Collaborative Governance: A New Paradigm Shift

Abstract

In this 21st century, collaborative governance has got great attention to resolve socio-economic problems and assure sustainable development goals. It is a new form of governance in which multi-stakeholders, such as the public agencies, private sectors, civil society organizations and international public organizations are working together build trust in government, resolve societal challenges, assure economic prosperity and development, and bring institutional transformation. This book chapter has tried to describe the theoretical and conceptual perspectives of collaborative governance. As it has described in this volume, the author believed that giving some insights on the collaborative governance; conceptual understanding, its nexus with development, and measurement parameters for checking its effectiveness, could produce a theoretical and conceptual asset for the other authors who want to make an in-depth investigation on the areas of governance.

Keywords: Collaboration, collaborative governance, development, governance, stakeholders

Collaborative Governance

Collaborative Governance: A New Paradigm Shift

“No organization of government possesses sufficient authority, resources, and knowledge to effect the enactment and achievement of policy intentions. Instead, policies require the concerted efforts of multiple actors, all possessing significant capabilities but each dependent on multiple others to solidify policy intention and convert it into action. Indeed, it is often difficult for any one actor, or group of actors, to manage, or manipulate the flow of problems and solutions onto the political agenda in the first place.” (Bressers, O’Toole, & Richardson, 1995)

INTRODUCTION

The concept of governance has become very fashionable development agenda over the past several decades in the political science and public administration. The term has been widely used by policy makers, politicians, governance practitioners, international organizations, and other different stakeholders. One of the key characteristics of using a governance lens is the recognition that there is a wide range of actors involved in governance, such as various government organizations, civil society organizations; for example, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community groups and the private sectors (Devas, 2001). McCarney et al. (1995) defined governance as the relationship between civil society and the state, between rulers and ruled; the government and the governed. According to the definition provided by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 1997, governance is the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority in the management of a country’s affairs at all levels. It comprises the mechanisms, processes and institutions, through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences. Aluko (2010) also defines governance as the act or process of governing a nation, state, or legal entity. It is the activity of governing a country, controlling, ruling, managing, regulating, influencing, or directing a place. Governance recognizes that power exists inside and outside the formal authority and institutions of government.

Most formulations of governance recognize government, civil society and the private sector as the key actors. At the local level, these groups can be further specified to include central government, state or provincial government (where applicable), local authorities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs), and the private sector. In the urban context, governance is the sum of many ways; individuals and institutions plan and manage the common affairs of the city (Adegun, 2011). This understanding lens consists of governance as a concept that recognizes the power existence inside and outside the formal authority and institutions of government, and governance emphasizes as a process. Besides, it recognizes that decisions are made based on complex relationships between many actors with different priorities.

It is from this stand point that using a governance lens is essentially about understanding these actors and the relationships between them. It can be considered that collective decision making process and practices can address societal problems through governance (Förster, 2016). In this sense, governance has become collaborative in nature that clearly shows the coordination and network of different stakeholders to resolve the societal problems and bring the transformational paradigm shift from a type of relationship where one side governs the other [that is, the government] to a set of relationships where mutual interaction takes place in order to make desirable choices for the citizens. Now days, it is a collaborative governance and/ or collective action which plays a key role to build trust in the government, assure accountability and transparency, bring quality service delivery to the people, and thereby ensure sustainable development in order to reduce extreme poverty from the landscape of the world. Hence, the implication of this chapter is to provide a conceptual and theoretical understanding on collaborative governance, to highlight the role of deliberate collaborative governance as a reform approach, to show its nexus with sustainable development for academicians, practitioners, college and university students, and for researchers, to describe the role of coordination and collaboration in bringing good urban governance, and finally, to explore some key challenges of collaborative governance facing in the urban areas.

Background

Collaborative governance has received significant attention in recent years. This implies that collaborative governance and its related paradigms, such as administrative conjunction (Fredrickson, 1999), cross-sector collaboration (Bryson et al., 2006; Simo & Bies, 2007), collaborative planning (Healey, 2003; Innes & Booher, 1999; Selin & Chevez, 1995; Tewdwr-Jones & Allmendinger, 1998) and collaborative public management (Agranoff, 2006; Agranoff & McGuire, 2003; Cooper et al., 2006; Leach, 2006) have received considerable attention in urban affairs, public management and environmental management research over the past few decades (cf. Donahue & Zeckhauser, 2011; Gerlak et al., 2013). Over the past 10 to 15 years, a number of alternative models of governance have been proposed: good governance (Leftwich, 1994; Weiss, 2000), multi-level governance (Hix, 1998), partnerships (Ansell, 2000), policy networks (Bogason & Toonen, 1998), interactive governance (Kooiman et al., 2008), and contemporary governance (Magnette, 2003). It has been used to describe a wide range of processes and activities, which in turn can create confusion among academics, policy makers, elected officials, and development practitioners. In this chapter, the author explores conceptualization of collaborative governance and provides this new form of governance as cooperative governance architecture. It also highlights how collaborative governance is important in the governance venue.

