Linking Service Contracting to CollaborativeGovernance: Evidence from Shanghai

YiJia Jing
Fudan University
​and
YeFeu Hu
Tsinghua University

Collaborative governance (CG) with nonprofits has been sought around
the world by governments looking for innovative ways to deal with
complex public and social issues. Yet, it has been a generic difficulty for
governments to promote and forge CG, especially in contexts without a
strong nonprofit tradition. This article, by using field studies in Shanghai
of China, argues that multiple mechanisms may arise from service
contracting and induce collaborative governance through an unintended
learning process. Service contracting helps cultivate mutual trust between
governments and nonprofits, enhances organizational development in
nonprofits, and gives them an opportunity to engage in community
governance networks. These spontaneous mechanisms create nonprofit
collaborators that make public decisions, enforce regulatory functions,
and influence community governance. Public managers may make
conscious policy and management efforts to consolidate the enabling and
facilitating elements of contracting in order to maximize its potential to
forge collaborative governance.