JPART18:543–571 Collaborative Governance in Theory
and Practice
Chris Ansell
Alison Gash
University of California,Berkeley
ABSTRACT
Over the past few decades,a new form of governance has emerged to replace adversarial and managerial modes of policy making and implementation.Collaborative governance,as it has come to be known,brings public and private stakeholders together in collective forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making.In this article, we conduct a meta-analytical study of the existing literature on collaborative governance with the goal of elaborating a contingency model of collaborative governance.After review-ing137cases of collaborative governance across a range of policy sectors,we identify critical variables that will influence whether or not this mode of governance will produce successful collaboration.These variables include the prior history of conflict or cooperation,
the incentives for stakeholders to participate,power and resources imbalances,leadership, and institutional design.We also identify a series of factors that are crucial within the collaborative process itself.These factors include face-to-face dialogue,trust building,and the development of commitment and shared understanding.We found that a virtuous cycle of collaboration tends to develop when collaborative forums focus on‘‘small wins’’that deepen trust,commitment,and shared understanding.The article concludes with a discus-sion of the implications of our contingency model for practitioners and for future research on collaborative governance.
Over the last two decades,a new strategy of governing called‘‘collaborative governance’’has developed.This mode of governance brings multiple stakeholders together in common forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making.In this article,we conduct a meta-analytical study of the existing literature on collaborative governance with the goal of elaborating a general model of collaborative governance. The ultimate goal is to develop a contingency approach to collaboration that can highlight conditions under which collaborative governance will be more or less effective as an Early versions of this article were presented at the Conference on Democratic Network Governance,Copenhagen,the Interdisciplinary Committee on Organizations at the University of California,Irvine,and the Berkeley graduate seminar Perspectives on Governance.We th
ank the participants of these events for their useful suggestions and Martha Feldman,in particular,for her encouragement.We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and useful comments.Address correspondence to the author at cansell@berkeley.edu or aligash@berkeley.edu.
doi:10.1093/jopart/mum032
Advance Access publication on November13,2007
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approach to policy making and public management.1In conducting this meta-analytic study,we adopted a strategy we call ‘‘successive approximation’’:we used a sample of the literature to develop a common language for analyzing collaborative governance and then successively ‘‘tested’’this language against additional cases,refining and elaborating our model of collaborative governance as we evaluated additional cases.
Although collaborative governance may now have a fashionable management cache
´,the untidy character of the literature on collaboration reflects the way it has bubbled up from many local experiments,often in reaction to previous governance failures.Collabo-rative governance has emerged as a response to the failures of downstream implementation and to the high cost and politicization of regulation.It has developed as an alternative to the adversarialism of interest group pluralism and to the accountability failures of manageri-alism (especially as the authority of experts is challenged).More positively,one might argue that trends toward collaboration also arise from the growth of knowledge and in-stitutional capacity.As knowledge becomes increasingly specialized and distributed and as institutional infrastructures become more complex and interdependent,the demand for collaboration increases.The common metric for all these factors may be,as Gray (1989)has pointed out,the increasing ‘‘turbulence’’faced by policy makers and managers.
Although Susskind and Cruikshank (1987),Gray (1989),and Fung and Wright (2001,2003)have suggested more general theoretical accounts of collaborative governance,much of the literature is focused on the species rather than the genus .The bulk of the collaborative governance literature is composed of single-case case studies focused on sector-specific governance issues like site-based management of schools,community po-licing,watershed councils,regulatory negotiation,collaborative
planning,community health partnerships,and natural resource comanagement (the species).2Moreover,a num-ber of the most influential theoretical accounts of this phenomenon are focused on specific types of collaborative governance.Healey (1996,2003)and Innes and Booher (1999a,1999b),for example,provide foundational accounts of collaborative planning,as Freeman (1997)does for regulation and administrative law and Wondolleck and Yaffee (2000)do for natural resources management.Our goal is to build on the findings of this rich literature,but also to derive theoretical and empirical claims about the genus of collaborative governance—about the common mode of governing.
DEFINING COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE
We define collaborative governance as follows:
A 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 assets.
This definition stresses six important criteria:(1)the forum is initiated by public agencies or institutions,(2)participants in the forum include nonstate actors,(3)participants engage directly in decision making and are not merely ‘‘consulted’’by public agencies,(4)the 1Thomas (1995)develops a contingency perspective on public participation,though it aims more broadly and is developed from the perspective of public managers.
2A smaller group of studies evaluates specific types of collaborative governance at a more aggregated level (for example,see Beierle [2000],Langbein [2002],and Leach,Pelkey,and Sabatier [2002]).
