Content area
Full Text
Civic engagement and collaborative public management are concepts that are defined broadly, making theoretical explication challenging and practical application of empirical research difficult. In this article, the authors adopt definitions of civic engagement and collaborative public management that are centered on the citizen and the potential for active citizenship. Following a historical review of civic engagement in the United States, a conceptual model of five approaches to civic engagement is offered. Citizen-centered collaborative public management is enhanced through these approaches. The authors suggest the need for further empirical research on collaborative public management that is grounded in citizenship action.
There is a renewed interest in civic engagement that extends widely across local, regional, national, and online communities. The current manifestations of civic engagement have taken on many forms at these different levels. The importance of this subject to interested citizens, publics, policy makers, and public administrators is reflected in the activities, programs, and projects that have been initiated in recent years.
Our objective in this article is to consider how civic engagement influences collaborative public management. Definitions of each concept are established to meet this objective. Macedo et al. rely on a broad definition of civic engagement: "any activity, individual or collective, devoted to influencing the collective life of the polity" (2005, 6). We wish to distinguish the different types of civic engagement to which Macedo et al. allude in terms of what each offers for the achievement of collaborative public management.
We advance the argument that deliberative and collective action strategies of civic engagement hold the most promise in achieving a public-involving, citizencentered collaborative public management. This kind of collaborative public management represents a form of governance that extends beyond "the process of facilitating and operating in multiorganizational arrangements to solve problems that cannot be solved, or solved easily, by single organizations" (Agranoffand McGuire 2003, 4). We intentionally use the phrase citizen-centered collaborative public management to emphasize the role of the public in collaborative management processes, which have not always recognized the value of citizenship. In achieving this outcome, we believe that civic engagement means "people participating together for deliberation and collective action within an array of interests, institutions and networks, developing civic identity, and involving people in governance processes" (Cooper 2005, 534).