Collaborative Platforms as a Governance Strategy

TLDR

Collaborative governance is increasingly seen as a proactive policy instrument that can be scaled from one local context to many. The article argues that viewing collaborative governance through the lens of collaborative platforms offers valuable insights into its use as a generic policy tool. Collaborative platforms are defined as organizations or programs equipped with dedicated competences and resources to facilitate the creation, adaptation, and success of multiple or ongoing collaborative projects or networks. The study finds that strategic intermediation and design rules generate positive feedback loops that help platforms adapt and succeed, and that these platforms scale collaborative governance by creating modular units that can be franchised.

Abstract

Collaborative governance is increasingly viewed as a proactive policy instrument, one in which the strategy of collaboration can be deployed on a larger scale and extended from one local context to another. This article suggests that the concept of collaborative platforms provides useful insights into this strategy of treating collaborative governance as a generic policy instrument. Building on an organization-theoretic approach, collaborative platforms are defined as organizations or programs with dedicated competences and resources for facilitating the creation, adaptation and success of multiple or ongoing collaborative projects or networks. Working between the theoretical literature on platforms and empirical cases of collaborative platforms, the article finds that strategic intermediation and design rules are important for encouraging the positive feedback effects that help collaborative platforms adapt and succeed. Collaborative platforms often promote the scaling-up of collaborative governance by creating modular collaborative units—a strategy of collaborative franchising.