Jacob Torfing

• Roskilde University

This chapter has three objectives. The first is to show that while co-production was originally tied to service production, co-creation has broader applications in the field of public governance and involves a broader range of actors and activities. The second objective is to demonstrate how the co-creation concept both builds on and extends the co...

Theoretical and empirical studies praise the role of collaborative governance in spurring green transition, but we still know little about how competing constellations of governance factors can support local collaboration between public and private actors. This article uses Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 22 local cases of the collaborative gov...

The concept of robustness has received increasing scholarly attention regarding public policy and governance, where it has enhanced our understanding of how policies and governance are adapted and innovated in response to disruptive events, challenges, and demands associated with heightened societal turbulence. Yet, we know little about the robustn...

To better understand why bureaucracy is still going strong despite a century of scorn, this article asks: How has the bureaucratic governance paradigm managed to achieve its ideational robustness in the face of consecutive waves of criticism and societal challenges? This question is answered by studying the combination of a broad range of ideationa...

This article contributes to public administration research on collaborative governance in partnerships by exploring local efforts to metagovern a multi‐layered interorganizational collaboration between a city and a university. Hence, to further explore the prospect for developing city–university partnerships (CUP) into local platforms for the co‐cr...

This Element aims to build, promote, and consolidate a new social science research agenda by defining and exploring the concepts of turbulence and robustness, and subsequently demonstrating the need for robust governance in turbulent times. Turbulence refers to the unpredictable dynamics that public governance is currently facing in the wake of the...

There is an increasing demand for new and better measurement tools that can help researchers, policy-makers and program managers to assess collaborative efforts to enhance public innovation in order to solve complex problems and enhance the creation of public value. Building on a research project that developed and tested a criteria-based assessmen...

Co-creation has received a growing attention in the public sector as a tool for mobilizing resources, spurring public innovation, and enhancing democratic legitimacy. Reaping the fruits of co-creation largely depends on the attempts made by local leaders to facilitate effective collaboration, overcome emerging problems and obstacles, and cope with...

This article aims to initiate a conversation about the democratic quality of co-creation. There is growing interest in co-creation as a tool for mobilizing societal resources, enhancing creative problem-solving, and building broad-based ownership for public solutions. While researchers have focused on the contribution of co-creation to improving th...

Efforts made by cities to enhance their vitality are often hampered by local councilors failing to set the political agenda, define pressing problems, and design and implement solutions that spur social cohesion, cultural creativity, and sustainable development. Experimentation with new forms of interactive political leadership may offer a solution...

Transformations of public governance, organization, and leadership are often propelled by the import, diffusion, and onboarding of new magic concepts promising to cure existing problems and to pave the way for a golden future. This article shows how the magic concept of “co-creation” entered the public sector in Norway, was spread across public org...

På en tragisk baggrund viser dette studie, at COVID-19-pandemien har været katalysator for innovationer i både velfærdsløsninger og den danske offentlige sektors maskinrum. På baggrund af såvel kvantitative som kvalitative data beskriver artiklen dels de nye velfærdsløsningers karakter og oplevede effekt i forhold til udsatte borgere, dels en række...

Against a tragic background, this study shows that the COVID-19 pandemic has catalyzed positive innovations in both welfare solutions as well as in public governance solutions of the Danish public sector. Drawing on qualitative as well as quantitative data, this article outlines the character and perceived effects of new welfare solutions among vul...

This introduction to the symposium on “Robust politics and governance in turbulent times”; examines how different governance paradigms have conceptualized the relationship between order and disorder and stability and change. We selectively focus on two prominent and well‐established paradigms—public bureaucracy and network governance—and then contr...

Persistent efforts to meet the demand for cross‐organizational collaboration and trust‐based management have been halted by a mixture of bureaucratic inertia and entrenched New Public Management thinking. This article explores whether the COVID‐crisis has broken the reform deadlock. Based on a handful of recent surveys and interviews conducted by D...

Collaborative governance arrangements are frequently criticized for achieving collaboration at the expense of legitimacy and accountability. We explore the conditions under which legitimacy and accountability can occur in collaborative governance, ultimately aiming to discover whether collaborative arrangements can 'have it all', simultaneously bei...

The paper critically reviews the consequences of a bifurcation of Political Science and Public Administration. This divorce of two closely related academic fields has removed political explanations to key developments in the public service from Public Administration research and thus it tends to provide a partial view of the reality that it seeks t...

The public sector frequently confronts a heightened societal turbulence triggered by an increasing number of unpredictable and disruptive economic, political and environmental crises. How can the public sector respond to this challenge? This article argues, first, that to continue to provide relevant solutions, public governance must be robust in t...

This article has a twofold aim. First, inspired by collaborative governance theory, the article develops an analytical framework built around three ideal co‐creation strategies utilized by city governments for building capacity and addressing urban climate solutions. Second, this co‐creation framework is applied to a comparative case study of clima...

