Work Package 4: Practices of Internal Collaboration for Policy Design

WP4 studies the emergence and nature of innovative collaboration in policy design inside governments, especially with regard to the relevance of ICT. How do ICT affect policy design inside governments and have they led to innovative collaboration practices? What are the main drivers and obstacles for such practices and how do institutional, organizational, and individual features shape the implementation of innovative collaboration practices within governments?

To answer these questions, WP 4 focuses on:

• Actor constellations and actors' capabilities
• Collaboration means, especially also the application and suitability of ICT
• Institutional and governmental conditions shaping actors and means and their inter-linkages

We conduct

• an inter-disciplinary academic expert survey and
• comparative case studies.

The academic expert survey

This survey will examine digitalisation and collaboration in European governments. It will be conducted in ten countries, involving social scientists, legal scholars, historians, and economists. We seek to complement existing 'governance indicators' that address rather broad issues of internal collaboration in policy design.

Comparative case studies

We conduct case studies in five European countries to analyse the causal mechanisms of internal government collaboration, linking actors with the means of collaboration, and the usage and feasibility of ICT. We also aim to uncover country- and sector-differences and the role of different administrative traditions in enhancing and implementing novel collaboration practices.