The collaborative governance has been emerged as a response to failures of implementation of policies and programs at the community level (Fung & Wright, 2001). Besides, this section of the chapter demonstrates the collaborative governance as a technique of building trust in government and other stakeholders. Some scholars described the definition of collaborative governance in the narrowest perspective, and others defined it in the broadest perspective. In this section, the author, depending upon different literatures, has defined collaborative governance in the broadest vein which is much more beyond than public-private partnership in which both of them are mutually beneficial and include structures, processes, actions and reactions. The next section clearly elaborates the nexus between collaborative governance and development. Finally, the author has explored some future trends or possible research areas in which in-depth investigations could be conducted and concluding remarks of the author has been finally addressed in the last section of this chapter.

Collaborative Governance: Concept and Technique

In this globalized world, a new paradigm shift of governance has emerged to replace adversarial and managerial modes of policy making and implementation. During the last two/three decades, a new strategy of governing called “collaborative governance” brings public and private stakeholders together in collective forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making. The collaborative governance model was emerged as a response to failures of nation states’ implementation of policies and programs at the community level (Fung & Wright, 2001). In addressing these failures, collaborative governance attempts to create, interpret, and apply policy through the participation of multiple stakeholders. Van Buuren et al. (2007) describe collaborative governance as “a reaction to traditional planning and policy-making approaches that are primarily top-down oriented, focusing on the government instead of the governed, mainly technocratically oriented and adversarially organized.” As an interactive and iterative process, collaborative governance engages multiple actors with different and complementary knowledge and experience. Put in another way, this mode of governance brings multiple stakeholders together in common forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making. Similarly, it has emerged as a response to the failures of downstream implementation and to the high cost and politicization of regulations. It has developed as an alternative to the adversarialism of interest group pluralism and to the accountability failures of manegeralism (Plotnikof, 2015; Ansell & Gash, 2008).

One may argue that trends toward collaboration have arisen from the growth of knowledge and institutional capacity. This mode of governance is currently practicing and developing in public organizations to involve stakeholders in co-creating solutions for shared problems such as policy and service innovation. Moreover, it is initiated by policy makers or public managers with the hope of bringing together stakeholders to explore new solutions and thereby co-create public value and innovation (Ansell & Gash, 2008; O’leary & Vij, 2012). In the public management perspective, collaborative governance is the process of facilitating and operating in multi-organizational arrangements to solve problems that cannot be solved, or easily solved, by single organizations. It manifests itself in various initiatives and practices of inter-organizational collaborations and comprises both long and short term events such as roundtable discussions, networks, partnerships and community programs. Tang and Mazmanian (2010) defined collaborative governance as the process of establishing, steering, facilitating, operating, and monitoring cross-sectoral organizational arrangements to address public policy problems that cannot be easily addressed by a single organization or the public sector alone. These arrangements are characterized by joint efforts, reciprocal expectations, and voluntary participation among formally autonomous entities, from two or more sectors —public, for profit, and nonprofits —in order to leverage the unique attributes and resources of each sector.

Ansel and Gash (2008) also defined collaborative governance as the relationship involving public agencies and non-stakeholders describing it as “an arrangement where one or more public agencies directly engage non-stakeholders in a collective decision making process that is formal or consensus-oriented and deliberative and that aims to make or implement public policy or manage public programs or assets.” Donahue (2004) provides a wider definition to the term describing collaborative governance as “an amalgam of public, private and civil-society organizations engaged in some joint effort.” Emerson et.al (2011) also described collaborative governance broadly as the processes and structures of public policy decision making and management that engage people constructively across the boundaries of public agencies, levels of government, and/or the public, private and civic spheres in order to carry out a public purpose that could not otherwise be accomplished. This definition allows collaborative governance to be used as a broader analytic construct in public administration and enables distinctions among different applications, classes, and scales.

