Private citizens, stakeholder groups, or governments? Perceived legitimacy and participation in water collaborative governance

Abstract

Collaborative governance (CG), involving partnership between governmental and non-governmental actors, has emerged as an alternative to traditional government (TG). While CG may be seen as a strategy for increasing legitimacy, we know little about how the public evaluates inclusion of private citizens and stakeholder groups in decision-making processes. Following the methodology of Cain et al. in their 2020 study of transportation and drawing on legitimacy theory, we develop a series of "components" of legitimacy. We then use these to test how respondents perceive the legitimacy of different institutional arrangements through a survey experiment on a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. Our results reveal that regardless of board function, respondents perceived CG as more legitimate than TG. Among different types of CG, they prefer the inclusion of private citizens over stakeholder groups, adding empirical data to theoretical debate over how and under what conditions CG may increase the legitimacy of public governance.

Beyond engagement: Enhancing equity in collaborative water governance

“…Information exchange; co-production of knowledge; more resource contributions; greater legitimacy; improved fit of governance Difficult to achieve truly inclusive representation; entrenched conflict and reduced decision-making efficiency Berardo, 2013;Fung, 2006;Guerrero et al, 2015;Hui & Smith, 2022;Huxham & Macdonald, 1992;Kim & Siddiki, 2018;Lasker & Weiss, 2003;Lee & Baggio, 2021;Mewhirter et al, 2019;Michels, 2011;Muro & Jeffrey, 2008;Purdy, 2012;Reed, 2008;Samuelson et Robertson, 2014;Fishkin, 2009;Heikkila & Gerlak, 2013;Hicks, 2002;Kallis et al, 2009;Koontz, 2014;Leach et al, 2014;Levesque et al, 2017;Muro & Jeffrey, 2012;Nabatchi, 2010; Kenney, 2000;Koebele, 2015;Koontz & Thomas, 2006;Margerum, 2011;Scott et al, 2019;Ulibarri & Scott, 2017 While engaging diverse actors has long been a central goal of collaborative governance, it provides a necessary, but not sufficient foundation for supporting equity. Collaborative processes that achieve broad recognitional equity may still remain unknown or inaccessible to key actors affected by a problem, creating intentional or unintentional exclusion (Karambelkar & Gerlak, 2020;Purdy, 2012).…”

“…Diverse actors may also contribute resources, whether financial, informational, human, or otherwise, to develop or achieve something beyond what a single organization or agency could do alone (Huxham & Macdonald, 1992; Lasker & Weiss, 2003; Silvia, 2011). In addition to supporting democratic policy making by including multiple perspectives (Dupuy & Defacqz, 2022; Leach, 2006; Michels, 2011), involving diverse actors may increase participants' perceptions of the process's legitimacy and fairness, as well as their support for policy outputs (Berardo, 2013; Donahue & Zeckhauser, 2011; Hui & Smith, 2022; Lee & Esteve, 2022; Söderberg et al, 2021). Finally, engaging diverse actors can help overcome challenges with managing boundary‐spanning issues by increasing coordination and improving the “fit” of governance (Angst et al, 2018; Guerrero et al, 2015; Ingold et al, 2019; Lee & Baggio, 2021).…”

To Be, to Do, to Share: The Triple-Loop of Water Governance to Improve Urban Water Resilience—Testing the Benidorm’ Experience, Spain

“…These issues tend to consider that water and society make and remake each other over space and time, being changeset and learning part of the process [37]. Collaborative governance, the process of engaging multiple stakeholders across scales and sectors to cooperate for joint policy and management, has emerged as an alternative to traditional government and presents an opportunity to understand water management barriers and weaknesses from stakeholders' behavior [38]. Along the same lines, collaborative arrangements aim at identifying common problems, sharing information, and building consensus on outputs in the form of policies, management plans, and on-ground action [39].…”

Editorial introduction: Charting new theoretical horizons here and elsewhere

“…The overwhelming response, with over 30 high-quality articles received, speaks volumes about the enthusiasm and collaborative spirit within our policy research community.Turning our attention to the research articles featured in this issue, we begin with three studies focused on the policy process within the United States. These articles offer novel insights into lobbying responsiveness to congressional agendas (e.g., Dwidar, 2022;Sheingate, 2022), the application of punctuated equilibrium theory to partisan polarization (e.g., Brandenberger et al, 2022;Fagan, 2023), and the exploration of the policy acknowledgment gap in social program perceptions (e.g., Hui & Smith, 2022;Jacobs et al, 2022).…”