Journal of Public Administration Research And Theory, 2018, 16–32

doi:10.1093/jopart/mux030
Article
Advance Access publication October 7, 2017

Article

Collaborative Platforms as a Governance

Strategy
Chris Ansell,* Alison Gash†
*University of California; †University of Oregon

Address correspondence to the author at cansell@berkeley.edu.

Abstract
Collaborative governance is increasingly viewed as a proactive policy instrument, one in which
the strategy of collaboration can be deployed on a larger scale and extended from one local con-
text to another. This article suggests that the concept of collaborative platforms provides useful
insights into this strategy of treating collaborative governance as a generic policy instrument.
Building on an organization-theoretic approach, collaborative platforms are defined as organiza-
tions or programs with dedicated competences and resources for facilitating the creation, adapta-
tion and success of multiple or ongoing collaborative projects or networks. Working between the
theoretical literature on platforms and empirical cases of collaborative platforms, the article finds
that strategic intermediation and design rules are important for encouraging the positive feedback
effects that help collaborative platforms adapt and succeed. Collaborative platforms often promote
the scaling-up of collaborative governance by creating modular collaborative units—a strategy of
collaborative franchising.

The term “platform” appears everywhere these days,
popularized by spectacularly successful technology
platforms like the Apple iPhone and by closely related
concepts like open source innovation or crowdsourc-
ing. The term has now begun to creep into the lexi-
con of governance. What we might once have called
a meeting, conference, partnership, clearinghouse or
network may now be branded a platform—as in the
case of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform
on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the European
Platform against Poverty and Social Exclusion, or
the FramingNano Governance Platform. Is this mere
fashion or does the term signal a distinctive logic of
governance?
This article explores the intersection between the
platform concept and the better-known concept (at
least in the fields of governance and public administra-
tion) of collaborative governance. This exploration is
useful for addressing two questions. The first is why do
some collaborations become more elaborate over time,
widening and deepening their sphere of collaboration
and producing spin-off collaborations? The second
is how can collaborative governance be purposefully
extended and scaled-up? Drawing on an expanding
literature on platforms, we suggest that the concept
of collaborative platforms offers insights that address
both of these questions.
A decade and more of scholarship has explored the
trend toward collaborative modes of governance. As a
general term, collaboration refers to a “high intensity”
mode of interaction (Keast, Brown, and Mandell 2007,
12)  that nurtures mutual interdependence and joint
action while preserving the autonomy of collaborating
parties (Thomson, Perry, and Miller 2009). As a mode
of collective action for achieving public purposes, col-
laborative governance refers broadly to “the processes
and structures of public policy decision making and
management that engage people constructively across
the boundaries of public agencies, levels of government,
and/or the public, private and civic spheres” (Emerson,

