The Vancouver Agreement: A Case Study

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Inter-organizational relationship in the Vancouver Agreement

The Vancouver Agreement (VA) is a multi-government agreement for urban development in the City of Vancouver, which particularly focus on Downtown Eastside (DTES) area (Graham 2010, p.1). DTES is an area that is socially dangerous due to high rate of drug and crime cases (p.1). This area had faced many policies failure in term of urban development and had been politically neglected (p.3). The VA is used to provide better services and develop the area of DTES by collaborating three levels of government; the federal government of Canada, the provincial government of British Columbia and the municipal government of Vancouver (p.1). Moreover, through the VA, the governments build partnership
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It means that in achieving their purposes, the VA build partnership with government and non-government organizations. So, if we look the VA as a framework of collaborating governance, we need to assess the integration and autonomy from the inside (internal) and outside (external) the structure of the VA.

In the external of the VA’s structure, each member (each level of governments and non-government organization) has autonomy in making decision related to their policies or projects (legal and operational autonomy). According to Thynne and Wettenhall (2004, p. 618), autonomy depends on the allocation and the exercise of the power. Since the VA’s structure could not exercise coercive power externally to the governments and non-governments involved, these organizations can act without reference from the VA’s structure. The three levels of government may be binded to cooperate in developing the city of Vancouver in the VA, but there is no binding in term of how they should make their policies inside of their organization. As a result, every organization has their own policies or projects related to the urban development in the Vancouver, but not all of them will be integrated into the
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Although the VA has tried to integrate the community organizations, the way the community is integrated into the VA is considered to be not optimal. There are critics about the need for a formal policy advisory role for community sector, community capacity building, more transparency, and faster access within the government system (Graham 2010, p.9). Consequently, it can be said that the degree of integration in the external structure of the VA is moderate. The VA can highly integrate the three levels of government but could not highly integrate the community

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