Moreover, collaborative governance captures a fuller range of emergent forms of cross-boundary governance, extending beyond the conventional focus on the public manager or the formal public sector. Besides, it is also possible to see collaborative governance in a wider spectrum. It is a strategy used to planning, regulation, policy making and public management to coordinate, adjudicate and integrate the goals and interests of multiple stakeholders. Collaborative governance does not, in principle, require transformative effects on any one class of partner. Governments can continue to represent the public interest through democratic processes. Civil society and labor organizations can be party to collaborative governance while maintaining their heterogeneous perspectives and complex, dynamic, organic, value-based accountability. In the same way, business can be involved in new governance models while continuing to seek to maximize financial returns to the owners of capital with management held to account though the rule of law, and the self-interested oversight of the investment community (Ansell, 2012; Silvia, 2011). It is used as a technique to bring citizens and other stakeholders together for common projects or agendas, to construct democracy along less adversarial and managerial lines, and to restore trust in government and expand democratic consent by widening citizen participation and deliberation in the agendas and affairs of the public. Thus, this new governance paradigm typically emphasizes on collaboration and partnership between and among the public, private, and interested stakeholders.

Scholars argued that collaborative governance is a governing arrangement in which decision-making power is shared among multiple organizations, it is a tool for managing uncertainty, it rhetorically seems to serve as a means of managing political and economic risks associated with high societal expectations, combining fears and concerns with diverse and substantial demands (Zadek, 2006; Scott, 2015; Hutter, 2016). Cross-organizational collaboration enables managers to incorporate diverse types of knowledge into a process and to understand how stakeholders might respond to a policy decision (Newig et al., 2005). The life cycle of collaborative governance contains two key elements or phases. In the first cycle, the design of public policy increasingly involves business and civil society inputs, including specialized knowledge and, crucially, lobbying to secure specific outcomes. The implementation of public policy habitually requires the explicit support of non-state actors in terms of resources and implementation pathways. With the growing importance of multiple actors during the implementation phase, their leverage also tends to increase over policy design. It is a response to a failure of traditional mechanisms for allocating resources, and setting and enforcing rules to effectively secure key public goods. Its logic is framed by the institutional interests of those involved, notably government, business, and civil society organizations. Of these participants, business, above all, has legitimized interests in private gain, and so treats public goods instrumentally to that end (Zadek, 2006).

According to the collaborative governance regime framework (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015), which is based on one of the most comprehensive reviews of the collaboration literature, collaborative governance is composed of three interacting elements, or “dynamics” that together yield changes in the world both proximate outputs, like learning and managerial capacity, and longer term effects on the environment. The first element, “the principled engagement”, is the process by which participants engage with one another, specially the use of deliberation and interest-based negotiation to make joint decisions. The second, “shared motivation,” is the affective stance of individual participants to one another and to the process as a whole, i.e., whether they trust the other participants, feel like their interests are respected by the group, and view the collaborative process as legitimate. The third, “capacity for joint action,” involves the structure and resources necessary to support engagement, including facilitation, leadership, and scientific information (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015). These three dynamics form the crux of collaboration (Ulibarri, 2019). Collaborative governance creates and fosters an environment of participation among regional actors, governments, and the private sector. This facilitates new networks for further enhancement of the trust base, and the ongoing sharing of ideas. The involvement of diverse actors contributes to a heightened investigation of policies and programs in the region (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Bevir &Richards, 2009). Thus, it is collaborative governance which reveals how the collaborative approach can be used to tap the resourcefulness and entrepreneurship of the private sector, and improvise fresh and flexible solutions to today's most pressing public challenges in the world.

DELIBERATIVE COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE AS A REFORM APPROACH

Gollagher and Hartz-Karp (2013) have proposed a particular collaborative governance approach they have termed it as Deliberative Collaborative Governance (DCG) which they contend as likely to be the most effective in resolving wicked problems, and they have described sustainability examples from across the globe that exhibit at least some of the characteristics of this approach. The term DCG was coined to address some of the key critiques of two related approaches – Deliberative Democracy and Collaborative Governance. The theory and practice of deliberative democracy incorporates inclusive, deliberative, and influential participation in policy development and decision-making. The most problematic critique of deliberative democracy as it relates to sustainable collaborative governance is its lack of success in reforming existing democratic institutions. This critique notes that although proliferating rapidly, the deliberative democracy movement has failed to secure institutionalization in the existing governance structure in all but a few places around the world, and hence, has failed to “democratize democracy” (Pateman, 2012). This failure may manifest in political elites, like media commentators and politicians (Boswell, Niemeyer, & Hendriks, 2013), viewing deliberative democratic processes as unworkable, or a revolutionary movement intending to overthrow the existing system. The rationales for the emergence of deliberative collaborative governance was that the existing government structures, technocratic and hierarchical, have been incapable of effectively addressing wicked problems, and of meeting the public’s expectation that it is government’s job to resolve such issues. This apparent lack of capability further erodes public trust, which makes it even harder to address the challenges – and so the governance gap widens. This reform has the capacity to change the existing system dynamics in regional governance to create a virtuous cycle, where greater collective ownership of wicked problems and potential solutions will decrease unrealistic expectations of what government can and cannot do, and increase the likelihood of more effective outcomes.

