Understanding Tradeoffs in the Institutional Design and Leadership of Collaborative Governance

There is broad scholarly agreement that successful collaborative governance relies on supportive institutional design and facilitative leadership. However, there is a need to increase our understanding of how institutional design and leadership are used to pursue and balance conflicting public values. This article discusses an in-depth case study of a Norwegian municipality's collaborative governance efforts in designing and leading a circular economy project. The results show how taking on a leadership role as a sponsor influences decisions regarding institutional design in terms of the inclusion of actors. The municipality committed to an open approach to inclusion, which challenged the opportunity to act the leadership role as a mediator by increasing the interests that needed to be aligned. In line with a contingency approach to collaborative governance the study suggests that different leadership roles and institutional design features are required for the pursuit of different values.