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Collaboration as a policy instrument in public administration: Evidence from forest policy and governance
Department of Political Science Umeå University, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6845-5525
Södertörn University, School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies, Environmental Science.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6823-3503
Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden.
Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden.
2024 (English)In: Environmental Policy and Governance, ISSN 1756-932X, E-ISSN 1756-9338, Vol. 34, no 5, p. 538-549Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

In recent decades, collaboration has become a common policy instrument in public administration, both internationally and in Sweden. Inspired by scholarly literature on collaborative governance, the aim of this study is to analyze the crucial role of public administration in the design and implementation of collaborative governance. Drawing on several years of research on Swedish forest policy and governance, our work is based on extensive empirical material, including 88 semi-structured interviews, observations, written comments from open public consultations and actors, enacted policy documents, open public hearings and a survey. Our results confirm that factors related to process design strongly affect the outputs and outcomes of collaboration in public administration. We assert that public officials should meticulously design and adapt the collaborative process during its initiation and progress, according to the policy problem and actors' incentives and motivations to participate. However, despite good intentions by public officials, the overarching priorities and contextual factors governing the policy area must be set by elected decision makers at an early stage to establish democratic accountability and high levels of policy legitimacy and acceptance. A major implication for public administration is that the increasing use of collaborative governance may be highly inefficient if it is difficult for participants to draft shared objectives and provide intended outputs because of low levels of trust, and different interpretations of knowledge and norms. Finally, in contentious policy areas, such as forest policy, political priorities must sometimes be set by elected decision makers rather than through collaborative processes.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
John Wiley & Sons, 2024. Vol. 34, no 5, p. 538-549
Keywords [en]
collaborative governance, policy instrument, public administration, qualitative methods, Swedish Forest Agency
National Category
Environmental Sciences Political Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-53627DOI: 10.1002/eet.2099ISI: 001175708300001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85186950581OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-53627DiVA, id: diva2:1842625
Funder
Swedish University of Agricultural SciencesSwedish Research Council Formas, 2020-01039Swedish Research Council Formas, 2016‐00786Swedish Research Council Formas, 2013-1650Mistra - The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental ResearchAvailable from: 2024-03-05 Created: 2024-03-05 Last updated: 2024-11-04Bibliographically approved

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