This in turn, will increase public trust in government and hence, cultivate a willingness and capacity to take part in future collaborative responses to wicked problems. Wicked problems are ranging from domestic issues, such as the impoverishment of education, health care, and justice systems; the crumbling of transportation, utility, energy, and other infrastructure systems; and recurring crises in housing, financial, and industrial markets to international and global issues, such as climate change, food and water shortages, infectious disease, human trafficking, and the illegal arms trade (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015). The newly coined concept of DCG reframes deliberative democracy to focus on the transformative reform that is envisaged – a new form of collaborative governance that is solidly grounded in discursiveness and descriptive representativeness (i.e. resembling a representative sample of the population). DCG unites elements of the broad field of collaborative governance with that of deliberative democracy.

Ansell and Gash (2008) define collaborative governance as an arrangement where one or more public agencies directly engage non-state stakeholders in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented, and deliberative, and that aims to make or implement public policy or manage public programs or assets. This concept involves an actor participating with other organized actors in the governance structure (unions, government departments, NGO’s…etc.) that results in genuine attempts at partnership to formulate policies and create recommendations. However, as Gollagher and Hartz-Karp argue, the key to more effectively addressing wicked problems is the holistic understanding of the system involved, and achieving this will also require the “practical wisdom” (Booth, 2006) of everyday people (Gollagher & Hartz-Karp, 2013). The general public, not only bring unique knowledge, experience and pragmatism to a problem, they also bring a representative legitimacy that can go some way to redressing the suspicion and distrust that undermines an effective resolution. the nexus BETWEEN Collaborative Governance AND DEVELOPMENT It is difficult and challenging to separate collaborate governance from development and vice versa. Development in the absence of cooperation and coordination is collaborative governance in the absence of development. In this vein, it is possible to say that development and prosperity can be strongly achieved through the collaboration between and among different stakeholders, such as the government which represents the public institutions and citizens, the business sector [the market], civil society organizations and international organizations. From this, collaborative governance, sometimes, termed as networked governance, is the must for ensuring and achieving sustainable development goals. The concept of governance is concerned directly with the management of the development process, involving both the public and the private sectors. It encompasses the functioning and capability of the public sector as well as the rules and institutions that create the framework for the conduct of both public and private business, including accountability for economic and financial performance, and regulatory frameworks relating to companies, corporations, and partnerships (World Bank, 1991).

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1996 acknowledged that promoting good governance in all its aspects by ensuring the rule of law, improving the efficiency and accountability of the public sectors, bringing public-private partnership, and tackling corruption are essential elements of a framework within which economies of both developed and developing countries can prosper (IMF, 2005). It is in this and other perspectives that collaborative governance expresses the power which is exercised in the management of state, civil society and private sector to work in cohesion for accelerated economic growth and greater human development. If the standards of governance remain poor, it becomes inevitable for the government to implement sound development management. To have the desired effect on people‘s lives, they must improve their socioeconomic conditions and alleviate poverty. It is good to encourage the private sector to invest and develop infrastructure, minimize financial constraints and to create an enabling environment for economic growth. Focusing upon collaboration and partnership in the affairs of the country is a prime economic and societal mover as well as driver of technological and political change in the country because collaboration implies that non-state stakeholders will have real responsibility for policy outcomes. In collaborative governance (Ansell & Gash, 2008), stakeholders will often have an adversarial relationship to one another, but the goal is to transform adversarial relationships into more cooperative ones.

