Renegotiating state-third sector relations through collaborative partnerships: The case of reception services for asylum-seeking children in Gothenburg, Sweden

Unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied minors entering Sweden in 2015, alongside other challenging social issues, have contributed to renegotiating collaborative forms of local governance in the country. This has resulted in an emergence of collaborative partnerships between civil society and public actors (Idéburna offentliga partnerskap or IOP), as real alternative to the market-based contracts and traditional state grants. This article addresses IOP from a collaborative governance perspective and questions if and how it may cope with a major and well known governance challenge, that of balancing the different roles and principles of public and civil society realms, so as to sustain an effective and legitimate cross-sectorial partnership. It asks, may and how an IOP enable civil society organisations a more active role in co-designing and co-implementing local welfare services with public sector actors without undermining their distinctiveness? The arguments are based on a case study of, at the time, the largest IOP in Sweden initiated for early reception of unaccompanied minors in Gothenburg city. The partnership is assessed against a normative theoretical framework of balanced state-third sector relations. The results suggest that IOPs, under certain conditions, may serve as ‘spaces of hope’ for more balanced power relations in local governance models.