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 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 1
Nabatchi, and Balogh 2012, 2)  or more narrowly to
the engagement of stakeholders in a “collective deci-
sionmaking process that is formal, consensus-oriented
and deliberative” (Ansell and Gash 2008, 2) where par-
ticipants “co-produce goals and strategies and share
responsibilities and resources” (Davies and White
2012). In the past, governments, international organi-
zations, local communities, and foundations have often
turned to collaborative governance as a last resort when
other strategies have failed. More recently, they have
begun to envision collaborative governance as a more
proactive policy instrument on a grander scale. For
example, to meet the sustainable development goals of
the UN’s Agenda 2030, World Vision International and
the Partnering Institute write: “If the bold (and wel-
come) vision of Agenda 2030 is to be realised, multi-
stakeholder collaborations, and the platforms that
can catalyse them, need to expand more rapidly than
at present” (2016, 4). To achieve “collective impact,”
it is argued, deeper and more extensive collaboration
must be fostered by strong and independent “backbone
organizations” (Kania and Kramer 2011, 39).
Although we now know a good deal about multi-
stakeholder collaborations, the governance literature
has scarcely recognized “the platforms that can cata-
lyze them” or the “backbone organizations” that foster
them. We propose to call such organizations collabora-
tive platforms, which we understand in the broadest
sense to be structured frameworks for promoting col-
laborative governance. Sometimes platforms develop
inadvertently. Green (2013), for instance, describes
how the Clean Development Mechanism created by
the Kyoto Protocol became a “coral reef” attract-
ing private rulemaking bodies to the climate change
regime complex. Our focus, however, is on structured
frameworks designed to explicitly support and facili-
tate collaborative governance.
As a strategy for scaling up or deepening collaborative
governance, platforms inherit and in some cases mag-
nify the challenges of the basic approach. Collaborative
governance can be fragile, time consuming, and risky
and can lead to least common denominator outcomes;
when it fails, it can accentuate skepticism and con-
flict, and when it succeeds, it is often due to contextual
factors such as inspired leadership or conditions that
promote voice over exit. Yet collaborative platforms
typically do not mandate collaboration or collaborative
governance, but rather catalyze and facilitate voluntary
efforts. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that
scaling up or extending collaborative governance will
be a more appropriate and successful strategy where
contextual conditions already push or pull constituent
groups in this direction.
In addition to making how collaborative governance
is being promoted as a proactive policy instrument
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more legible, our goal is to explore the meaning and
applicability of the platform concept itself. The idea
is now widely used in the management, organization
theory, and computer science literatures (Thomas,
Autio, and Gann 2014). However, it has received lit-
tle attention from governance or public administration
scholars. Drawing on the concept of web or software
platforms, a few scholars have begun to focus on
platforms as a strategy of e-government (Janssen and
Estevez 2013; Klievink, Bharosa, and Tan 2016; Koch,
Füller and Brunswicker 2011; O’Reilly 2011; Ranerup,
Henriksen, and Hedman 2016). Although very useful,
these contributions tend to associate platforms with
information technology. By contrast, we view them
here as a generic organizational logic. Our interest is
in understanding how this generic organizational logic
might serve as a governance strategy via the promotion
of collaborative governance.
Despite the increasing use of the term platform to
describe governance arrangements, few scholars have
yet examined this more human-centered conception of
platforms as a strategy of governance. One important
exception is Nambisan’s (2009) analysis of “collabora-
tive platforms” as a strategy of societal problem-solv-
ing. He distinguishes three distinct types of platforms:
exploration platforms bring problem-solvers together
to frame and investigate problems; experimenta-
tion platforms bring people together to explore and
evaluate potential solutions; and execution platforms
encourage collaborative implementation of solutions.
Platforms have also been recognized as a governance
strategy in certain policy sectors, such as humani-
tarian relief (Ogelsby and Burke 2012), agricultural
innovation (Nederlof et al., 2011), regional economic
development (Cooke 2007; Harmaakorpi 2006) and
sustainable development (Reid, Hayes, and Stibbe
2014).
Although this work has begun a conversation about
platforms as a governance strategy, more needs to
be done to translate the logic of platforms from the
domain of technology, software development and even
organization theory to that of governance and public
administration. Collaborative platforms fill a particu-
lar niche in the world of governance: they specialize
in facilitating, enabling, and to some degree regulat-
ing, “many-to-many” collaborative relationships. The
phrase “many-to-many” helps to reinforce the sense of
the distinctiveness of collaborative platforms, which
can be contrasted with now-familiar commercial plat-
forms. In both a “multi-sided” market platform like
Uber and in collaborative platforms, the platform
plays a role of “meta-governance” or “orchestration.”
But multi-sided market platforms bring together a
willing buyer and seller to facilitate a bilateral market
exchange while collaborative platforms orchestrate a
 18
multilateral (as opposed to bilateral) collaborative
relationship (as opposed to market exchange).
Examples of Collaborative Platforms
Since the idea of collaborative platforms is not widely
appreciated, we begin by providing three concrete
examples representing different policy sectors and
regions of the world. These examples will be used to
motivate our subsequent theoretical analysis.
Together Let’s Prevent Childhood Obesity (EPODE)
EPODE (Ensemble Prévenons l’Obésité Des Enfants
or Together Let’s Prevent Childhood Obesity) is a plat-
form that aims to prevent obesity in children. Started
in France in 2004, it has since become the largest glo-
bal obesity prevention program (Borys et al. 2012; Van
Koperen et al. 2013). EPODE works by mobilizing
stakeholders on a national and local basis to organ-
ize local obesity campaigns. On the national level, the
program first brings high-level stakeholders together
to generate political commitment for a national pro-
gram. It then recruits and trains local project managers
to organize local steering committees that will develop
local obesity prevention campaigns.
In mobilizing for local obesity campaigns, EPODE
program managers identify those already actively
involved in the issue and build on existing efforts.
Borys et al. describe their role:
The local project manager takes responsibility
for managing the multidisciplinary local steer-
ing committee of professionals in order to foster
positive peer-to-peer dynamics and accelerate the
implementation of local actions by a wide variety
of local stakeholders (Borys et al. 2012, 303).
Obesity campaigns are tailored to local conditions, but
they draw on a methodology that EPODE has devel-
