Collaborative Governance: Integrating Management, Politics, and Law

• Author: Lisa Blomgren Amsler
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12605
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Date: 01 September 2016

700 Public Administration Review • September | October 2016

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 76, Iss. 5, pp. 700–711. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12605.

Lisa Blomgren Amsler (formerly

Bingham) is the Keller-Runden Professor

of Public Service in the School of Public

and Environmental Affairs, Indiana

University Bloomington and Saltman Senior

Scholar in the William S. Boyd School of

Law, University of Nevada Las Vegas. An

elected fellow of the National Academy of

Public Administration and recipient of the

American Bar Association Section of Dispute

Resolution Award for Outstanding Scholarly

Work, her research addresses collaborative

governance, public engagement, public law,

and dispute resolution.

E-mail : lbingham@indiana.edu

Public

Administration

and the

Disciplines

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.

Practitioner Points

• In designing public engagement and collaborative processes, public managers must consider the legal

framework that governs their action.

• Relevant law varies across the federal, state, and local arenas and shapes design choices.

• Collaboration itself is an important value to the public and stakeholders.

• Public managers must acquire an understanding of basic constitutional and administrative law to plan

effective public engagement and collaborative governance.

• In seeking to innovate, public managers should consider what the relevant legal framework is and consult

with legal counsel. However, they should also consider the likelihood that in-house counsel may be risk

averse.

• When innovation presents a case of first impression, one for which there is no case law, managers should ask

not whether they can innovate by using participatory and collaborative processes but how to do it consistent

with their legal authority.

P ublic administration scholars have engaged in

an ongoing dialogue about the relationships

among management, politics, and law in public

agencies’ work (Christensen, Goerdel, and Nicholson-

Crotty 2011 ; Rosenbloom 1983 , 2013 ). Collaborative

governance presents a new challenge for this dialogue.

As an umbrella term, it describes various system

designs and processes through which public agencies

work together with the private sector, civil society,

and the public to identify problems, issues, and

potential solutions; design new policy frameworks for

addressing them; implement programs; and enforce

policies.

Public law is an important variable that is often

missing in collaborative governance scholarship.

Moreover, some scholars question whether adequate

theory exists to motivate public administration ’ s

collaborative governance research program

(Rosenbloom 2013 ). Additionally, the public

administration literature generally has not explicitly

addressed collaboration as a public value.

This article reviews the current dialogue on

management, politics, and law as a framework for

public administration research and reviews the role

of law and public values. It suggests that a body of

theory, the institutional analysis and development

(IAD) framework (Ostrom 2005 , 2011 ), can frame

our collaborative governance research explicitly

around law as rules. The article argues for explicitly

including collaboration as a public value. It provides

an overview of the existing legal framework for

collaborative governance at the federal, state, and local

levels of government and identifies gaps and public

values reflected in administrative laws. Administrative

Rosemary O’Leary, Editor

Lisa Blomgren Amsler

Indiana University, Bloomington

Collaborative Governance:

Integrating Management, Politics, and Law