Collaborative knowledge-driven governance: Types and mechanisms of collaboration between science, social science, and local knowledge

Abstract

Knowledge plays an important role in modern public governance characterized by complexity, but collaboration between different types of knowledge in public governance has not been systematically studied. Increasingly, literature has stressed the importance of the application of science, social science, and local knowledge in public governance, whereas it has paid little attention to the types and mechanisms of collaboration between these three fields. The aims of this study were to explore the influence of collaboration between the three types of knowledge on governance performance, the major types of collaboration, and the major institutional design principles for successful collaboration. Based on a combined field study including surveys, interviews, observations, and archive data as well as a meta-analysis study on desertification control in northern China, the largest developing country in the world, this study made the following three key findings: (1) Although natural science was the most widely applied area of knowledge and social science was least applied, the order of the correlation coefficients of the three types of knowledge with governance performance from the highest to the lowest was social science, local knowledge, and natural science. (2) Collaboration between these three types of knowledge influenced governance performance. The types of collaboration with low levels of all three types of knowledge always had low governance performance, and the types of collaboration with high levels of social science and local knowledge often had high performance. (3) Successful collaboration among different types of knowledge shared nine significant institutional design principles. These principles stressed the integration of three types of knowledge, the collaboration among knowledge possessors and other social actors, and reliable and sustainable external support (government, financial, and institutional). These findings shed new light on collaboration between science, social science, and local knowledge in public and environmental governance in China as well as in other countries around the world.