Definition
Collaborative governance is a process through which multiple stakeholders mutually engage and negotiate values, meaning, and resources to address problems or carry out a public purpose that could not be achieved by individual actors alone. It is a collective action process that enables commitment, coordination, and cooperation among elites and nontraditional political actors, such as citizens and marginalized groups. It is grounded on different opinions, consensus building, and social learning in contexts where power is often asymmetrical. It does not entail harmonization of interests, homogeneity of values, or the elimination of disagreements among diverse participants, and it is opposed to collusion, capture, and cooptation.
This conceptualization builds on the World Development Report’s (World Bank 2017, p. 3) definition of governance: “the process through which state and non-state actors interact to design and implement policies within a given set of formal and informal...
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Further Reading
Amsler, L. B. (2016). Collaborative governance: Integrating management, politics and law. Public Administration Review, 76(5), 700–711. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12605.
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Schommer, P.C., Guerzovich, F. (2023). Collaborative Governance. In: List, R.A., Anheier, H.K., Toepler, S. (eds) International Encyclopedia of Civil Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99675-2_9519-1
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