by Sarah Brown and Allegra Fullerton
This quarter’s Policy & Politics highlights collection brings together three of our most popular articles recently published, that extend and deepen our theoretical and empirical understanding of collaborative governance. Each article advances our knowledge by engaging critically with key debates in the field, whether through conceptual synthesis, empirical exploration, or theoretical refinement. Together, they contribute to our understanding of the complexities and contingencies of collaboration in contemporary governance settings.
Our first article, A systematic review of conflict within collaborative governance, investigates how, when and where conflict arises within collaborative governance processes and the strategies used to address it. Authors Jacob Torfing, Reza Payandeh, Seyed Mostafa Jalili and Masoud Banafi systematically review 62 studies using the PRISMA-S framework examining conflicts’ scales, stages, and domains and addressing the outputs, outcomes, and long-term impacts of conflict management interventions. Their analysis reveals that conflicts are most commonly encountered at the local level and during the initial phases of collaborative efforts, particularly in environmental governance. The authors propose a typology of six over-arching conflict-resolution strategies and underscore collaborative governance’s effectiveness at resolving minor disagreements, while highlighting its challenges in managing more fundamental, value-based conflicts. By positioning conflict as an inherently and potentially productive part of collaborative processes, the article questions prevailing assumptions of harmony in collaborative governance, and calls for greater theoretical attention to the conditions under which disagreement may be generative rather than destructive.
In our second article, Metagoverning collaborative networks: a cumulative power perspective, authors Alexander L.Q. Chen and Oda Hustad ask how metagovernors can exercise power without undermining the collaborative capacities of the networks they aim to steer. Drawing on a case study of sustainable housing initiatives in Denmark, the authors develop a cumulative power perspective to explain how power is exercised across three modalities of metagovernance: outputs, inputs and processes. Rather than viewing each action in isolation, they argue that it is the cumulative and processual effects of these modalities, through repeated and aligned interventions at different stages, that shape which interests and outcomes are ultimately privileges within collaborative networks. The article emphasises that power can be both constructive and repressive, and that it is best understood as emerging incrementally through the structural privileging of particular interests and outcomes. Importantly, the article moves beyond binary framings of metagovernance as either facilitative or coercive to offer a more nuanced account of how power operates through iterative interactions and framing effects. In this way, the article offers a clear contribution to our understanding of the field in two key ways. Firstly, by refining the conceptual tools available for analysing metagovernance and power asymmetries in collaborative settings; and secondly, by illustrating how the legitimacy of metagovernance depends not only on formal authority but also on the perceived alignment of interests within collaborative processes.
Our third article, Using bricolage and robustness theory to explain the dynamism of collaborative governance, by authors Martin B. Carstensen and Eva Sørensen, develops a conceptual framework for analysing collaborative governance as a dynamic, non-linear process. Drawing on bricolage theory and robustness theory, the authors argue that collaboration often unfolds through loosely coupled, situated practices rather than stable, consensus-driven processes and instead foregrounds the role of agency, multi-vocality, and adaptive improvisation. They contend that participants engage in ‘tangled moments of bricolage’, using whatever tools, relationships and narratives are at hand to sustain collaboration in the face of changing conditions. The article challenges life-cycle models that assume collaborative initiatives move predictably from formation to institutionalisation, and instead proposes a vocabulary for capturing volatility, multi-vocality and heterogeneity in collaborative practice. This contribution is particularly valuable in pushing the field to better theorise the temporal and structural discontinuities that characterise real-world collaboration. It also invites further empirical research that treats flexibility, improvisation and adaptive learning not as anomalies but as central features of collaborative governance.
Together, these three articles enhance our understanding of collaborative governance by highlighting its dynamic, conflict-laden, and power-infused nature. They reveal that collaboration is not inherently stable or harmonious but is instead a contested, evolving process shaped by shifting actor composition, diverse and sometimes conflicting purposes, and flexible distributed structures. Conflict, rather than being a mere obstacle, is portrayed as a vital source of creativity and innovation when constructively managed, though deep-rooted or systemic disagreements remain a key challenge. The articles also foreground the nuanced role of power, especially how meta-governance can simultaneously enable and constrain agency within collaborative networks. These articles open new avenues for critical inquiry and provide a robust foundation for future theoretical development in this important area of research.
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🆓 Access the full collection for free from 31 July to 31 October 2025 via the article links below or in the text above.
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The articles featured in this blogpost are free to access via the links below from 31 July to 31 October 2025.
A systematic review of conflict within collaborative governance
Jacob Torfing, Reza Payandeh, Seyed Mostafa Jalili, and Masoud Banafi
Metagoverning collaborative networks: a cumulative power perspective
Alexander L.Q. Chen and Oda Hustad
Using bricolage and robustness theory to explain the dynamism of collaborative governance
Martin B. Carstensen and Eva Sørensen
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