oped over time. This methodology stresses the use of
social marketing techniques to raise awareness and
change cultural attitudes about obesity. Advancing the
EPODE brand is also a strong element of its organiz-
ing philosophy and is used to help diverse local stake-
holders feel part of a positive shared project. By 2011,
more than 500 communities in six countries (France,
Belgium, Spain, Greece, Australia, and Mexico) had
organized EPODE campaigns (Borys et al. 2012).
The Coral Triangle Center
The coral triangle is an area of exceptional marine
diversity situated between Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and the
Solomon Islands. The Coral Triangle Center (CTC)
was established in 2010 to help protect this rich but
fragile resource. Created through the cooperation of
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Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 1
an international environmental NGO—the Nature
Conservancy—and the Indonesian government, the
CTC’s work focuses on creating Marine Protected
Areas (MPAs). Its ultimate goal is to create a “net-
worked system” of MPAs in the coral triangle (Coral
Triangle Center 2016). Since its formation in 2010, the
CTC has been actively involved in providing training
on the concept of MPAs and in fostering “learning net-
works” to share knowledge and best practices.
At the core of the MPA concept is a strategy of build-
ing local partnerships for protecting marine resources.
As a CTC staffer describes it: “CTC’s role is to bring
actors together...[and it] strongly advocates a collab-
orative approach’ (quoted by Berdej and Armitage
2016, 10). For example, on the Indonesian island of
Nusa Penida, the CTC has sought “to catalyze new
institutions and forums for interaction” and had spon-
sored over 60 forums with local stakeholders by 2014
(Berdej and Armitage 2016, 13). This effort includes
helping groups like ecotourism operators organize so
that they can participate more productively in mar-
ine protection activities. Consequently, Berdej and
Armitage (2016) find that the CTC is at the center
of the island’s collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and
funding networks related to marine protection.
East Africa Dairy Development Program
East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) has been
described as an “agricultural innovation platform”
that aims to promote smallholder dairy production
in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda (Kilelu et  al. 2013).
The program is a consortium composed of Heifer
International, the International Livestock Research
Institute (ILRI), Technoserve, the African Breeders
Services Total Cattle Management Limited, and the
World Agroforestry Centre, with major funding from
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The consor-
tium organizes dairy farmers and other key stakehold-
ers to expand the dairy market in East Africa with the
ultimate goal of enhancing farmer livelihoods.
At the heart of the EADD strategy is what the con-
sortium calls the “hub model,” which has four basic
components: (1) organizing farmers and strengthening
their associations; (2) facilitating access to improved
production technologies; (3) improving access to mar-
kets; and (4) stimulating business development services
(Bisagaya 2014). Hubs are groups of local dairy farm-
ers who join together to create business associations
and limited liability companies that provide shared
support services. At the heart of this cooperation is typ-
ically the establishment of a milk chilling facility that
allows smallholders to store their product so that they
can achieve greater market access and higher returns.
Since 2008, the program has created 27 hubs and
strengthened 10 existing hubs (Heifer International
 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 1
2016). These hubs were initially organized by mobiliz-
ing relevant political stakeholders and then conducting
public meetings where local communities were invited
to establish interim boards of directors. EADD then
works with these boards to establish governance struc-
tures and business plans for these local hubs. Once the
local dairy companies are established, EADD works
with them to link them to a range of support services
(e.g., veterinary, marketing, etc.) that farmers can
access using a credit-based system.
Although our focus is on the organizational logic
of these collaborative platforms, we acknowledge at
the outset that platforms are not apolitical technolo-
gies. An evaluation of a collaborative platform called
Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) offers a vivid example of
its political character:
SUN’s engagement with corporate business is
anathema for some, while others see SUN as
not taking a sufficiently rights-based approach,
ignoring the underlying food system causes of
hunger and malnutrition, and also undermining
the UN governmental forums, including the CFS
and WHA, that they regard as the proper source
of guidance on nutrition policy (Mokoro 2015,
585–6).
Like all other governance institutions, collabora-
tive platforms are established with agendas that have
admirers and detractors.
In the remainder of the article, we take on three
tasks. The first is to clarify the basic concept of a plat-
form, illuminating how it is distinctive and what it
may contribute to our understanding of collaborative
governance. The second task is to deepen our under-
standing of the organizational logics underlying col-
laborative platforms. The third task is to conceptually
locate collaborative platforms in a wider family of gov-
ernance platforms.
The Platform Concept
To be sure, the platform concept poses challenges. Used
without critical reflection, it can become an evocative
umbrella concept that attracts attention while being
devoid of meaning. The term may simply trade on the
reflected glory of powerful platforms like Apple with-
out providing real analytical insight. To make the term
concrete and to demonstrate its potential, we need to
be clear about what it entails and how it can be dis-
tinguished from related ideas. Building on a growing
body of theoretical work on platforms, our goal is to
adapt this work to the governance context.
Although it is now common to talk about software
platforms such as JAVA, LINUX, or Mac OS, begin-
ning our discussion here would quickly lead us into a
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discussion of the architecture of software code (Evans,
Hagiu, and Schmalensee 2008). A  more useful place
to begin is with the literatures on “platform organi-
zations” and “innovation platforms.” Ciborra (1996)
was the first to analyze organizations as platforms,
using the concept to describe the innovation strategy
of the Italian firm Olivetti. He described a platform
as a “…a formative context that molds structures, and
routines shaping them into well-known forms, such as
the hierarchy, the matrix and even the network, but
on a highly volatile basis” (Ciborra 1996, 103). From
this definition, we can draw out several characteristics
of platforms. First, platforms provide a framework
upon which and through which other activities may be
organized; second, this framework is relatively stable
through time, but the activities that take place upon
it may be easily and flexibly organized and reorgan-
ized. In Ciborra’s terms, they are easily “reconfigur-
able” (Ciborra 1996, 115). Third, the platform is not
merely a passive support structure; it facilitates this
reconfigurability.
The literatures on product and innovation plat-
