1 Instituting Collaborative Governance: Accidental or Designed? Abdillah Noh Tun Abdul Razak School of Government, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak, Malaysia Nadia Hezlin Yashaiya University of Western Australia, Australia This article describes Malaysia’s experience in collaborative governance. In making its case, the article will trace the role of Malaysia’s performance, management and delivery unit (PEMANDU) in providing preconditions to collaborative governance. It will examine PEMANDU’s various initiatives in bringing about economic and government transformation that has ultimately laid down, albeit nascent, institutionalization of collaborative governance. The paper concludes that Malaysia’s collaborative governance endeavor is an unintended consequence of Malaysia’s Economic Transformation and Government Transformation programmes. It argues that collaborative governance in Malaysia is still at an early stage primarily because the articulation of collaborative governance is nested within Malaysia’s larger policy concerns and a function of regime legitimacy. Background Since the year 2009, the Malaysian government has been embarking on ambitious government and transformation programmes. These programmes are, in part, responses to the ruling political party’s – the Barisan Nasional(BN) - waning popularity after it suffered heavy defeat at the 2008 general election, one in which the opposition parties took control of 5 states and increased their parliamentary seats from 22 to 82 seats. Among the first policy initiatives that the newly appointed Prime Minister Najib Razak introduced was the New Economic Model (NEM), whose objective is to promote inclusive growth which would allow Malaysia to join the ranks of world’s high-income economies. The introduction of the NEM was quickly followed by other initiatives to revamp the bureaucracy and the economy which came in the form of the government transformation programme (GTP) and the economic transformation programme (ETP) that, collectively, was termed the National Transformation Programme (NTP). The aim of the NTP is to improve public service delivery in six key areas called the National Key Result Areas(NKRAs) and this involves reducing crime, fighting corruption, improving student outcomes, raising living standards of low income households, developing rural basic infrastructure and improving public transport. The task to ensure that the NTP goals are achieved rests on a newly established Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu). Pemandu is not a typical public agency. Structure-wise, Pemandu behaves like a pseudo public organization. It is a unit in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) but unlike other government agencies, Pemandu does not come under the direct control of the head