IMPACT Cities around the world are assuming responsibility for solving the climate crisis, and this bold endeavour calls for the co-creation of innovative green solutions. To be successful, co-creation requires the exercise of a particular type of co-creation leadership. To grasp the peculiarity of this leadership type, this article derives a set o...

Building on recent public administration research on service coproduction and cocreation, this article draws out the democratic potential of new forms of collaborative governance between the democratic state and civil society. Within democratic theory, cocreation has many similarities with the concept of deliberative mini-publics, but it goes beyon...

Governance researchers have repeatedly discussed how to make public governance more accountable given the relatively ‘thin’ accountability of representative government. Recent decades have seen the growth of new, compensatory forms of accountability. However, these measures do not seem have satisfied the demands for strengthening public sector acco...

In this programmatic essay, we argue that public governance scholarship would benefit from developing a self-conscious and cohesive strand of “positive” scholarship, akin to social science subfields like positive psychology, positive organizational studies, and positive evaluation. We call for a program of research devoted to uncovering the factors...

As a group of fifteen scholars from different sub-fields, countries, and generations, we argue that public administration would benefit from launching a self-conscious and cohesive strand of ‘positive’ scholarship, akin to social science subfields like positive psychology, positive organisational studies, and positive evaluation. We call for a prog...

We need new governance solutions to help us improve public policies and services, solve complex societal problems, strengthen social communities and reinvigorate democracy. By changing how government engages with citizens and stakeholders, co-creation provides an attractive and feasible approach to governance that goes beyond the triptych of public...

This chapter aims to open the black box of co-creation, look at its constituent parts and inner mechanics, identify the drivers of and barriers to different parts of the process, and highlight the tools that may support and facilitate the co-creation of public value. Hence, to provide a baseline for subsequent analysis, it establishes an analytical...

We need new governance solutions to help us improve public policies and services, solve complex societal problems, strengthen social communities and reinvigorate democracy. By changing how government engages with citizens and stakeholders, co-creation provides an attractive and feasible approach to governance that goes beyond the triptych of public...

We need new governance solutions to help us improve public policies and services, solve complex societal problems, strengthen social communities and reinvigorate democracy. By changing how government engages with citizens and stakeholders, co-creation provides an attractive and feasible approach to governance that goes beyond the triptych of public...

We need new governance solutions to help us improve public policies and services, solve complex societal problems, strengthen social communities and reinvigorate democracy. By changing how government engages with citizens and stakeholders, co-creation provides an attractive and feasible approach to governance that goes beyond the triptych of public...

Transforming the way that public governance is produced and delivered is difficult given the combination of bureaucratic politics and institutional path-dependence. To imagine whether it is still possible, this chapter looks at how public leaders can transform public institutions through intentional reform and what kind of change they must bring ab...

This chapter provides the conceptual foundations for discussing the process and impact of co-creation as a mode of governance as developed in subsequent chapters. To do this, the chapter traces the genealogy of the notion of co-creation, discussing how it has become increasingly central to social science research, and defining the concept in ways t...

Along with the potential benefits and advantages, co-creation presents a series of dilemmas that may hamper the expansion of co-creation as a core principle of governance. In addition, co-creation has a dark side that we seldom talk about. Finally, co-creation may jeopardize cherished norms and values of liberal democracy. Our attempt to elevate co...

This chapter takes issue with idea that governance is produced in and through a linear chain of command and seeks to replace this with an ecosystem perspective that appreciates co-created governance. Equipped with this new perspective on public governance, the chapters explores the empirical prevalence of co-creation in different policy sectors and...

We need new governance solutions to help us improve public policies and services, solve complex societal problems, strengthen social communities and reinvigorate democracy. By changing how government engages with citizens and stakeholders, co-creation provides an attractive and feasible approach to governance that goes beyond the triptych of public...

This chapter examines the outcomes and limitations of co-creation. Promotors of co-creation are sometimes satisfied with having stimulated civic voluntarism and created processes that are gratifying for the participants, but it is also paramount to consider the collective impact of co-creation on societal problems and challenges. A systematic liter...

This chapter presents four widely debated challenges to the current forms of liberal democracy in order to envision how co-creation may provide an adequate response to underlying democratic problems and thus help to reinvigorate and expand democratic governance. The chapter also revisits the accountability problem that arises in relation to public...

This article has three objectives. The first is to show that while co-production was originally tied to service production, co-creation has broader applications in the field of public governance and involves a broader range of actors and activities. The second objective is to demonstrate how the co-creation concept both builds on and extends the co...

The research on collaborative governance has focused on the upstream problems concerning the recruitment of actors, facilitation of collaboration and the fostering of agreement. However, the main problems are possibly located downstream after a decision is made and thus relate to the implementation of joint solutions the evaluation of the results a...

Recent research argues that complex problems such as climate change are best tackled through co‐creation, which brings together public and private actors, including citizens, neighborhoods, and civil society organizations, in collaborative processes that define problems and design and implement solutions that produce innovative public value outcome...

Stewardship theory provides an interesting alternative to agency theory, which in the recent New Public Management era supported the introduction of rigorous performance management systems based on generalized mistrust in and control of public employees. However, we lack empirical validation of the feasibility and positive outcomes of the new forms...

