For example, the definition encompasses collaboration between governments at different levels and hybrid partnerships initiated by the private or community sectors.
For public officials who work in administration and management, collaborative governance can serve as a way of genuinely allowing a wider array of ideas and suggestions in the policy process.
[9] For both public and private sectors, a commitment to collaboration is likely to drive organizational change and affect resource reallocation.
Overall, collaborative governance can lead to mutual learning and shared experiences, while also providing direction for institutional capacity building inside and outside agencies and organizations.
Open structures with loose leadership and membership allow multiple participants to gain access to a fast expanding agenda.
Achieving goals in such a wide agenda becomes more difficult as an increasing number of players struggle to resolve differences and coordinate actions.
Critics argue that collaborative governance does not provide the institutional stability and consistency required, and therefore deters progress.
[11] The work of Ansell and Gash (2008) and Emerson, Nabatchi and Balogh (2012) seeks to understand these issues and challenges and identify the social and process conditions required for effective collaborative governance.
Collaborative governance has been used to address many complex social, environmental and urban planning issues, including: flood crisis management and urban growth management in Australia; community visioning and planning in New Zealand; and public participation in the redesign of the Ground Zero site in New York.
[12] In the UK, the USA and countries across much of Western Europe, governments have attempted to shift the focus towards various forms of co-production with other agencies and sectors and with citizens themselves in order to increase civic participation.
For example, managing the growing number of official and non-official crossings of the US-Mexico border has required input from all levels of US and Mexican governments, multiple government agencies (like U.S. Forest Services and U.S. Border Patrol), land management, and other non-federal agencies for social affairs.
As a result, the U.S. Border Patrol and Forest Services successfully enacted the terms of the 2006 memorandum of understanding, creating inter-agency forums, increasing field coordination and joint operations, and constructing fences and other tactical infrastructure.