Collaborative Governance in Local Government’s Policy Process: A Comparative Case Study on General University Hospital Hosting Initiatives in Yeosu and Gunsan

Drawing on Ansell and Gash(2007)’s Collaborative Governance model, this study attempts to explain how and why a city succeeds in making a policy solution in the seemingly non-partisan, re-distributive tasks such as inviting a General University Hospital to a locality. A basically identical policy initiatives taken by two mostly similar port cities (Yeosu and Gunsan) in Cholla region, Korea are compared. Collaborations among local power elites, university hospital leaders and local civil society organizations are analyzed through both elite interviews and observations on the flow of events. Efforts by Gunsan was successful while that by Yeosu was not. Itemized analyses find that the policy process in both cities commonly show low-level collaborative governance, especially in the domains of accountability and responsiveness. That in Gunsan, nevertheless, shows a comparatively higher-level collaboration among the actors in the domains of participation, autonomy, network, openness, trust and institutionalization. The researchers interpret it as the key to the success. In conclusion they emphasize both voluntary collaboration, trust-building and network-making among actors in the process.