242 9: Th eories of Governance
the nature of relationships between institutions, and between institutions and
citizens (Koppell 2010, 2008). GGOs lack formal and uniform accountability
standards. Moreover, identifying the relevant actors is less obvious for more tra-
ditional public-private partnerships. With GGOs, authority is granted without
an agreed-upon sense of legitimacy; GGOs “are structured to manage the ten-
sion” between authority and legitimacy (Koppell 2008, 199). Traditional notions
of democratic accountability based on the preferences of citizens and elected
representatives are likely to be inadequate when studying GGOs. Koliba, Mills,
and Zia’s theory (2011) of accountability includes eight diff erent actors to whom
governance networks should be held accountable. Questions remain, however,
as to whether all eight actors can agree upon the sources of accountability. In at
least one instance, to resolve “accountability gaps” between the public and pri-
vate sector over local public fi nance, what was advocated were more government
and more bureaucracy (Howell-Moroney and Hall 2011). Contrary to NPM,
government maintains a prominent role in this governance network. Th e chal-
lenge for governance scholars is to build a theory that allows for empirical test-
ing of the appropriate balance between public and private involvement (which
will most likely be policy specifi c), as well as the implications of increasing (de-
creasing) public-sector accountability and decreasing (increasing) private-sector
accountability.
Collaborative Governance Th eory
Given the permeation of public problems across jurisdictional lines, as well as
the complexity of certain services, bureaucrats are operating “without borders”
(Frederickson 2007), and relying more on nongovernmental agencies for assis-
tance. Frederickson’s end of geography thesis mentioned earlier is based on his
“observation that there is extensive interjurisdictional collaboration or gover-
nance and a call for further governance or collaboration.” On this point, within
governance theory, increasing attention has shift ed to the notion of “collaborative
governance.” Emerson, Nabatchi, and Balogh (2012) defi ne collaborative gover-
nance as:
the processes and structures of public policy decision making and management
that engage people constructively across the boundaries of public agencies, levels
of government, and/or the public, private and civic spheres in order to carry out
a public purpose that could not otherwise be accomplished. (2)As the authors note, this extends the concept beyond the public sector as orig-
inally defi ned by Ansell and Gash (2008) and is more line with Frederickson’s
end-of-geography thesis. Indeed, Frederickson’s work provides a useful starting
point for the development of a theory of collaborative governance based on four
characteristics and qualities of collaboration: