P26 Collaborative Governance in an Era of Polycrisis

Panel chairs

Corresponding chairs

• Yixin Dai, Tsinghua University yixindai@tsinghua.edu.cn

review group chair:

• Hui Li, University of Hong Kong lihuipa@hku.hk

Coordinators and co-chairs

• Shui-Yan Tang, University of Southern California
• Asim Zia, University of Vermont
• Yixin Dai, Tsinghua University

Panel Topic Description

Collaborative governance has become an influential perspective for understanding how governments and stakeholders jointly address complex public problems that transcend organizational, sectoral, and jurisdictional boundaries. As research has expanded across disciplines, policy domains, and political systems, collaborative governance has also been conceptualized and operationalized in increasingly diverse ways. At the same time, growing attention to governance networks, collective intelligence, social-ecological-technological systems (SETS), and cross-sector collaboration raises new questions about how collaborative governance should be understood and how it works. This panel brings these conversations together around an overarching question: What constitutes collaborative governance, through what mechanisms does it generate governance capacity, and how are these processes shaped by socio-technological, institutional and policy contexts?

First, what constitutes collaborative governance? Collaborative governance is frequently discussed alongside collaboration, coordination, collaborative networks, network governance, partnerships, platforms, and collaborative governance regimes, despite important differences among these concepts. The panel invites renewed attention to their conceptual boundaries and constitutive conditions. When does coordination become collaboration, and when does a network or partnership become collaborative governance? What institutional, relational, or processual elements are necessary for collaboration to emerge and persist? Conversely, examining collaboration failure can help identify which elements are indispensable and under what conditions collaborative arrangements break down.

Second, how does collaborative governance generate governance capacity? Collaborative governance requires participating actors not simply to connect, but to mobilize and integrate diverse forms of knowledge, reconcile competing interests, learn collectively, and coordinate action. The panel tries to examine the mechanisms that enable or constrain these processes. Particular attention is given to how network structures, institutional arrangements, power asymmetries, leadership, trust, and SETS shape knowledge integration, collective learning, shared decision-making, and adaptive problem solving. This perspective connects the institutional architecture of collaboration with the processes through which collaborative governance generates collective intelligence and governance capacity. Particular attention is also invited to the role of artificial intelligence, digital platforms, data infrastructures, and decision-support technologies in shaping collaborative processes. These developments raise important questions regarding how human and machine intelligence interact within governance systems, how knowledge is generated and validated, and whether emerging technologies enhance or constrain collective learning, adaptation, legitimacy, and accountability.

Third, how does context shape collaborative governance? Collaborative arrangements are embedded within different political institutions, administrative traditions, policy sectors, and distributions of authority and resources. Rather than assuming a universal form of collaborative governance, the panel encourages examination of how institutional and policy contexts enable, constrain, or transform collaboration. Cross-sectoral and cross-system comparisons can reveal whether apparently similar arrangements constitute collaborative governance, networked coordination, or other forms of interorganizational governance. Contextual variation therefore provides not only settings in which collaborative governance can be studied, but also empirical grounds for refining its conceptual boundaries and identifying the conditions under which its mechanisms operate.

Relevance to the Conference Theme

Polycrisis confronts public institutions with interconnected wicked problems that cannot be effectively addressed within individual organizations, sectors, jurisdictions, or established areas of expertise. Climate change, public health emergencies, social-ecological-technological disruption, geopolitical fragmentation, and other systemic risks simultaneously create demands for coordination across boundaries and for the integration of dispersed knowledge, resources, and authority. Collaborative governance is therefore increasingly important as both an analytical perspective and a governance choice for addressing complex public problems. The emergence of artificial intelligence, digital platforms, and data-intensive governance systems further expands the importance of collaborative governance research. Public institutions increasingly operate in environments where decision-making depends on interactions among human actors, algorithmic systems, ecological conditions, and technological infrastructures. Understanding how collaborative governance generates collective intelligence within these social-ecological-technological systems has become a central challenge for contemporary public management scholarship and practice.

Yet the growing demand for collaboration makes conceptual and methodological precision more, rather than less, important. If collaborative governance cannot be clearly distinguished from networks, coordination, partnerships, or other forms of interorganizational governance, it becomes difficult to determine when collaboration is an appropriate governance response, what capacities it can realistically generate, or why collaborative arrangements succeed or fail.

The panel responds to this challenge by moving from recognizing conceptual ambiguity toward evidence-based clarification and refinement. Connecting conceptual boundaries with governance mechanisms and contextual variation enables scholars to examine which elements of collaborative governance are fundamental, which are contingent, and how their effects change across institutional settings. In doing so, the panel seeks to strengthen cumulative theory building while providing a firmer basis for selecting, designing, and evaluating collaborative arrangements in practice. Such foundations are particularly important when governments must decide not simply whether to collaborate, but what form of collaboration is appropriate for addressing different wicked problems under conditions of polycrisis.