Collaborative Governance: Promises and Challenges

This article provides an overview of the theory of collaborative governance and its promises for achieving good governance. Now-a-days, the concept of collaborative governance has garnered increasing attention in academic and policy arenas for addressing sustainability issues in complex social-ecological systems. The traditional way of governance has to move towards theories of cooperation, networking and institution building as well as volunteer and consensual participation of its subjects.

This article further explores broader theoretical perspectives of the emergence and viability of collaborative governance. The theoretical perspectives provide insights for understanding different aspects of collaborative governance. Many factors have influence over the success of this model of the governance, so these factors are also delineated in brief. The huge potential of collaborative governance has been analysed to reveal the benefits accrued to society. No doubt, there are also barriers and challenges persistent for subjugation of this innovative idea of governance. This article has made an effort to discover the obstacles and to suggest the ways and means to ameliorate the rate of success of collaborative governance.