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Ansell and Gash Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice545 forum is formally organized and meets collectively,(5)the forum aims to make decisions
by consensus(even if consensus is not achieved in practice),and(6)the focus of collab-oration is on public policy or public management.This is a more restrictive definition than
is sometimes found in the literature.However,the wide-ranging use of the term has,as Imperial notes,been a barrier to theory building(Imperial2005,286).Since our goal is to compare apples with apples(to the extent possible),we have defined the term restrictively
so as to increase the comparability of our cases.
One critical component of the term collaborative governance is‘‘governance.’’Much research has been devoted to establishing a workable definition of governance that is bounded and falsifiable,yet comprehensive.For instance,Lynn,Heinrich,and Hill (2001,7)construe governance broadly as‘‘regimes of laws,rules,judicial decisions,
and administrative practices that constrain,prescribe,and enable the provision of publicly supported goods and services.’’This definition provides room for traditional governmental structures as well as emerging forms of public/private decision-making bodies.Stoker,on
the other hand,argues:
As a baseline definition it can be taken that governance refers to the rules and forms that guide
collective decision-making.That the focus is on decision-making in the collective implies
that governance is not about one individual making a decision but rather about groups of
individuals or organisations or systems of organisations making decisions(2004,3).
He also suggests that among the various interpretations of the term,there is‘‘baseline agreement that governance refers to the development of governing styles in which bound-
aries between and within public and private sectors have become blurred’’(Stoker1998, 17).We opt for a combined approach to conceptualize governance.We agree with Lynn, Heinrich,and Hill that governance applies to laws and rules that pertain to the provision of
public goods.However,we adopt Stoker’s claim that governance is also about collective decision making—and specifically about collective decision making that includes both
public and private actors.Collaborative governance is therefore a type of governance in
which public and private actors work collectively in distinctive ways,using particular processes,to establish laws and rules for the provision of public goods.
Although there are many forms of collaboration involving strictly nonstate actors,our
definition stipulates a specific role for public agencies.By using the term‘‘public agency,’’
our intention is to include public institutions such as bureaucracies,courts,legislatures,and
other governmental bodies at the local,state,or federal level.But the typical public in-stitution among our cases is,in fact,an executive branch agency,and therefore,the term
‘‘public agency’’is apt.Such public agencies may initiate collaborative forums either to
fulfill their own purposes or to comply with a mandate,including court orders,legislation,
or rules governing the allocation of federal funds.For example,the Workforce Investment
Act of1998stipulates that all states and localities receiving federal workforce develop-
ment funds must convene a workforce investment board that comprised public and private
actors in order to develop and oversee policies at the state and local level concerning job training,under-and unemployment.According to our definition,these workforce invest-
ments boards are mandated to engage in collaborative governance.
Although public agencies are typically the initiators or instigators of collaborative governance,our definition requires participation by nonstate stakeholders.Some scholars describe interagency coordination as collaborative governance.Although there is nothing inherently wrong with using the term in this way,much of the literature on collaborative
governance uses this term to signal a different kind of relationship between public agencies and nonstate stakeholders.Smith (1998,61),for example,argues that collaboratives in-volve ‘‘representation by key interest groups.’’Connick and Innes (2003,180)define collaborative governance as including ‘‘representatives of all relevant interests.’’Reilly (1998,115)describes collaborative efforts as a type of problem solving that involves the ‘‘shared pursuit of government agencies and concerned citizens.’’
We use the term ‘‘stakeholder’’to refer both to the participation of citizens as indi-viduals and to the participation of organized groups.For convenience,we will also here-after use the term ‘‘stakeholder’’to refer to both public agencies and nonstate stakeholders,though we believe that public agencies have a distinctive leadership role in collaborative governance.Our definition of collaborative governance also sets standards for the type of participation of nonstate stakeholders.We believe that collaborative governance is never merely consultative.3Collaboration i
mplies two-way communication and influence be-tween agencies and stakeholders and also opportunities for stakeholders to talk with each other.Agencies and stakeholders must meet together in a deliberative and multilateral process.In other words,as described above,the process must be collective .Consultative techniques,such as stakeholder surveys or focus groups,although possibly very useful management tools,are not collaborative in the sense implied here because they do not permit two-way flows of communication or multilateral deliberation.
