Chapter 2: It Takes Two to Tango: When Public and Private Actors Interact

Governments at different levels increasingly recognize the urgent need to mobilize and utilize the knowledge, resources, and energy of empowered citizens in the governing of our complex, fragmented, and multilayered societies. Hence, they frequently use and experiment with user surveys, public consultations, citizens juries, and institutional mechanisms of cogovernance in order to reinforce the link between government and civil society. In this chapter we argue that civic engagement through the participation of individual or organized citizens in different kinds of governance networks might help to improve both the effectiveness and the democratic performance of public governance. Governance networks bring public and private actors together in relatively self-regulated negotiations that contribute to the production of public value. As such, the production of effective and democratic network governance depends on a high level of committed interaction between public and private actors. Both parties must carefully reconsider their roles and strategies and reflect on how they can help facilitate effective and democratic governance through a negotiated interaction driven by the recognition of interdependency, the presence of trust, and willingness to compromise. It takes two to tango, and there are many difficult steps to learn for the public and private actors. This chapter aims to contribute to this learning by analyzing the new roles for the public and private actors engaged in network governance. It begins with a brief diagnosis of the problems and challenges that confront public authorities in their quest for effective and democratic governance. It then considers the merits and problems of an increasing use of governance networks in the formulation and implementation of public policy. This is followed by a lengthy discussion of the new roles that emerge for public authorities and private actors, such as citizens and organized stakeholders, and the dilemmas these roles bring with them. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the interaction between the public and private network actors where we warn against seeing “consensus” as the primary goal of network governance. Alternatively, we recommend that governance networks are regulated by the normative ideal of “agonistic respect” in coping with conflict.