forms make similar types of arguments, noting that
platforms foster both stability and flexibility. These
literatures also describe the way platforms allow for
a large variety of product extensions based on either
creating products that complement or plug in to a core
product or based on the recombination of component
parts. Nearly all uses of the platform concept empha-
size that platforms create either a space or an interface
to facilitate the interaction of different skills, resources,
knowledge or needs. A platform may do this by facili-
tating the matching of interests, by creating standard-
ized technological interfaces or communication forums
or by creating cross-functional teams.
Modularity—an architecture that allows the easy
recombination of component parts—facilitates recon-
figurability by creating opportunities for mass cus-
tomization or for massively customized products. In
a platform context, modularity is understood to allow
interorganizational coordination while lessening the
need for overt managerial control (Furlan, Cabigiosu,
and Camuffo 2014). Such coordination is facilitated
by “design rules” that often standardize interfaces and
communication protocols (Baldwin and Clark 2000).
Modularity and reconfigurability, in turn, create the
potential for an “ecosystem” of complementary prod-
ucts, processes, and people (Gawer and Cusumano
2014). Many studies suggest that platform ecosys-
tems are generated by positive feedbacks or “network
effects.” These positive feedbacks are often created
when the platform facilitates “open innovation” that
allows third parties to utilize the platform for their
own purposes. To generate a critical mass of inter-
est, successful platforms must be robust in the face of
 20 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 1
different agendas and combinations of skills, know-
ledge, or interests.
Collaborative platforms may be used to replicate
collaborative governance on a wider scale, but they
may also be used to expand the scope of a single col-
laboration over time. We observe that in some cases
collaborations become more elaborated over time,
spawning multiple projects and spinoff collaborations,
producing a collaborative ecosystem as a result. Innes
and Booher’s (2010) case study of the Sacramento Area
Water Forum provides a good example. To confront
the region’s politically conflictual water management
issues, the Forum had to sustain itself through time,
adapting itself to a complex array of interlocking chal-
lenges. Success entailed the creation of many teams,
entities, and agreements along the way. The success of
the Forum also had spin-off effects that came to “per-
vade the governance culture in other policy arenas”
(Innes and Booher 2010, 50). The platform concept
helps us to see that the Forum is not a single collabor-
ation, but rather a foundation for the elaboration of a
wider collaborative ecosystem.
Drawing on this brief discussion, we can now pro-
vide a basic definition of a collaborative platform:
A collaborative platform is an organization or
program with dedicated competences, institu-
tions and resources for facilitating the creation,
adaptation and success of multiple or ongoing
collaborative projects or networks.1
Each of the examples described in the introduction fits
this definition of a collaborative platform. EPODE cre-
ates collaborative local campaigns for the prevention
of childhood obesity built on a basic social marketing
technology. The CTC catalyzes local stakeholder part-
nerships around the basic institutional framework of
MPAs. The East African Dairy Development platform
creates local hubs that link small farmers together in
business associations around the shared technology
of a milk chilling facility. In each case, promoting col-
laboration is a basic policy instrument used to achieve
general ends. And in each case, distributed collabor-
ation is facilitated by allowing stakeholders to plug
into modular institutional frameworks or interfaces
configured to local needs and contexts. Table  1 pro-
vides a diverse range of examples that fit our basic def-
inition of a collaborative platform.
1 A collaborative platform is often a stand-alone organization, but may
also be a program or a subunit of an organization. A  “project” is a
temporary organization formed to carry out a delimited agenda (Lundin
and Söderholm 1995). A “network” is a “stable articulation of mutually
dependent, but operationally autonomous actors” (Sørensen and
Torfing 2009, 236). A collaborative project is typically a network, but a
network (which implies collaboration) is not necessarily designed to be
temporary or to carry out a delimited agenda.
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Collaborative platforms are often collaborative or
networked in form, but not necessarily so. This dis-
tinction between collaborative platforms and collab-
orative governance is important because these terms
can otherwise become loosely interchangeable. For
example, a literature in natural resource management
defines a “multi-stakeholder platform” as:
A negotiating and/or decision-making body
(voluntary or statutory), comprising different
stakeholders who perceive the same resource
management problem, realize their interdepend-
ence in solving it, and come together to agree on
action strategies for solving the problem (Steins
and Edwards 1999, 244).
This use of the term platform reflects the sense that it is
a foundation that intermediates between stakeholders
and upon which collaboration can be built. However,
the definition is not easily distinguishable from what
the literature now calls collaborative governance. The
value-added of a concept like collaborative platform
comes from seeing the platform as the nexus of mul-
tiple collaborations or networks.
The platform concept complements, but also
extends, the idea of collaborative governance regimes
(CGRs) developed by Emerson, Nabatchi, and Balogh
(2012) and Emerson and Nabatchi (2015). They define
CGRs as a “type of public governance system in which
cross-boundary collaboration represents the predom-
inant mode for conduct, decision making, and activ-
ity between autonomous participants who have come
together to achieve some collective purpose defined
by one or more target goals” (Emerson and Nabatchi
2015, 18). The concept of a regime, they argue, helps to
distinguish different types of collaborative governance
and their typology of CGRs emphasizes how regimes
are formed—specifically, whether they are self-initi-
ated, independently convened or externally-directed
(Emerson and Nabatchi 2015, 163). A platform may be
considered a key component of an independently-con-
vened or externally-directed regime. However, whereas
the regime typology takes the perspective of the result-
ing collaboration, the platform concept focuses on the
organization convening or directing the collaboration.
Emerson and Nabatchi rightly express caution
about “externally-directed” collaborations, noting that
mandated or preset forms of collaboration can fail to
produce on-the-ground collaboration (Emerson and
Nabatchi 2015, 174–5). This concern certainly carries
over to collaborative platforms. The concept of collab-
orative platform, however, helps to call attention to the
way that “preset” conditions do or do not encourage
on-the-ground collaboration. It also calls attention to
the platform’s facilitative as opposed to merely direct-
ive role in encouraging collaboration. Finally, while
 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 1 21

