Collaborative Governance

Fabio Giglioni, Sapienza University of Rome

Definition

Collaborative governance describes an approach to shared management and decision-making between public and private entities, enabling them to undertake activities of general interest on an equal footing. It is a model based on collaboration, dialogue, and the active participation of various actors, including public authorities, businesses, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and citizens, with the aim of improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of public policies and administrative services. The collaborative governance model is in contrast with traditional administration, which is based on the “bipolar paradigm,” characterised by asymmetric, authoritative, and hierarchical relationships. This means that the inclusion of a multitude of actors (public, private or civic) is organised in networks, partnerships or other forms of (hybrid) organisations in order to guide and restrain their everyday affairs and/or to mediate their competing interests or even conflicts. For this, usually, a variety of formal and informal institutions (such as contracts, routines, shared norms, etc.) are used to solve complex, dynamic, and diversified problems.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, is an example of a collaborative approach at the international level. It encourages cooperation between governments, the private sector, civil society, and other entities to achieve common sustainable development goals.

Collaborative governance, therefore, is based on the sharing of resources and responsibilities between citizens and between citizens and administrations, considering a framework of principles such as mutual trust, publicity and transparency, inclusivity, equal opportunities, sustainability, proportionality, and adequacy. This system promotes the expansion of democracy by strengthening the trust between citizens and institutions.

Collaborative governance is itself an implementation of the principle of horizontal subsidiarity, as outlined in Article 118, last paragraph, of the Italian Constitution, which provided a constitutional basis for this theory, already supported by numerous practical applications. The theory underpinning this model was first presented in an essay by Gregorio Arena titled “Introduzione all’amministrazione condivisa”. Even though the principle of horizontal subsidiarity was incorporated into the Constitution in 2001, it was only with the approval of local regulations that the shared administration model gained full implementation at the national level. On February 22, 2014, the Municipality of Bologna adopted the first local regulation, which served as a template and was followed by approximately 284 Italian municipalities.

This “shared administration” introduces a new relationship between public administration and non-profit organisations engaged in the production of common goods and services. The Italian model is an example that shows variations across the EU/EEA member states in terms of the extent to which requirements or expectations to collaborate are codified in laws and regulations, the nature of the legal infrastructure in terms of scope and content to determine where (in which areas) law and other written rules are concentrated; and finally, the broader trends that can be discerned from legal regulation.

References

Ansell, C., & Gash, A. (2008). Collaborative governance in theory and practice. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18(4), 543–571. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mum032

Arena, G. (1997). Introduzione all’amministrazione condivisa. Studi parlamentari e di politica costituzionale, 117-118, 29-65.

Arena, G., & Bombardelli, M. (2022). Amministrazione condivisa. Quaderni della Facoltà di Giurisprudenza dell’Università degli Studi di Trento.

Batory, A., & Svensson, S. (2019). Regulating collaboration: The legal framework of collaborative governance in ten European Countries. International Journal of Public Administration, 43(9), 780–789. https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2019.1658771

Ferroni, M.V., Galdini, R., & Ruocco, G. (2023). Urban informality. A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Springer. Labsus & Bright (2022). Rethinking horizontal subsidiarity in the European Union. https://www.labsus.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Bright_Documento_ENG.pdf