Conference Agenda

This study examines the formation and transformation of youth policy governance in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, through longitudinal participatory observation, emphasizing the role of meta-governance in steering collaborative governance arrangements. Drawing on four years of empirical fieldwork (2019–2022), the research employs a multi-case study design grounded in the collaborative governance triangle and process-tracing methodology to explore how coordination challenges and institutional tensions were addressed. The analysis identifies two competing causal mechanisms: meta-governance as enabling shared leadership, adaptive goal-setting, and policy co-creation (primary hypothesis), versus meta-governance as reinforcing hierarchy and undermining trust (rival hypothesis). Findings suggest that youth stakeholders, intermediary bodies, and public officials collectively enacted dynamic leadership and mutual accountability, facilitating sustained collaboration, except where hierarchical control disrupted participatory momentum. The study contributes theoretical and practical insights into how meta-governance functions as both a mechanism for democratic innovation and a site of potential dysfunction in complex local governance systems.

How do public interventions affect the role of civil society organizations in local-level collaboration? Collaboration is a dynamic process that evolves over time, with both civil society organizations and public sector organizations playing critical roles.

Applying the theory of fields, this study explores how public interventions through policies and programs influenced the role of civil society organizations in migrant-supporting interorganizational collaboration in Ansan, South Korea. Using network analysis of longitudinal data from Incheon (2003-2013) and qualitative thematic analysis of 13 interviews and multiple other public documents, the findings indicate that public interventions can lead to gradual decline in the power of leading civil society organizations and the emergence of new collaborative structures with different leadership in local migrant integration. Specifically, findings from interviews support those public interventions by local officials, often lacking prior knowledge, particularly in government contracts involving financial incentives, are attributable to reinforcing an environment that shifted power dynamics between the government and civil society organizations. This resulted in the proliferation of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations (quangos), which intensified competition among local civil society organizations for limited public resources and led to the dropout of many local civil society organizations from local initiatives.

These findings highlight the need for improved government intervention strategies to sustain the role of local civil society organizations and enhance collaborative efforts to support international migrants at the local level.

Collaborative governance is increasingly recognized as a key strategy for tackling complex policy problems. Yet empirical analyses of collaboration among government agencies remain underdeveloped, particularly in non-Western contexts. This study explores the patterns of inter-agency collaboration in South Korea through a network analysis of multi-agency policy initiatives conducted between 2021 and 2022. Drawing on collaborative governance theory and employing stochastic actor-based modeling(RSiena) and other social network analysis techniques, we examine how institutional characteristics—such as organizational attributes and policy fields—shape the dynamics of inter-agency collaboration. Our analysis also investigates both structural tendencies within the network(e.g., transitivity, preferential attachment, reciprocity) and sector-specific differences in collaboration intensity.

The findings are expected to reveal that shifts in network structure are associated with specific organizational attributes and that certain policy sectors demonstrate higher levels of sustained collaboration. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for advancing both the theoretical understanding and practical application of collaborative governance.

This study examines how citizens perceive the legitimacy of diverse public service providers, with a particular emphasis on understanding the impact of cross-sector collaboration. The research focuses on two key questions: 1) Does cross-sector collaboration enhance citizen perception compared to traditional, single-sector service delivery models? 2) How does sector bias influence perceptions of cross-sector collaboration and the legitimacy of service providers from various sectors? This study represents a “generalization and extension” replication of the work conducted by Lee and Kim (2024), albeit with distinct policy contexts and measurement approaches. Additionally, the research expands the scope by transitioning from a single-country sample to a multi-country sample, broadening the study's applicability and capturing diverse perspectives across multiple nations.

We conduct an online survey experiment designed as a vignette-based factorial survey where survey participants are randomly assigned to experimental conditions and shown a set of questions designed to measure outcome variables. It is a between-subjects 6 × 2 factor design. The first treatment is the type of service provider of single-sector and collaborative entities. The second treatment consists of high or low performance information on the provider. The study focuses on adults in the United States, United Kingdom, and South Korea.

Understanding public perceptions of different service providers is crucial, especially given the ongoing shift from hierarchical, bureaucratic governance to more collaborative and participative processes. This study aims to contribute to the literature by exploring public perceptions of emerging public service delivery models across countries with varying national cultures.