Output Performance of Collaborative Governance: Examining Collaborative Conditions for Achieving Output Performance of the Dutch Flood Protection Program

Abstract

Despite abundant research on collaborative governance, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining its performance. When are collaborations performing and what conditions are required to achieve high performance? This study fills this gap by building on the performance matrix for assessing collaborative governance regimes by Emerson and Nabatchi. Drawing on survey data, we use a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the performance of 26 collaborative flood risk governance projects in the Netherlands. We analyze how conditions of engagement, shared motivation, external expertise, connective leadership and resource availability shape the output performance of these collaboratives. The results reveal four “success” configurations. Success stems, in particular, from “connective leadership” and resources for collaboration working in tandem, or with one of these conditions combined with respectively “external expertise” and “shared motivation.” Failure, in contrast, stems from the absence of multiple conditions. Consequently, we draw lessons about the spectrum of different concrete recipes of collaboration fostering output performance.