Collaborative public administration Some lessons from the Israeli experience Eran Vigoda-Gadot Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel Keywords Public administration, Israel Abstract Public administration is incrementally moving on a reform track that leads from responsiveness to collaboration. Attempts to enrich the discussion on the current state of new managerialism in public administration and to explain why and how it makes progress towards higher levels of cooperation and collaboration with various social players such as the private sector, the third sector, and citizens. Argues that in the end this is a socially desirable trend with meaningful benefits that reach far beyond the important idea of responsiveness. The idea of “collaborative” administration thus challenges “responsive” public administration. Maintains that the collaborative model, whether bureaucracy-driven, citizen-driven, or private-sector-driven, is realistic and beneficial even if it cannot be fully applied. Goes on to describe two major experiences from the Israeli arena. Finally, summarizes the theoretical and practical experiences that can be learned from these ventures and elaborates on the future of collaboration in modern public administration. Introduction The increasing interest in the idea of new public management (NPM) has put serious pressure on state bureaucracies to become more responsive to citizens as clients. In many respects NPM has become the “religion” and responsiveness the “law”. However, recently bureaucracies have also been urged/forced to advance beyond responsiveness and engage in collaboration with other social players such as private businesses and third-sector organizations as well as citizens. Without doubt, these are important advances in contemporary public administration, which finds itself struggling in an ultra-dynamic marketplace arena. Some may even define the shift toward collaboration as an additional “law” in the “religion” of NPM. Like any other call for reform it was built on a necessary change in the minds and hearts of the parties involved. In order to bring collaboration into the central halls of public administration, many old perceptions and attitudes need to be revised and reframed. Despite its evident advantages the idea of collaboration also attracts heavy fire from those who believe that it is merely a utopian idea with minimal impact on the administrative process. At most, opponents suggest that collaboration is a welcome change in theory building and in practical culture reconstruction, but they add that modern societies still encounter an increase in citizens’ passivism; they tend to favor the easy chair of the customer over the sweat and turmoil of participatory involvement. The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0268-6902.htm Paper presented at the European Group of Public Administration (EGPA) Annual Conference, 5-8 September 2001, Vaasa, Finland. MAJ 19,6 700 Managerial Auditing Journal Vol. 19 No. 6, 2004 pp. 700-711 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0268-6902 DOI 10.1108/02686900410543831