Steering Social Outcomes in America's Energy Heartland: State and Private Meta-Governance in the Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania

This article argues that analysis of meta-governance purely in terms of the actions of the state can obscure the significant, but less apparent, ways in which private actors may influence the choices and interactions of individuals within various modes of governance coordination. We investigate the networked governance of affordable housing impacts in the Marcellus Shale gas region of the United States to empirically illuminate the dynamics of state and private meta-governance. Drawing on a qualitative research approach, we identify public authorities as exercising what seems to be predominant responsibility for meta-governance, with state government having strong influence over the structure and resourcing of a networked governance response, and county government directly facilitating the collaborative engagement of actors at the local level. Although private oil and gas companies demonstrate little involvement in network governance, the presence of private meta-governance in the alternative form of the design of market governance is shown to have a number of countervailing implications for the form and function of network governance. We suggest that expansion of the concept of framing to account for strategies that structure how key governance actors understand a particular problem provides valuable insights for understanding private meta-governance in relation to network governance.