In this blog post for The Intersector Project, researchers Kirk Emerson and Tina Nabatchi explore collaborative governance in light of current partisan polarization: “News coverage and social media posts may be disheartening, suggesting polarized politics, incivility, and failure to address problems; however, evidence of our ability to collaborate — to work together across boundaries to solve problems and strive for the common good — is bountiful. … Cross-boundary collaboration and collaborative governance are becoming the tools of choice for public problem-solvers in the 21st century. Of course, collaboration and collaborative governance are not easy, and they are not now (nor will they ever be) panaceas. Nevertheless, in many cases, collaborative approaches are changing the way public work gets done. Simply put: The business of governing has become everyone’s business.“
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “Traditional governance, even when it is functioning effectively and fairly, often produces clear winners and clear losers, leaving smoldering resentments that flare up whenever there is a shift in the balance of power. Over the past two and…
“Initially, governance networks were intended as tools for making public governance more effective. Yet, scholars have argued that governance networks also have the potential to democratize public governance. This article provides an overview of theoretical arguments pertaining to the democratizing impact of governance networks. It…
“Research on open strategy suggests that shared knowledge through collaboration can generate co‐created value. We explore this idea by assessing it as a predictor of absorptive capacity (ACAP) in cross‐sector partnerships in pursuit of social innovation. The findings of our study indicate that aspects of…
“Traditionally, statutory regulation was viewed as the primary mechanism for achieving environmental and social change. Its uniform system and top down implementation was expected to engineer social and environmental change at every location. However, this vision never constituted an entirely satisfactory empirical account of the…
“The literature indicates that social capital plays a crucial role in facilitating collective action in collaborative governance. Despite this important role, the extant literature has not systematically conceptualized what forms of social capital exist in the context of collaborative activities and when and where such…
“This chapter can be found in Innovations in Public Leadership Development. ‘This is the best single-source guide to leadership development in the public sector. It offers a wealth of advice for teachers, students, trainers, human resource officers, and established leaders. The all-original chapters include discussions…
“Defined as the process of establishing, steering, facilitating, operating, and monitoring cross-sectoral organizational arrangements to address public policy problems, collaborative governance has emerged as an institutional form valued by both professional and research audiences across a growing range of policy arenas. Practice has preceded theory,…
“Multi-level and collaborative governance are multifaceted concepts grounded in several academic disciplines, government orientations, and community-level experiences. This diverse foundation provides a rich and complex canvass for constructing and operationalizing ‘governance’. The fluid and organic definition of governance contributes to the diversified origins of the…
“We examine the adaptability of collaborative governance regimes associated with publicly managed ecosystems as they move from direction-setting to implementation phases. This is an under-researched topic and is particularly relevant given the growth of collaborative environmental governance efforts around the globe. Through an in-depth analysis…
“Collaboration has emerged as a central concept in public policy circles in Australia and a panacea to the complex challenges facing Australia. But is this really the cure-all it seems to be? In this edited collection we present scholarly and practitioner perspectives on the drivers,…