Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are often regarded as the solution for time and budget overruns in large infrastructural projects, but not all are successful. This raises the question of what really makes PPPs work. Focusing on the role of relational aspects, this article examines the degree to which trust and managerial activities correlate to the perceived performance and cooperation process in PPP projects. A multilevel analysis of survey data from 144 respondents involved in Dutch PPP projects shows that both trust and management correlate significantly to the perceived performance of these projects. Moreover, trust is associated with a good cooperation process.

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This article examines to what degree citizens and societal stakeholders are involved in Public–Private Partnership (PPP) projects, what factors account for their involvement, and what the effects are on the performance and innovativeness of the projects. This research, based on a survey in 2014 consisting of 144 respondents involved in Dutch PPP projects, shows that although trustful relationships between actors enhance the inclusion of societal parties, the presence of a contract that allows for flexibility leads to more citizen involvement. Furthermore, we found that the involvement of stakeholders leads to more innovative projects but not necessarily to better performing projects.

This study explores the growing interest of governments in co-production and self-organisation by examining the framing of roles and responsibilities of citizens and professionals in care reforms. As in many other western countries, the Dutch welfare state is subject to major reforms, shifting responsibilities back towards society. A qualitative content analysis of policy letters of the Dutch national government shows that newer roles (citizen-asco-producers) do not substitute traditional roles (citizen-as-clients), but constitute a new layer resulting in an expansion and diversification of roles for regular providers. Activating, supporting and partnering with citizens are framed as new competences of professionals.

This article compares views of policy officials and members of community-based collectives on the ideal role of government in processes of community self-organization. By using Q methodology, we presented statements on four different governance perspectives: traditional public administration, New Public Management, network governance, and selfgovernance. Perceptions differ about how government should respond to the trend of community self-organization and, in particular, about the primacy of the relationship. Whereas some public servants and collectives favor hands-off involvement of policy officials, others show a preference for a more direct and interactive relation between government and community-based collectives. In general, neither of the two groups have much appreciation for policy instruments based on performance indicators, connected to the New Public Management perspective or strong involvement of politicians, connected the traditional public administration perspective. This article contributes to the discussion of how practitioners see and combine governance perspectives and serve to enable dialogs between practitioners.

The literature on collaborative governance has generated several comprehensive models detailing the conditions which collaborations must meet to achieve collaborative performance. The importance of each separate conditionsuch as the presence of incentives to participate, appropriate institutional designs, or facilitative leadershiphas been validated in various studies. How all of these conditions interact with each other, and whether all of the conditions need to be present to achieve performance, is less well understood. Leveraging the rich resource of the newly created Collaborative Governance Case Database, this article explores the different pathways to performance used by 26 local collaborations. The analysis shows that the presence of strong incentives for partners to collaborate is a crucial condition for success; almost all performing cases shared this starting point. Performance was then achieved by combining strong incentives with either clear institutional design (e.g. explicit rules, transparent decision-making) or with intensive collaborative processes (e.g. face-to-face dialogue, knowledge sharing). This analysis shows that the current models for collaborative governance can serve as roadmaps, laying out all of the different conditions than may be important, but that collaborations can follow different routes to reach their objectives.

This article critically examines strategies used by boundary spanners to align the institutional logics of bureaucracy, management and networks in citizenstate interactions. In-depth interviews conducted within the Dutch municipality of Rotterdam reveal that boundary spanners use entrepreneurial, mediation, and hierarchical strategies to align institutional logics. By providing insight into the strategic toolbox of boundary spanners and the perceived effectiveness of these tools, this article enhances empirical understanding of how the interplay between older and newer institutional logics within public organisations takes shape and how boundary spanners make strategic use of hierarchy to overcome institutional barriers.

The topic of government–nonprofit collaboration continues to be much-discussed in the literature. However, there has been little consensus on whether and how collaborating with government is beneficial for the performance of community-based nonprofits. This article examines three dominant theoretical interpretations of the relationship between collaboration and performance: collaboration is necessary for the performance of nonprofits; the absence of collaboration is necessary for the performance of nonprofits; and the effect of collaboration is contingent on the nonprofits’ bridging and bonding network ties. Building on the ideas of governance, nonprofit, and social capital in their respective literature, this article uses set-theoretic methods (fsQCA) to conceptualize and test their relationship. Results show the pivotal role of the nonprofit’s network ties in mitigating the effects of either collaborating or abstaining from collaborating with government. Particularly, the political network ties of nonprofits are crucial to explaining the relationship between collaboration and performance. The evidence demonstrates the value of studying collaboration processes in context.