About the Virtual Centre for Collaborative Governance

The Virtual Centre for Collaborative Governance was created to support the capacity for people in many avenues to engage in the collaborative governance of our shared commons.

Background

Collaborative governance of our shared commons represents a phase shift in human thinking and practice in governance. A commons is something which a group of people mutually depend on their survival and wellbeing, which by virtue of their interdependence with it must engage in the governance of it, to protect, nurture and procreate it. Collaborative governance is therefore the practice by those with a stake in a commons of the management, decision making and innovation for the care of a commons.

Collaborative governance also represents a new type of ‘political contract’. A political contract is an agreement on the exercise of power between the governed and those that govern. This can be between citizens and the state, a municipality and residents, or between organisations and non-governmental institutions.

Historical examples of political contracts include: the Magna Carta, the establishment of representative democracies (e.g. the US and Australia), the establishment of a woman’s right to vote through the suffrage movement. Each of these examples shifted and re-codified the exercise of power and governance.

Recently the city of Bologna in Italy created a new political contract, a relationship between citizens and the city government which embodies a partnership for the care and regeneration of the urban commons. This most recent political contract expresses the logic of co-governance – the capacity for multiple entities, in this case citizens and the city government, to work together to generate positive outcomes for the common good. In their recent book, Gorenflo and co-authors document many examples worldwide where collaborative governance of the commons takes place.

A commons is anything which people may mutually depend on for their survival and well-being. This can include natural resources such as aspects of ecosystems, it can include our urban environments, it can include shared or public infrastructure; the definition of a commons is necessarily broad because what we depend on for our survival and well-being cuts across many dimensions.

When we are ‘implicated’ into a commons, when we come to realize that there is something that we mutually depend on for our survival and well-being, a shared responsibility to govern the management of this commons naturally arises. Today we are coming to realize that there are many commons, things that we depend on for our mutual survival and well-being, that we need to collectively govern for the stewardship and the benefit of those that depend on it.

For example, we can consider food. We have come to realise that our food systems must have long term viability, need to produce health for people, need to be affordable, ensure the sustainability of our soils, promote healthy eating; all of this we mutually depend on for our survival and well being. Unfortunately, the industrial-capitalist system of food production is at odds with such long term viability – mining soils for short term profit, promoting sugar addiction that leads to obesity, and a variety of other problems. We can no longer take our food as a given, we are mutually implicated in the commons which is our food system – we have come to realise we mutually depend on this for our survival and well being. With this shared realisation comes the responsibility to govern this commons for our mutual benefit.

This logic of implication includes everything from the care of ecosystems, our urban environments, our digital and knowledge resources, all the way to our atmosphere and a safe climate. Today the logic of understanding how we are implicated in shared commons that we mutually depend on is a profound provocation for people and citizens everywhere to engage themselves and participate in governing, managing and steering all of these critical dimensions of our lives toward mutually beneficial ends.

Rationale

We are coming to realise that there are many commons that we not only care about, but that we fundamentally depend on. And yet the governance systems that exist today appear inadequate to the task.

• At the municipal level, governance too often excludes citizen involvement and contributions. The discourse of consultation and participation often pays lip service to real council-citizen collaboration; This legacy is inadequate for supporting the development of the urban commons.
• State bureaucracies, even with the best of intentions, struggle to find ways in which the state can play a support role for local communities in making their own decisions about government services.
• Collaboration among civil society organisations and between CSOs and other institutions is critically needed to address many of the problems that we face today – and yet the knowledge and the practice in implementing such co-governance approaches is new and evolving.
• At the federal level, we continue to struggle with factionalism, the influence of lobby groups, and the perverse influence of unaccountable media. All too often states do not govern for the common good, but rather powerful minorities which are able to manipulate political systems.
• At a global level, we are struggling to find ways to get past the dynamic of geopolitical rivalry, and build cooperative governance to protect the global commons. In the midst of this is a new force and potential of citizen participation and contribution which is only just emerging.

Our thinking about governance is limited by these legacies. If someone were to say today that only those of European heritage should be able to vote, it would come off as racist, discriminatory and regressive. And yet 100+ years ago this kind of thinking was commonplace and often unchallenged.

Today the idea that only elected representatives should have the statutory right to make decisions may be one of these notions that, from a future perspective, we look back upon as wholly regressive and inadequate. Rather, looking back we may see that those that mutually depend on a commons – be this an ecosystem like a river system, an ocean, an urban environment, a knowledge resource – have both the right and responsibility for the care, the management, the stewardship, the governance of this commons with others in solidarity. This is the logic of commons governance in the 21st century.

We need an organisation that can support the development of thinking in this area, formulate new pathways, support organisations to take these new steps, and build expertise and knowledge around new practices and implementation.