More than Stakeholders: Reforming State-Voluntary Sector Relations

Canadian governments are not particularly well prepared to shift from the tradition of hierarchical government to more collaborative governance. This article outlines four major institutional reforms that are required to build the kind of relationships between the state and the voluntary sector that are necessary to support collaborative governance. The first involves enabling the voluntary sector to fulfil its distinctive roles as governing partner and as builder of community and active citizenship. Second, effective governance involves engaging voluntary organizations in genuine and meaningful dialogue about public policy problems and solutions. Third, elasticizing the means and practices of accountability that are legacies of command-and-control government is essential to supporting the requisite flexibility and responsiveness of a governance approach. Finally, embodying horizontal management of policy issues across departments and across governments needs to be addressed with new governing machinery, not merely through ad hoc processes.