Collaborative Governance: Integrating Management, Politics, and Law

Abstract

Scholars have engaged in an ongoing dialogue about the relationships among management, politics, and law in public administration. Collaborative governance presents new challenges to this dynamic. While scholars have made substantial contributions to our understanding of the design and practice of collaborative governance, others suggest that we lack theory for this emerging body of research. Law is often omitted as a variable. Scholarship generally does not explicitly include collaboration as a public value. This article addresses the dialogue on management, politics, and law with regard to collaborative governance. It provides an overview of the current legal framework for collaborative governance in the United States at the federal, state, and local levels of government and identifies gaps. The institutional analysis and development framework provides a body of theory that incorporates rules and law into research design. The article concludes that future research on collaborative governance should incorporate the legal framework as an important variable and collaboration as a public value.

The Scathingly Brilliant Scholarship of Lisa Blomgren Amsler (Formerly Bingham)

“…Unsatisfied with just speaking to legal scholars, Lisa made similar arguments to public administration (e.g., Amsler, ), and perhaps more importantly, to practitioners. Through her involvement with the Working Group on Legal Frameworks for Public Participation, an effort led by several practitioner organizations, Lisa explained the legal framework and context for voice through participation in local government (Amsler, ) and helped draft a Model State Public Participation Act and A Model Municipal Public Participation Ordinance (Amsler, Huggins, Moore, Stout, & Willis, ).…”

“…To Lisa, the advancements in ADR, collaborative public management, and public participation represented “part of a single phenomenon, namely the changing nature of citizen and stakeholder voice in governance,” and demanded that scholars address “questions of transparency, accountability, and the extent to which delegation adequately constrains administrative action within the rule of law” (Bingham, , p. 273). Thus, Lisa set off to explore, explain, and enhance the legal infrastructure for the new governance (e.g., Amsler, ; Amsler & Nabatchi, ; Bingham, , 2010b, ). She mapped the federal, state, and local laws pertaining to the new governance (e.g., Bingham, ), and generated ideas about how to integrate those laws and “broaden agency authority to innovate through a Collaborative Governance Act (CGA) that defines public participation to include an increasingly rich variety of deliberative and participatory democratic practices” (Bingham, 2010b, p. 297).…”

“…Law is often omitted as a variable. Scholarship generally does not explicitly include collaboration as a public value” (Amsler, , p. 700). Lisa then presented an overview of the current legal framework for collaborative governance in the United States at the federal, state, and local levels of government and identified gaps.…”

“…Lisa then presented an overview of the current legal framework for collaborative governance in the United States at the federal, state, and local levels of government and identified gaps. She concluded that “future research on collaborative governance should incorporate the legal framework as an important variable and collaboration as a public value” (Amsler, , p. 700).…”

The 2017 John Gaus Award Lecture: What If We Took Professionalism Seriously?

“…Green et al (1993), for example, distinguish among professional, constitutive, and normative competence, a three-way distinction that is compatible with the operational (i.e., professional), collective choice (i.e., constitutive), and constitutional (i.e., normative) worlds of action. The correspondence between Green et al (1993) and the IAD framework is strong and therefore could be fruitful for advancing calls for integrating public administration and political science research (Amsler 2016).…”