When Public Officers Take the Lead in Collaborative Governance

Authors

  • Anna Zachrisson Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden
  • Therese Bjärstig Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden
  • Katarina Eckerberg Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v22i4.8695

Keywords:

environmental officers, collaborative governance, public leadership, collaboration, trust

Abstract

Governments are investing considerable time and resources in the field of collaborative governance as it proliferates throughout many sectors, and how public officers choose to respond to these developments therefore becomes an important question. The increased public involvement that collaborative governance brings is often more costly than traditional forms of governance, while the outcomes are highly uncertain. For these reasons, it is important that collaborative governance is only used when really warranted, and the various forms that it can take should be carefully designed. In this study, we apply a typology of collaboration strategies to examine firstly, the circumstances under which leading officers at four county administrative boards in the Swedish mountain region decide to lead collaboration, and secondly what collaboration strategies they then apply. This study is based on 20 interviews with key officers, and 39 interviews with project leaders of public-private collaborations in the area of natural resource management in the region. We find that officers should take trust levels into account when designing collaboration strategies, not least the lack of official trust. Strategies are found to be not mutually exclusive but complementary, and officers employ several at the same time. Interestingly, the results of this study show that – somewhat counter-intuitively – distrust is a driver for officers to initiate collaboration, a conclusion which questions the common view that more trust unequivocally translates into more participation.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Anna Zachrisson, Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden

Anna Zachrisson is an associate professor at the Department of Political Science, Umeå University. Her research concerns natural resource conflicts, collaborative governance, and environmental policy in relation to mining, nature conservation, landscape planning, ecological restoration, agriculture and rural development. She has been a visiting scholar at the Workshop of Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Therese Bjärstig, Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden

Therese Bjärstig is an associate professor and researcher at the Department of Political Science at Umeå University. Her research focuses mainly on collaborations, policy instruments, evaluation and implementation processes in relation to forests, wildlife and natural resource management, rural development and landscape planning.

Katarina Eckerberg, Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden

Katarina Eckerberg is professor in Public Administration at the Department of Political Science, Umeå University. Her expertise comprises environment and natural resource policy and politics at global, national and local level. Current research includes forest water collaboration, voluntary protection of forests, and evaluation of innovation support in agriculture. Katarina is currently vice chair of the Swedish Forest Agency Board and member of the Swedish Climate Policy Council. She has published about 70 peer-reviewed articles, books and book chapters, and a large number of research reports and popular articles.

Downloads

Published

2018-12-15

How to Cite

Zachrisson, A., Bjärstig, T., & Eckerberg, K. (2018). When Public Officers Take the Lead in Collaborative Governance. Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration, 22(4), 21–44. https://doi.org/10.58235/sjpa.v22i4.8695

Issue

Section

Original Articles

Similar Articles

<< < 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.