The key roles of non-government actors, including business sectors, have more confirmed in the United Nations (UN) declaration of achieving sustainable global development goals. The UN Sustainable Development Summit adopted a new framework to guide development efforts between 2015 and 2030, entitled “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.” Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Meeting essential needs requires not only a new era of economic growth for nations in which the majority are poor, but an assurance that those poor get their fair share of the resources required to sustain that growth. Such equity would be aided by political systems that secure effective citizen participation in decision making and by greater democracy in international decision making (UN, 2015; FAO, 2017). It is a fact that sustainability issues involve complex interactions between social, economic, and environmental factors that are often viewed quite differently by disparate stakeholder groups.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal set of goals and targets agreed by 194 UN member states to guide their development policies and initiatives over the next 15 years. The SDGs apply equally to developed and developing countries, and the framework of targets and indicators provides the basis for stimulating initiative, monitoring performance and levering compliance. The SDGs address, in an integrated manner, the social, economic and environmental dimensions of development, their interrelations, aspects related to peaceful societies and effective institutions, as well as means of implementation. The 2030 Agenda focuses on the elimination of hunger and reduction of poverty and inequality (opportunity, resource access, gender, and youth) in all their forms. It is associated with a financing framework that recognizes the need not just for innovation and business development but also social protection. It commits to support the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, by promoting and facilitating energy efficiency and clean energy. It seeks to increase resilience – to climate change, weather and natural disaster, market volatility and political instability. And it seeks to reduce the pressure of human economic activity on the natural environment by stressing the need not just for habitat and ecosystem protection, but also increased resource use efficiency, and sustainable production and consumption – thereby spreading collective responsibility for delivering sustainability across all economic players (UN, 2015).

When the world's governments adopted the SDGs in 2015 to achieve by 2030, they opened the window to a massive expansion of a new form of governance that has been growing on the global stage for some two decades. Obviously, they called multi-stakeholder initiatives, public–private partnerships, or cross‐sector collaborations; these partnerships across governments, civil society, and the private sector are changing how we conceive of governance and public policy (Florini & Pauli, 2018). The Goal 17 of SDGs in UN is an instrument which is barking on the world to “strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.” This is argued that enhancing the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology, and financial resources, to support the achievement of the SDGs in all countries, in particular developing countries and encouraging and promoting effective public, public–private, and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships are clearly described to achieve sustainable development goals through eradicating poverty, hunger and famine. This shows that the new form of governance, which is collaborative, has strong nexus with sustainable development of one’s country. Accordingly, the 2030 Agenda provides a high-level policy and monitoring framework designed to stimulate and coordinate the activities of national governments, the UN and other intergovernmental organizations, civil society organizations and other institutions - in pursuit of sustainable development, with the specific aim of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (UN, 2015). It fosters collaborative governance in which revitalization of Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, based on a spirit of strengthened global solidarity, focused in particular on the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable and with the participation of all countries, all stakeholders and all people.

Moreover, in 2015, governments all around the world agreed on a set of SDGs in which they are universal, connected and undividable. The goals and the document, Agenda 2030, is unique and taken together, they can be seen as a global consensus on the goals for sustainable development. One of the seventeen goals is directly related to cities and urban development (UN, 2015). The Goal 11 of SDGs is “making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” The world is becoming increasingly urban. The level of urbanization is rapidly changing with 60 percent of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2030 and nearly 70 percent by 2050. The rapidly increasing dominance of urban areas places the process of urbanization among the most significant global trends of the 21st century. The transformative force of urbanization and the role that cities can play have far reaching implications beyond demographic change. While urbanization includes rural urban migration, proportional increases in the urban population, and the spatial expansion of cities, it also has other very important social, behavioral, political, economic, and environmental dimensions. Urban life influences consumption and production patterns as well as levels and rates of urban socio-economic activities, growth and development. Furthermore, urban life refers to cognitive processes; the changing of mind-sets in ways that profoundly influence social development and innovation (UN, 2014).

In addition, in this 21st century, our world is going through massive urbanization, and sustainable urbanization is considered as a mechanism to protect the interest of all stakeholders during this urbanization process (Liu et al., 2016). According to a report of the UN Habitat (2012), 54% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, with an expected increase to 66% in 2050. However, this increasing population is not equally concentrated among the different parts of the world as the same report states that a larger portion of urban people will be increased in the cities and towns of less developed countries. In this regard, the estimated population growth in Asia is 1.4 billion, 0.9 billion in Africa, and is 0.2 billion in Latin America and the Caribbean by 2050 (Satterthwaite, 2007). In 2014, 30% of urban residents lived in slum-like settings; in sub-Saharan Africa, this number was 55%, which was the largest of any region. Moreover, more than 880 million persons worldwide resided in slums until 2014. Additionally, megacities are the main contributors of carbon emissions and weather changes. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that governments and business leaders are now keenly focused on cities and their effects on economic development and public well-being, to climate variation and sustainability (KPMG International Cooperative, 2012).

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