Reframing Co-production: More Definitions or New Schools?

• In Event: Active Citizenship, Policy Making and Social Change

Abstract

This paper reflects on the fact that co-production initially emphasized the role of citizens in the implementation of public policy. With renewed interest in this phenomenon the focus has greatly expanded in scope. Today it favors a more encompassing or ‘enhanced’ approach involving activities on both input and output sides of public policy-making. This invites different, sometimes conflicting, approaches to framing and understanding co-production, like public administration’s input/output model or service management’s value chain model.
It explores the presence of three approaches or schools of co-production and then considers three issues related to citizen participation in public service and the role of TSOs: i) volunteering and the ‘what and who’ of co-production, ii) the ‘where’ of co-production and the role of third sector organizations; and iii) differences between social and economic understandings of ‘collective’ co-production. Finally, it suggest the need to reconfigure our understanding of co-production and recognize the impact of these three schools of co-production.

Author

• Victor Pestoff, Ersta Skondal University College