The COVID-19 pandemic reveals that the public sector is not only facing simple and complex problem, but also turbulent problems characterized by the surprising emergence of inconsistent, unpredictable, and uncertain events. Turbulent problems call for robust governance solutions that are sufficiently adaptable, agile and pragmatic to upheld a parti...

This article aims to test whether local governments can enhance the elected councillors’ perceived political leadership by changing the institutional design that conditions their ability to define problems that call for collective action, design policy solutions and mobilise support for their implementation. The study draws on new research on polit...

Studying collaborative governance has become a booming business. However, the empirical literature still struggles to produce robust generalizations and cumulative knowledge that link contextual, situational and institutional design factors to processes and outcomes. We still have not mustered the broad and deep evidence base that will really help...

The growing expectations to public services and the pervasiveness of wicked problems in times characterized by growing fiscal constraints call for the enhancement of public innovation, and new research suggests that multi-actor collaboration in networks and partnerships is superior to hierarchical and market-based strategies when it comes to spurri...

Der er et stigende fokus på behovet for innovative løsninger i den offentlige sektor, og forskningen viser, at samarbejde mellem relevante og berørte parter ofte er bedre til at skabe innovation end hierarkiske og markedsbaserede beslutningsprocesser. Der er imidlertid meget, der kan gå galt, når man forsøger at samskabe offentlige løsninger, hvilk...

The rise of governance networks through which public and private actors co-create public value outcomes has two important consequences for the legitimacy of private businesses. On the one hand, private companies participating in governance networks and public value co-creation get to influence political and administrative decisions in legitimate wa...

This chapter introduces the book. In the first part, we discuss different meanings of “political leadership”, arguing that political leadership should be understood as three interrelated functions: Identifying problems, give direction and mobilizing support. After discussing important theoretical trends in political leadership research, the chapter...

In this chapter we sum up and conclude the book. In the first part we summarize the four paradoxes that have structured the book. The four paradoxes relate to conflict, administration, openness and democracy. We then discuss the national Norwegian framework for local government, and to what extent and how changes in for example national legislation...

The metropolitan region of Copenhagen in Denmark has successfully avoided urban sprawl through a comprehensive public plan initiated more than seventy years ago. Given the well-known challenges to urban planning, it is surprising how successful this so-called Finger Plan has been in governing the process of expansion and development to satisfy both...

Whether contracting out to private actors results in value for money depends on how public authorities govern, organize and manage service contracting. However, only a few studies have attempted to investigate how local governing practices can help to ensure that the contracting out of public services enhances economic efficiency and service qualit...

Public administration-as a field of both academic study and professional practice-would benefit greatly from a more systematic and cohesive strand of research that is explicitly geared towards systematically studying the successes and positive contributions of government. At present, the citizenry at large is ill-informed about what government does...

This article calls for the development of democratic hybrids that combine elements of representative democracy with elements of participatory and deliberative democracy. It presents and evaluates an empirical model of hybrid democracy from a Danish municipality and tests whether the positive Danish experiences can be transferred to a Norwegian muni...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study and assess the content, functioning and impact of institutional reforms aiming to enhance collective and holistic political leadership at the level of local government. Design/methodology/approach The authors conduct a comparative case study of two Danish frontrunner municipalities drawing on relevan...

In response to the urgent need for elected politicians to lead processes of collaborative policy innovation, this paper brings together political leadership theory and theories of collaborative and participatory governance in order to make way for the concept of interactive political leadership. The theoretical framework shows how interactive polit...

So far, the impact of local governing practices on the likelihood that municipalities will reap the potential fruits of contracting out has only received scant attention. To fill this gap, this article explores the governing practices of local municipalities in order to determine whether or not they match the forms of governance, organization and m...

Initially, governance networks were intended as tools for making public governance more effective. Yet, scholars have argued that governance networks also have the potential to democratize public governance. This article provides an overview of theoretical arguments pertaining to the democratizing impact of governance networks. It claims that the i...

The governance paradigm has been travelling a bumpy road from an enfant terrible that challenged conventional ideas about how think of the way that society and the economy is governed to a relatively mature paradigm with distinctive theories and methods and empirical studies of scope conditions and causal impact of interactive forms of governance....

There has been a growing interest in the question of how to spur innovation in the public sector, and recent research points to multi-actor collaboration as a superior innovation driver. This article explains why and how multi-actor collaboration may spur public innovation. It also discusses why we should expect different public and private actors...

This book investigates the challenges posed by the scale and scaling of network and collaborative forms of governance. Our original motivation arose from a concern about whether collaborative governance can scale up. As we learned more, our inquiry expanded to include the tensions inherent in collaboration across scales or at multiple scales and th...

Introduction Although hierarchies and markets continue to play a crucial role in regulating society and the economy and delivering public and private services, collaborative forms of governance are proliferating, fuelled by institutional complexity and political fragmentation and driven by the recognition that no single actor has the knowledge or r...