Street-level collaboration: perception, power, and politics on the frontlines of collaboration

Abstract

Purpose

To examine the implementation processes and outcomes of collaborative governance initiatives through the lens of bureaucratic politics.

Design/methodology/approach

An in-depth single case study research design with 28 embedded cases to study the implementation of a collaborative governance initiative. This paper uses the analytical technique of process tracing to explicate necessary and sufficient conditions to uncover causal mechanisms and confirm descriptive and causal inferences.

Findings

This study finds that when street-level bureaucrats perceived the collaborative initiative as a health intervention (and not as a collaborative initiative), it resulted in low levels of stakeholder participation and made the collaborative initiative unsuccessful. This paper finds that bureaucratic politics is the causal mechanism that further legitimized this perception resulting in each stakeholder group avoiding participation and sticking to their departmental siloes.

Research limitations/implications

This is a single case study about a revelatory case of collaborative governance implementation in India, and findings are analytically generalizable to similar administrative contexts. Further research is needed through a multiple case study design in a comparative context to examine bureaucratic politics in implementing collaborative initiatives.

Practical implications

Policymakers and managers need to carefully consider the implications of engaging organizations with competing institutional histories when formulating and implementing collaborative governance initiatives.

Originality/value

This study's uniqueness is that it examines implementation of collaborative governance through a bureaucratic politics lens. Specifically, the study applies Western-centric scholarship on collaborative governance and street-level bureaucracy to a non-Western developing country context to push the theoretical and empirical boundaries of key concepts in public administration.

Citation

Jagannath, H.P. (2020), "Street-level collaboration: perception, power, and politics on the frontlines of collaboration", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 461-476. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-07-2019-0194