Understanding Collaborative Governance from the Structural Choice - Politics, IAD, and Transaction Cost Perspectives

Defined as the process of establishing, steering, facilitating, operating, and monitoring cross-sectoral organizational arrangements to address public policy problems, collaborative governance has emerged as an institutional form valued by both professional and research audiences across a growing range of policy arenas. Practice has preceded theory, however, and we know far more about particulars than how to explain from broader theoretical perspectives the emergence and viability of collaborative governance. This paper explores how three well established and related theoretical perspectives — structural choice politics, the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, and transaction cost analysis — can be used to bring theoretical clarity to the phenomenon of collaborative governance. In addition to suggesting research propositions from the three perspectives, the paper also proposes directions for future research.