Table 1.  Additional Examples of Collaborative Platforms

Platform Description

Innovation and economic development

  Development Trusts Association Scotland (www.dtascot. DTAS facilitates the creation of locally-owned and managed
org.uk) development trusts by providing information, resources,
training and assistance to interested communities.
  New Vision for Agriculture (www.wereform.org) A project of the World Economic Forum, NVA promotes
food security, environmental sustainability and economic
opportunity by catalyzing, brokering and facilitating
investment in regional and country-level agricultural
partnerships.
  German National Platform for Electromobility (http:// GNPEM encourages regional and multi-sectoral collaborations
nationale-plattform-elektromobilitaet.de/en/) to encourage innovations that will allow Germany to become
the leading global supplier of electrical mobility by 2020.
Sustainability
  Global Environmental Facility (www.thegef.org) A partnership of 18 international organizations, the GEF
catalyzes and supports multi-stakeholder alliances and
collaborative projects to preserve threatened ecosystems.
  Water framework directive (www.ec.europa.eu) The WFD is an EU policy framework for integrated river basin
management that requires the development of local river basin
districts and collaborative basin planning.
  Roundtable on the crown of the continents (http:// The Roundtable encourages collaboration at multiple scales to
crownroundtable.org) sustainably manage the Crown of the Continents—a region of
the Rocky Mountains straddling both the U.S. and Canada.
Health
  Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health A multi-sector coalition of more than 700 organizations in
(who.int/pmnch/en/) over 75 countries that promotes multi-stakeholder action to
improve the health of mothers, newborns and children and
adolescents.
  LiveWell Colorado (livewellcolorado.org) A “bi-directional platform” that promotes local multi-sector
community coalitions to address obesity.
  Forum for Action on A multisector platform sponsored by the Pan American Health
Non-Communicable Disease (www. Organization that catalyzes collaborative action at the
paho.org/panamericanforum) regional, subregional, and country level to address non-
communicable diseases.
Poverty and disaster relief
  Vibrant Communities Canada (www.vibrantcanada.ca) A network of Canadian cities that promotes local multi-sector
collaborations to address urban poverty.
  FT Kilimanjaro (www.ftkilimanjaro.org) Tanzanian NGO that has created nearly 40 collaborative
partnerships to develop an integrated approach to poverty
reduction in the Lower Moshi region of Tanzania.
  Global Platform for Disaster Biennial forum for information sharing and multi-sector coalition
Risk Reduction (www.unisdr. building to improve communication and coordination in
org/we/coordinate/global-platform) disaster reduction.

