Collaborative Governance
Private Roles for Public Goals in Turbulent Times
Published on 26. August 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
296 pages
978-0-691-15630-9 (ISBN)
Description
All too often government lacks the skill, the will, and the wallet to meet its missions. Schools fall short of the mark while roads and bridges fall into disrepair. Health care costs too much and delivers too little. Budgets bleed red ink as the cost of services citizens want outstrips the taxes they are willing to pay. Collaborative Governance is the first book to offer solutions by demonstrating how government at every level can engage the private sector to overcome seemingly insurmountable problems and achieve public goals more effectively. John Donahue and Richard Zeckhauser show how the public sector can harness private expertise to bolster productivity, capture information, and augment resources. The authors explain how private engagement in public missions--rightly structured and skillfully managed--is not so much an alternative to government as the way smart government ought to operate. The key is to carefully and strategically grant discretion to private entities, whether for-profit or nonprofit, in ways that simultaneously motivate and empower them to create public value.
Drawing on a host of real-world examples-including charter schools, job training, and the resurrection of New York's Central Park--they show how, when, and why collaboration works, and also under what circumstances it doesn't. Collaborative Governance reveals how the collaborative approach can be used to tap the resourcefulness and entrepreneurship of the private sector, and improvise fresh, flexible solutions to today's most pressing public challenges.
Drawing on a host of real-world examples-including charter schools, job training, and the resurrection of New York's Central Park--they show how, when, and why collaboration works, and also under what circumstances it doesn't. Collaborative Governance reveals how the collaborative approach can be used to tap the resourcefulness and entrepreneurship of the private sector, and improvise fresh, flexible solutions to today's most pressing public challenges.
Reviews / Votes
"No one has summed up quite as concisely the transcendent idea behind the deregulation movement of the last fifty years as have Donahue and Zeckhauser: that by carefully granting decision-making authority to private entities, profit and non-profit enterprises alike, government can achieve considerable gains in both efficiency and consent."--David Warsh, Economic Principals "For anybody who has any experience in public life, either as a politician or official, or in the private sector working on government contracts, Collaborative Governance by John Donahue and Richard Zeckhauser is an interesting read."--Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist blog "Public-private collaboration, for better and for worse, is the way of American government. Sometimes this is done very well. Sometimes ... this is done very badly. Elected officials and public managers need to learn to do this more effectively, because that's the way their work will get done. John Donahue and Richard Zeckhauser provide a great starting point to ponder these issues... Through a variety of case studies, they consider what government must do in monitoring and motivating private partners to make such arrangements a success... This book effectively demonstrates that government can increase public value by properly and carefully collaborating with the for-profit and non-profit sectors."--Harold Pollack, Reality-Based Community "Required reading for anyone interested or involved in public policy making to understand the potential value, and risks, of collaborative governance."--Sasha Jesperson, LSE Politics and Policy blog "Donahue and Zeckhauser have written an appealing book that, once again, conceives of collaboration as possible... The scholarship upon which the book is based can not be doubted... The public, non profit, and private sectors will need one another to meet on the basis of respect for the strengths of the other. This book's optimism is a delightful step in that direction."--Jos C. N. Raadschelders, Perspectives on PoliticsMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Jersey
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
5 line illus. 3 tables.
Dimensions
Height: 233 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
458 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-691-15630-9 (9780691156309)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
John D. Donahue | Richard J. Zeckhauser
Collaborative Governance
Private Roles for Public Goals in Turbulent Times
E-Book
06/2015
1st Edition
Princeton University Press
from
€96.95
Available for download
John D. Donahue | Richard J. Zeckhauser
Collaborative Governance
Private Roles for Public Goals in Turbulent Times
Book
03/2011
Princeton University Press
€27.24
Article exhausted; check different version
Persons
John D. Donahue and Richard J. Zeckhauser both teach at the Harvard Kennedy School--Zeckhauser economics and analytics, Donahue public management and business-government relations. They write on related themes, Donahue mostly books (this is his twelfth) while Zeckhauser favors articles (he's done hundreds, several of them seminal). Donahue chairs Harvard's Master in Public Policy program and held senior roles in the Clinton administration. Zeckhauser pioneered the field of policy analysis and is a national-champion bridge player.
Content
Foreword by Stephen Breyer ix Part I: The Promise and Problems of Collaboration Chapter 1: Private Roles for Public Goals 3 Chapter 2: Rationales and Reservations 27 Chapter 3 : he Delegator's Dilemma 45 Part II: Rationales--More, Better, or Both Chapter 4: Collaboration for Productivity 63 Chapter 5: Collaboration for Information 104 Chapter 6: Collaboration for Legitimacy 122 Chapter 7: Collaboration for Resources 156 Part III: The Art of Collaboration Chapter 8: Tasks and Tools 207 Chapter 9: Getting Collaboration Right 240 Chapter 10: Forging the Future: Payoff s and Perils 264 Acknowledgments 289 Index 291