Interactive Policy-Making: The Evolvement of Collaborative Capabilities in Multi-Level Governance Settings

The need for collaboration is rapidly rising in all areas of the public sector because solving complex problems as a single actor is getting more and more difficult. With the changing role of the state new actors emerge and with them new modes of governance. Multi-Level Gov-ernance is no longer limited to federal states including numerous actors on institutional, managerial, and technical levels of governance with a high need for interaction. Political decisions made within policy-making processes are thus based on interactivity.

Even though interaction is crucial for the concept of multi-level governance, it cannot be taken as granted among decision makers. Specific capabilities have to be developed from the beginning of the policy-making process in order to make interaction between multiple levels possible and decision-making successful. These so-called collaborative capabilities are analysed here concerning their formation in public organisations. The evolvement of collaborative capabilities is based on the accumulation of past experience, knowledge articulation and knowledge codifi-cation. Therefore the theoretical framework is traced back to the concepts of organisational learning and dynamic capabilities.

Since learning processes are central the focus is accordingly on relevant actors and linked processes. Empirical evidence is drawn from a case study of interactive policy-making within multi-level governance settings leading to several conclusions concerning crucial factors for the evolvement of collaborative capabilities.