Can the Power of Platforms be Harnessed for Governance?

The platform concept examines how strategic leadership and institutional and technological resources enable multiple distributed activities to innovate, adapt, and change. The central question addressed in this paper is: Can this potentially powerful organizing logic be harnessed for public purposes? Since governance platforms are still largely experimental, we cannot fully settle this question at present. However, we can begin to address the issue to help scholars and practitioners explore the potential of platforms. We start with a general statement about what governance platforms might offer to the public sector, before probing the concept more deeply. We then investigate the institutional mechanisms that purportedly make platforms powerful and propose a typology of governance platforms. Finally, we investigate the challenges and successes they have encountered

Improving policy implementation through collaborative policymaking

We offer a fresh perspective on implementation problems by suggesting that collaborative policy design and adaptive policy implementation will help public policy makers to improve policy execution. Classical implementation theories have focused too narrowly on administrative stumbling blocks and New Public Management has reinforced the split between politics and administration. Attempts to improve policy implementation must begin by looking at policy design, which can be improved through collaboration and deliberation between upstream and downstream actors. We provide a broad overview of how collaborative policymaking and adaptive policy implementation might work in theory and practice.</jats:p

Co-Creation for Sustainability

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set an ambitious agenda for global problem-solving and create a framework to achieve it through the power of partnerships. Goal 17 points to the central importance of partnerships, networks, and multi-stakeholder collaborations for bringing together a broad range of actors to accomplish the first 16 goals. Only through such partnerships can the distributed knowledge, resources and capacity of government agencies, private enterprises, political activists, local communities, and international NGOs be effectively combined to produce the major breakthroughs in sustainability that the SDGs envision. Co-Creation for Sustainability sets out a strategy of partnership, with an emphasis on how global goals can be translated into local action. Co-creation brings multiple parties together—including citizens—to collaboratively engage in innovative problem-solving. The book explains this strategy and describes how to foster the conditions necessary for its success. It details how leaders can spur co-creation and manage and overcome its practical challenges. Written to inspire public and private changemakers to find fundamental solutions to the pressing challenges that confront our social and natural environment, Co-creation for Sustainability: The UN SDGs and the Power of Partnerships provides intellectual resources and practical advice relevant for those who aspire to harness the talents, energy and perspectives of different sectors to build the momentum we need to realize a sustainable future

Comparative analysis of institutions to govern the groundwater commons in California

The management of groundwater, a common-pool resource, is a fundamental collective action problem that can lead to over-exploitation. Our paper examines the management of two groundwater basins in California’s Central Coast region whose geographic proximity, land use patterns, socioeconomic characteristics, and timing of institutional formation provide an ideal basis for comparative study. However, each basin is governed by a distinctive institutional configuration. The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency is a legislatively created Special Act District with a collective public management focus, while the Santa Paula Groundwater Basin is managed through a court adjudication with a rights-based focus. We compare the legal and administrative foundations of these institutional arrangements and examine their implications for the polycentric regulation of sustainable groundwater use. We find that while adjudication may specify groundwater rights, an approach that scholars argue can be critical for achieving sustainability, it also promotes insularity with a wider polycentric system and this ultimately limits its management strategies. The Special Act District, by contrast, does not encourage as clear an allocation of water rights, but does encourage a broad sustainability mission and wider polycentric engagement, though it still struggles with declining groundwater levels. Ultimately, neither institutional arrangement fully addresses the problem of groundwater sustainability. This suggests the need for further research on how institutional configurations and developmental pathways impact resource outcomes

To the summit and beyond: Tracing the process and impact of collaborative performance summits

Interactive routines such as collaborative performance summits are thought to help collaborating organizations assess and improve their performance. However, there is little systematic evidence to substantiate this claim. This study leverages a longitudinal dataset to examine the summit process and identify the difference between summits that have an impact on performance and those that do not. The study explicates the assumed causal process and traces 18 partnerships as they prepare, conduct, and follow-up a summit. The analysis provides evidence for the positive impact of summits, but also shows that the process unfolds differently than expected. Neither the range of performance issues that actors bring to the summit nor the intentions for change they formulate at the end of the meeting are key differentiators. The hallmark of impactful summits emerges to be a large share of participants gaining comprehensive insights. These findings have implications for collaborative performance management research and practice

Understanding inclusion in collaborative governance: a mixed methods approach

Who should be included in collaborative governance and how they should be included is an important topic, though the dynamics of inclusion are not yet well understood. We propose a conceptual model to shape the empirical analysis of what contributes to inclusion in collaborative processes. We propose that incentives, mutual interdependence and trust are important preconditions of inclusion, but that active inclusion management also matters a great deal. We also hypothesize that inclusion is strategic, with ‘selective activation’ of participants depending on functional and pragmatic choices. Drawing on cases from the Collaborative Governance Case Databank, we used a mixed method approach to analyse our model. We found support for the model, and particularly for the central importance of active inclusion management.Fil: Ansell, Christopher. University of California at Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Doberstein, Carey. University of British Columbia; CanadáFil: Henderson, Hayley. The Australian National University; Australia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Centro de Estudios Urbanos y Regionales; ArgentinaFil: Siddiki, Saba. Syracuse University; Estados UnidosFil: ‘t Hart, Paul. Utrecht University; Países Bajo