Articulating the Regulation Logics in Governments-nonprofits Collaboration

Calls for the construction of a post-New Public Management paradigm to engage collaboratively in wicked public problem solving are important. However, the shift toward more horizontal relations between public and civil society actors is constrained by an institutional environment. This article studies the efforts of public and nonprofit actors to articulate the network logic carried in the collaboration with the preexistent hierarchical and market logics. A two-year inter-organizational ethnography was conducted within a government-association collaboration structure: the Equality Group as a community of public and nonprofit actors seeking to co-construct regional public policies on gender equality in France. The results highlight two different conceptions of the articulation of collaboration with regulation logics: mandated collaboration and coopetition. This discrepancy generates a collaborative distrust. A positive role of the public actor's hierarchical authority in the collaboration between governments and nonprofits is highlighted with the theorization of a collaborative ratchet effect. The research argues for the need to shift the debate from the legitimacy of hierarchical authority in collaboration to the legitimate and ethical ways in which hierarchy could be exercised for collaborative purposes. It supports practitioners wishing to develop collaboration by shedding light on the mutual representations and expectations of partners.