Collaboration also implies that nonstate stakeholders will have real responsibility for policy outcomes.Therefore,we impose the condition that stakeholders must be directly engaged in decision making.This criterion is implicit in much of the collaborative gov-ernance literature.Freeman (1997,22),for example,argues that stakeholders participate ‘‘in all stages of the decisionmaking process.’’The watershed partnerships studied by Leach,Pelkey,and Sabatier (2002,648)make policy and implementation decisions on a range of ongoing water management issues regarding streams,rivers,and watersheds.Ultimate authority may lie with the public agency (as with regulatory negotiation),but stakeholders must directly participate in the decision-making process.Thus,advisory committees may be a form of collaborative governance if their advice is closely linked to decision-making outcomes.In practice (and by design),however,advisory committees are often far removed from actual decision making.
We impose the criteria of formal collaboration to distinguish collaborative gover-nance from more casual and conventional forms of agency-interest group interaction.For example,the term collaborative governance might be thought to describe the informal relationships that agencies and interest groups have always cultivated.Surely,interest groups and public agencies have always engaged in two-way flows of influence.The difference between our definition of collaborative governance and conventional interest group influence is that the former implies an explicit and public strategy of organizing this influence.Walter and Petr (2000,495),for example,describe collaborative governance as a formal activity that ‘‘involves joint activities,joint structures and shared resources,’’and Padilla and Daigle (1998,74)prescribe the development of a ‘‘structured arrangement.’’This formal arrangement implies organization and structure.
Decisions in collaborative forums are consensus oriented (Connick and Innes 2003;Seidenfeld 2000).Although public agencies may have the ultimate authority to make 3See Beierle and Long (1999)for an example of collaboration as consultation.
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Ansell and Gash Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice547 a decision,the goal of collaboration is typically to achieve some degree of consensus among stakeholders.We use the term consensus oriented because collaborative forums
often do not succeed in reaching consensus.However,the premise of meeting together in
a deliberative,multilateral,and formal forum is to strive toward consensus or,at least,to
strive to discover areas of agreement.
Finally,collaborative governance focuses on public policies and issues.The focus
on public issues distinguishes collaborative governance from other forms of consensus decision making,such as alternative dispute resolution or transformative mediation. Although agencies may pursue dispute resolution or mediation to reduce social or political
conflict,these techniques are often used to deal with strictly private conflicts.Moreover,
public dispute resolution or mediation may be designed merely to resolve private disputes.
While acknowledging the ambiguity of the boundary between public and private,we restrict the use of the term‘‘collaborative governance’’to the governance of public affairs.
Our definition of collaborative governance is meant to distinguish collaborative gov-ernance from two alternative patterns of policy making:adversarialism and managerialism (Busenberg1999;Futrell2003;Williams and Matheny1995).By contrast with decisions
made adversarially,collaborative governance is not a‘‘winner-take-all’’form of interest intermediation.In collaborative governance,stakeholders will often have an adversarial relationship to one another,but the goal is to transform adversarial relationships into more cooperative ones.In adversarial politics,groups may engage in positive-sum bargaining
and develop cooperative alliances.However,this cooperation is ad hoc,and adversarial politics does not explicitly seek to transform conflict into cooperation.
In managerialism,public agencies make decisions unilaterally or through closed de-
cision processes,typically relying on agency experts to make decisions(Futrell2003; Williams and Matheny1995).Although managerial agencies may take account of stake-
holder perspectives in their decision making and may even go so far as to consult directly
with stakeholders,collaborative governance requires that stakeholders be directly included
in the decision-making process.
A number of synonyms for collaborative governance may cause confusion.For ex-ample,‘‘corporatism’’is certainly a form of collaborative governance as we define it. Classic definitions of corporatism(like Schmitter’s)emphasize tripartite bargaining be-
governancetween peak associations of labor and capital and the state.Typically,these peak associa-
tions have a representational monopoly in their sector(they are‘‘encompassing’’).If we
start with this narrower definition of corporatism,collaborative governance is the broader term.Collaborative governance often implies the inclusion of a broader range of stake-holders than corporatism,and the stakeholders often lack a representational monopoly over
their sector.The term‘‘associational governance’’is sometimes used to refer to the more generic mode of governing with associations,but collaborative governance may not even include formal associations.The Porte Alegre project,for example,is a form of collabo-
rative governance that includes individual citizens in budgetary decision making(Fung and Wright2001).
Sometimes the term‘‘policy network’’is used to describe more pluralistic forms of
state-society cooperation.A policy network may include both public agencies and stake-
holder groups.Moreover,policy networks typically imply cooperative modes of deliber-
ation or decision making among actors within the network.Thus,the terms policy network
and collaborative governance can refer to similar phenomena.However,collaborative governance refers to an explicit and formal strategy of incorporating stakeholders into

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