between the SFBCDC and the Palm Beach SWCD exemplified. Nevertheless, some QGOs have a better “net” independence than others. The most obvious example is the U.C. Regents, who have term lengths that are significantly longer than the political cycle, can be removed only under circumstances requiring the vote of the rest of the board, are numerous (twenty-six members) which makes decision-making less contingent on the steering of one individual (especially any of the seven ex-officio officials on the board), and have access to a range of public and private financing for the university. These characteristics afford the Regents independence that is generous on the whole– albeit not as significant as if e.g. there were no ex-officio public officials present on the board, board member terms were unlimited, removal could only occur “for cause”, etc.

More broadly, in terms of the cases’ history and context, this study suggests QGOs can strengthen effective action– either within or outside of the climate change adaptation domain– by depoliticizing informational sources and fostering multi-level and sectoral stakeholder coordination in planning and implementation. The NYCEEC, SFBCDC, KUB, and U.C. Regents have all in some way contributed to or emerged from a broader effort to promote apolitical, accurate, scientific, and coordinated decision-making, within and outside of the climate adaptation sector. These examples speak to the possibilities of QGOs to address necessities for effective governance.

6 Conclusion

The multi-level governance (MLG) framework has been used to understand how stakeholder interactions affect climate adaptation outcomes. Effectiveness of these outcomes is limited, among other factors, by politicization as well as by the difficulty of achieving multi-level and sectoral stakeholder coordination. Scholars have discussed how to overcome these barriers in the context of the private sector, governmental organizations, and new institutional arrangements linking them together. With the signing of the Paris Agreement emphasizing the importance of the bottom-up component of adaptation MLG, finding sub-national organizational solutions to adaptation barriers has been deemed particularly critical.

Despite these concerns, there has been virtually no consideration of the role that quasi-governmental organizations (QGOs) may play in future U.S. climate adaptation MLG at the federal and sub-national levels. The quasi-governmental form of organization has been traditionally employed as a solution to obstacles of achieving multi-level and sectoral stakeholder policy coordination and politicization in non-climatic domains. Quasi-governmentality emerges from an organization’s ability to embody for-profit and not-for-profit modes of operation and public and private sector characteristics. QGOs thus incorporate varying blends of these elements and, depending on the combination, possess certain measures of political and financial independence absent in traditional governmental agencies.

Through an analysis of six QGO case studies, operating in climatic and non-climatic fields, this study highlights different modalities of administrative and financial independence expressed in U.S. sub-national governance. Some of these QGOs exemplify relatively unique governance models, while others are indicative of much more predominant functional forms present throughout the U.S. Most importantly, this paper suggests that QGOs constitute an overlooked means to overcome the difficulty of achieving multi-level or sectoral stakeholder coordination and politicization barriers in climate adaptation MLG. Specifically, some QGOs are particularly well adapted to clearing one or the other hurdle; while some reduce both simultaneously, but to a lesser extent. Using a QGO to deal with adaptation barriers therefore requires considering which of these situations is more desirable in addressing a locality’s particular needs and governance context.

More generally, this paper’s cases illustrate that well designed QGOs can overcome these governance barriers, by filling a need for e.g. effective policy entrepreneurship, providing apolitical and trusted scientific information, enabling public support on issues requiring efficient and equitable action. Some of the cases exemplify this with regard to climate adaptation, while others do so in the context of environmental or other domains.

This paper’s results constitute the first guide to U.S. quasi-governmental organization design and its importance for overcoming climate adaptation institutional obstacles– thus bridging the divide between the literatures on these topics. In addition, this article responds to calls from the global governance literature to place more attention on the critical role that sub-national organizations play in nations’ efforts to carry out their Paris Agreement goals. This paper is based on and constrained by a limited number of cases– for this reason, this study avoids broad claims on the potential of QGOs in climate adaptation governance. This limitation emerges from a lack of systematic and comprehensive data on these organizations; and of research on their context, history, and decision-making. For that reason, it is beyond this article’s scope to i) suggest that for any of the six QGO cases, founders set up these organizations in order to overcome climate adaptation barriers, and ii) speculate about what an “optimal” QGO design to overcome them would look like. Instead, this paper therefore provides a foundation for scholars to build on to assess the U.S.’ projected institutional capacity to address climate adaptation planning and implementation, and explore the potential role for QGOs to add to this capacity in particular situations.