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This chapter provides background information on tribal governments and on the book's methods of analysis. The book examines tribal governments in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and the Upper Plains from the 1980s into the 2000s. The book combines quantitative and qualitative analyses, using previously unexplored records of tribal, federal, state, and local governments. Also, the chapter examines the development of American Indian leaders’ strategies from the late 19^th century to present. This chapter provides a context for understanding how Indian leaders discovered and refined tactics for political resilience. Over time, a militarily subjugated people pushed slowly to redefine their relationship with powerholders.

This chapter considers tribal-local relations and illustrates the importance of expertise for tribes' victories in local politics. The chapter also exposes the interplay of race, land, and power in tribes’ external relations. These findings illustrate important limitations: in certain contexts with pronounced racial hostility, other actors may wage high-cost fights than undermine—but do not entirely erase—expertise-based strategies. To evaluate expertise's effects in local politics, the chapter examines tribes with varying governments and with varying economies that improve capacities to house, sustain, and reproduce expertise. The chapter finds that tribes’ political strategies hinge on expert calculations: they are extremely selective about county relations and they pick the winning issues.

This chapter examines the ways that American Indian tribal governments confront and change federal Indian policy—specifically, how tribes have discovered and buttressed institutional niches. The chapter explores both short-term and long-term components of tribes’ strategies. Chapter 3 also identifies forces that can alter prospects for utilizing institutional niches. Tribes sought support from institutional niches because those niches allowed them to understand specific problems and solutions; to understand outside interests and to access them; and to access new organizational repertoires. Tribes secured this assistance over time because they gained political insiders’ insights; they won recognition as important collaborators; and they nudged forward regulations that were more favorable, flexible, and simple.

This chapter documents tribal-state interactions: in particular, the role of expertise in tribal successes in state politics. Also, the chapter examines the broader social and political environments in which tribal governments are situated and traces the consequences that those contexts bring for state politics. This chapter shows when tribal governments have more help from the federal government for cultivating skills in a given policy area or for governance structures, they do better in state interactions. Furthermore, American Indian state legislators serve tribal interests in ways that are based on accumulating expertise. But in states where the potential for Indian-white conflict is high, tribal advocates cannot completely undo a marked neglect of their concerns.

This chapter reviews the puzzle of American Indian tribal governments' political successes. Institutional niches in the federal government provide tribes with subtle outside help with cultivating expertise. Expertise then matters because it provides building blocks for future political victories—building blocks that are easily overlooked by scholars. Institutional niches help marginalized groups with developing technical policy expertise, provide opportunities to get to know the external environment, and offer exposure to a variety of strategies and organizational forms. Groups can maintain and improve a niche's support by seeking modest yet serial adjustments in their access to officials, in overall policy frameworks, and in the specific technical procedures of federal agencies. While institutional niches may seem unremarkable in a single snapshot, their effects accumulate into impressive outcomes with wide-ranging consequences. Variegated institutions such as federalism matter because they enable quiet successes.

This chapter considers the particular types of expertise that tribes have built as a result. Specifically, the chapter details how knowledge changes organizations and how it alters political strategies. When tribes develop specialized knowledge about problems, problem-solving routines, and environments, they are better positioned to envision and implement new strategies on their own. This chapter examines four critical expertise-centered behaviors. Two expertise-centered behaviors are manifestations of analytic capacity: diagnosing and anticipating. Two others are manifestations of capacity for action: initiating and partnering. Greater expertise increases all four behaviors. This chapter is of particular interest to scholars of public management and administration.

This chapter concludes the analysis and summarizes the argument. The chapter also suggests broader implications and extensions for other scholarship. Tribal governments have managed federal institutional niches, used them to accrue expertise, and nudged those niches towards even more hospitable frameworks. Thus, they have built independent expert organizations that can open up new political opportunities. These findings redirect our attention to lower-profile arenas, with the realization that certain actors have compelling reasons to focus their efforts there. The findings spotlight the influence of variegated institutional environments, not simply as settings of multiple veto opportunities, but also as venues for nuanced positive action. This book makes the case for more actor-centered institutionalism: to think more about agency in agenda-setting. Finally, the chapter engages timely policy debates about federalism, American Indian tribal governments, and Indian gaming.

This chapter examines water-related issues faced by contemporary American Indian tribes. Tribes face different circumstances compared to other ethnic and racial groups in the US, and this affects tribal water governance. Tribes have a unique political (and legal) relationship with the federal government; they are sovereign within a framework of other sovereigns who often compete with one another. The chapter considers three water challenges that many tribes face in detail: water rights and administration, energy and water, and water quality governance. It concludes with suggestions on an approach to twenty-first-century federal policy on tribal water matters.