Capacity for Collaboration: Policy and Administrative Capacity in Public Service Delivery

Public services are increasingly delivered through arrangements crossing organizational boundaries. These include consultation, contracting-out, commissioning, co-management, co-production and third-party certification. Yet collaboration is not self-executing. Its effects on service quality, access and equity depend on whether actors can mobilize capacities suited to each arrangement. This panel asks which configurations of policy and administrative capacity enable collaborative service delivery, for whom and under what conditions.
Policy capacity comprises analytical, managerial and political competences distributed across individual, organizational and systemic levels. Analytical capacity supports needs assessment, knowledge integration and performance monitoring. Managerial capacity enables coordination, conflict resolution, adaptation and user engagement. Political capacity provides authorization and legitimacy, sustains trust and commitment, manages power asymmetries and connects flexibility with public accountability.
Capacity requirements vary by arrangement. Consultation depends on system-level knowledge infrastructures; contracting-out on expertise in specifying, negotiating and monitoring contracts; and commissioning on organizational capacity to link needs, expenditure and outcomes. Co-management requires partnership-building and durable coordination, while co-production relies on frontline relational skills and citizens’ ability and willingness to participate. Third-party certification depends on systemic regulatory capacity, transparent rules and credible accountability. Political capacity remains necessary across all these arrangements.
This perspective shifts attention from collaboration in general to capacity fit. Collaboration can pool complementary knowledge and resources, but may also fragment responsibility, increase transaction costs or reproduce power imbalances. Research should therefore examine where capacities are located, how they are institutionally embedded and whether particular arrangements can activate and recombine them. Public administrations retain key responsibilities for selecting and steering collaborative modes, structuring participation, monitoring performance and supporting learning.
The panel invites theoretical and empirical papers on capacity fit and mismatch, the distribution and recombination of capacities among collaborative partners, and processes of capacity building. Contributions may assess implications for service quality, accessibility, equity, and public value across sectors and levels of government. All methodological approaches are welcome. Research from outside Europe, particularly from the Global South, is encouraged as a source of concepts and causal mechanisms for understanding collaborative service delivery across different institutional contexts.