Politics and Collaboration

Synonyms

Civic engagement; Comanagement; Cooperation; Public participation; Stakeholder partnership

Introduction

For many, the word “collaboration” probably conjures some image of multiple parties working together to achieve some mutually desired end, a shared effort to achieve a goal in which each party has a shared stake. Indeed, this is largely consistent with what we talk about when we discuss collaboration in the context of public administration and public policy. Very broadly speaking, in public management, policymaking, and governance, collaboration is often used as a tool for organizing the efforts of multiple groups or individuals working together in a manner that is typically cooperative and deliberative, as opposed to adversarial and hierarchical. Choosing the exact terminology here can be problematic because there are so many different terms that have been used in the literature to describe collaboration in the context of governing. Common terms represented in the...