Introduction: Collaborative Governance

Collaborative governance is a mechanism intended to bring together stakeholders from various sectors to design and implement policy. It developed as a mean to increase government’s ability and capacity to govern, to reinforce trust and legitimacy in government, and to broaden inclusion in policy design and implementation. The introduction is composed of two parts: the first presents the concept “collaborative governance, " and the second offers a modular definition to collaborative governance, trying to capture the various forms of its evolution in practice. This part further presents two questions this book deals with: Do collaborative governance arrangements promote public values, and do these arrangements contribute to a more democratic process? Lastly, the chapter ends with the structure of the book.