In the last two decades, there has been a growing interest in the concept of collaborative governance. Collaborative governance is an activity or strategy in the public domain that brings together stakeholders from various sectors to design and implement a policy or program. The increasing interest in this mechanism derives from the potential benefits of including various actors to deal with the capacity and legitimacy problems of governance. Collaborative governance offers a different governance strategy from privatization and regulation, which have been utilized to respond to the challenges facing governments.
Due to its potential, this book deals with collaborative governance on two levels. On the empirical level, it focuses on the strategies of collaborative governance implemented in the Israeli context. On the theoretical level, it focuses on the theoretical developments of the concept. Two main questions guided this bookās chapters: Do collaborative governance arrangements promote public values, and do these arrangements contribute to a more democratic process? To study these questions, our research group developed a modular definition of the concept of ācollaborative governanceā that will be discussed here.
This introduction is composed of two parts. The first part will present a brief literature review of the concept of collaborative governance and a short description of the Israeli context. The second part of the chapter will present the definition developed by the research group and detail the parts of the book.
The Study of Collaborative Governance
The concept of collaborative governance developed after four decades of gradual changes in public administration and public policy. These changes were part of reforms that began in the 1980s and were popular until the end of the 1990s. They were intended to make public administration more efficient. New public management reforms sought to adjust the Weberian bureaucratic mechanisms that were based on clear rules, hierarchal structures, the functional division of responsibility, and specialization to the needs of the late twentieth century by adopting management techniques from the business sector. As a result, the emphasis became managing state affairs so citizens would receive value for money, by, among other things, reducing the size of the public sector, privatization, relying on outsourcing, developing performance indicators, and viewing the public as ācustomersā of the public sector. Since the early 2000s, however, administrative reforms that emphasize democratic characteristics have been adopted (Cohen 2016; Dunleavy et al. 2006; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011; Stoker 2006; Vigoda-Gadot 2009). These reforms seek to address some of the unintended consequences of the new public management reforms such as the fragmentation of government agencies. They respond to the need to strengthen the capacity of government due to privatization trends that weakened the knowledge and expertise of government institutions, as well as their ability to design and implement policy (Baker and Stoker 2013; Hajer 2003; Rhodes 1994, 2012). These models change the view of the public from ācustomersā to ācitizens,ā build and strengthen trust as a basic component of the activity within and between organizations, enhance cooperation between various actors, and highlight the importance of identifying and implementing public values. These trends in public policy also emphasize āgovernanceā rather than āgovernment.ā Accordingly, public policy is formulated by discussions between networks composed of actors from different sectors that act together to create public policy (Dunleavy et al. 2006; Howlett 2014; Kekez et al. 2019; Lang 2019; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011; Salamon 2002; Stoker 2006; Vigoda-Gadot 2009). Therefore, this approach is composed of tools that emphasize coordination, discourse, and dialogue between different groups (Deleon 2006). These policy instruments, defined as āsoftā tools, have become increasingly relevant, considering the changes occurring in the role of the state (Bevir 2012; Rhodes 1994, 2000, 2012). Instead of relying on a rigid hierarchy and markets as the mechanisms to govern society, there is a shift to modes of governance based on networks (Bevir 2012). Thus, these trends create the foundation for the growth of government strategies utilizing collaborative governance that includes diverse stakeholders to promote public policies and programs.
The roots of collaborative governance are interdisciplinary in nature. As a result, there are various definitions of the term based on a variety of theories and disciplines such as political science, public administration, public policy, sociology, and economics (Emerson et al. 2012; Williams 2012). Moreover, different scholars refer to different points in time to describe its origins. Some see collaborative governance as a phenomenon of the last 20 years, while others point to its roots in the nineteenth century (e.g., Ansell and Gash 2008; Emerson and Gerlak 2014; McGuire 2006).
One of the dominant definitions1 in the literature is that of Ansell and Gash (2008): āA governing 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 assetsā (p. 544). In other words, it is a formal arrangement in which stakeholders communicate with one another in a deliberative and multilateral process. The stakeholders share responsibility for the policy outcomes because they are involved in the formal decision-making process within the forums of government agencies (Ansell and Gash 2008). This is an important point, even if responsibility is ultimately in the hands of the state, as in the case of regulation. Ansell (2012) lists six components of collaborative governance: (1) the initiative is that of a public agency; (2) it includes non-government actors; (3) the participants are involved directly in the design of policy rather than serving only as advisors; (4) the forum is formally organized and meets collectively; (5) it aims to reach decisions by consensus even if a consensus is not achieved in the end; and (6) the focus of the collaboration is on public policy or the management of public programs.
Differing from Ansell and Gash (2008), Emerson, Nabatchi, and Balogh (2012) present a broader definition of collaborative governance. In their definition the initiative for collaborative government may arise from non-governmental organizations. Therefore, the initiative might originate from the civil society, for example. It is considered collaborative governance because their goal is to promote public goals and they include government actors. Moreover, their definition also includes intergovernmental collaborative structures, meaning collaboration between different levels of government or between different government units. One of the important features of their definition is their addition that collaborative governance should be used only when public goals cannot be achieved in any other way (Emerson et al. 2012, p. 2). Therefore, an interesting question is whether collaborative governance is an additional strategy that government could embrace or whether there are situations in which it should not be implemented. Other scholars point to the strengthening trends of cooperation and normatively call for the inclusion of various stakeholders to strengthen the governmentās capacity (Vigoda-Gadot 2004, 2009; Wanna 2008).
One of the challenges regarding the concept of collaborative governance derives from the attempt to differentiate it from similar concepts. For example, Ansell and Gash (2008) distinguish between collaborative governance and corporatism, associational governance, policy networks,2 and public-private partnerships. They maintain that corporatism is more an expression of a partnership between leading organizations in the labor market and their interaction with government agencies. The concept of āassociational governanceā includes non-profit organizations, in contrast to collaborative governance, which can include citizens but does not ne...