The Role of Collaborative Design in Enhancing the Legitimacy of Collaborative Governance

• In Event: Coming Full Circle: Design, Deliberation, Decision, and Delivery of Collaborative Policymaking

Abstract

The design of collaborative governance institutions can meaningfully enhance civic participation in collaborative venues. While the collaborative governance as a tool of governance is widely adopted and used in communities at different scales, how and to what extent the collaborative design features affect citizen’s levels of trust and legitimacy is much less known within collaborative governance literature. Legitimacy is broadly defined as positive perceptions to citizens that the actions of collaborative governance institutions are desirable and fair in addressing policy problems at hand. This study offers an empirical test in which how strategically varied collaborative design features affect citizen’s perceptions of legitimacy. The typology of legitimacy to conceptualizing four types of legitimacy include input legitimacy, throughput legitimacy, output legitimacy, and external legitimacy. The comprehensive operationalization of legitimacy provides systematic measurement of concepts.Conjoint experiment is used to test the simultaneous effects of collaborative design treatments on perceived legitimacy. Conjoint attributes include commitment (meeting frequency), representation (balanced representation), capacity (access to expert consultant), performance information (city’s climate policy rank), and formative type (mandate, voluntary, independently convened). Experimental context provided to respondents is the situation of climate disaster and the collaborative summit that brings partners together to explore solutions for climate resilient communities (“The Blue Summit”). Using U.S. national sample in 2025, we estimate Average Marginal Component Effect (AMCE) of conjoint attributes. This experiment was pre-registered before data collection took place. Results suggest that providing accessible technical supports to citizens is the most effective way to improve legitimacy perceptions. Balanced representation and positive performance information are also important design elements to increase citizen’s legitimacy perceptions of collaborative summit. However, commitment in the form of meeting frequency and the type of collaborative governance (e.g., voluntary) have little to do with citizen’s legitimacy perceptions. When collaborative governance is not adequately designed to incorporate citizen’s interests, it cannot gain ‘collaborative advantage’ that is promised in using collaborative institutions. This research provides useful design knowledge to scholars and practitioners interested in using collaborative venues to solve complex problems.

Authors

• Minwoo Ahn, College of Charleston
  Presenting Author

• Dani McLaughlin, University of Kentucky
  Non-Presenting Co-Author