Collaborative governance is a process and a form of governance

Governance

Governance is the act of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists of either a separate process or part of management or leadership processes...

 in which participants (parties, agencies, stakeholders) representing different interests are collectively empowered to make a policy

Policy

A policy is typically described as a principle or rule to guide decisions and achieve rational outcome. The term is not normally used to denote what is actually done, this is normally referred to as either procedure or protocol...

 decision or make recommendations to a final decision-maker who will not substantially change consensus recommendations from the group.

Governance can employ different degrees of public consultation

Public consultation

Public consultation, or simply consultation, is a regulatory process by which the public's input on matters affecting them is sought. Its main goals are in improving the efficiency, transparency and public involvement in large-scale projects or laws and policies...

 and participation, ranging from non-participation (the community is unaware of any decisions taken), informing (telling the community what is planned and to understand problems, alternatives and solutions), consultation

Consultation

The Consultation served as the provisional government of Mexican Texas from November 1835 through March 1836 during the Texas Revolution. Tensions rose in Texas during early 1835 as throughout Mexico federalists began to oppose the increasingly centralist policies of the government. In the...

 (to obtain public feedback on analysis, alternatives and/or decisions), collaboration

Collaboration

Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...

 (to partner with the public to develop alternatives, identify preferred solutions, and make decisions), to empowerment (placing final decision-making into the hands of the public). Collaborative governance is governance with characteristics of both collaboration and empowerment.

Some models of collaborative governance have been criticized as allowing ad hoc deliberation to drown out minority opposition.

See also

• Consensus government
  Consensus government
  Consensus government is a form of consensus democracy government in Canada in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, as well as Nunatsiavut, an autonomous area in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador....
  
  
• Open source governance
  Open source governance
  Open-source governance is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles in order to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document. Legislation is...
  
  
• Collaborative leadership
  Collaborative leadership
  The term Collaborative Leadership describes an emerging body of theory and management practice which is focused on the leadership skills and attributes needed to deliver results across organizational boundaries...
  
  
• Collaborative e-democracy
  Collaborative e-democracy
  Collaborative e-democracy is a democratic conception which combines key features of direct democracy, representative democracy, and e-democracy...
  
  

External links

• Collaborative governance on the website of the Metagovernment