the regime idea envisions the compound and sustained
nature of collaborative governance, the platform con-
cept directs our attention to the specialized task of
facilitating and adaptively managing a bundle of col-
laborative projects or networks.
The platform concept can also be related to ideas
developed in the literature on network governance.
Provan and Milward (1995) found that networks with
central coordinating bodies offered better integration
of mental health services. Subsequent research found
that many networks are managed by “lead organi-
zations” or “network administrative organizations”
(Provan and Kenis 2008), or what the Collective
Impact literature calls “backbone organizations”
(Kania and Kramer 2011). The network governance
literature has also been attuned to the importance of
managing networks (Koppenjan and Klijn 2004) and
has developed the concept of network metagovernance
to describe how the state can engage in the “govern-
ance of governance” (Sørensen and Torfing 2009). This
work calls attention to idea that the role of facilitat-
ing or managing networks is often a specialized one
that provides strategic direction for the formation and
management of networks. A  platform is much like a

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lead or network administrative organization that gen-
erates and metagoverns a portfolio of collaborative
projects and networks.
Although our definition of collaborative platforms
stresses its organizational dimensions and distin-
guishes the platform itself from the collaborations it
fosters, we note that it may often be difficult to dis-
tinguish them in practice. Platforms facilitate multiple,
on-going collaborations. In doing so, the collabora-
tions may simply appear to be extensions of the plat-
form. For example, local obesity campaigns organized
under the aegis of EPODE are branded as EPODE
campaigns. Even where there is a sharper demarca-
tion between the platform organization and its affili-
ated collaborations, elements of the platform may be
embedded in a distributed fashion into the collabora-
tions it helps to organize. For example, the CTC is an
active participant in the many local collaborations it
facilitates. Thus, although we have noted the similari-
ties here between platforms and network administra-
tive or backbone organizations, the boundary between
platforms and the collaborations they promote may
often be fuzzy.
An important value of the platform concept is that
it offers a useful framework for distinguishing one-off
or short-term instances of collaborative governance
from more adaptive or sustained efforts. Platforms
generate collaborations or networks and help modify
them as conditions change. There is thus a temporal
dimension to the platform concept. Inherent in the
concept of platform as developed by Ciborra is the
idea that platforms create a stable framework to facili-
tate a more flexible mode of governance that adapts
over time to new opportunities or changing condi-
tions. Thus, collaborative platforms may serve as a
strategy of adaptive governance, helping to generate
or reorganize projects and networks as new opportu-
nities or challenges arise. Here again, the usefulness
of the term depends on being able to distinguish a
relatively enduring set of organizational competences,
institutions and resources for generating and adapting
collaboration from the specific projects or networks in
question. Drawing this distinction is probably easier
where the platform and its collaborative projects or
networks operate at different scales (e.g., EPODE,
EADD) and somewhat more difficult where a single
collaborative (e.g., Sacramento Water Forum) grad-
ually becomes more differentiated.
In defining collaborative platforms, this section has
argued that the concept is useful when we wish to
describe a distinctive institutional framework for pro-
moting multiple collaborations or for facilitating the
adaptation of many collaborative projects over time.
Having defined the basic concept, we now go on a
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deeper exploration of the basic logics of collaborative
platforms.
A Deeper Dive: The Logics of Collaborative
Platforms
In this section, we work back and forth between
the theoretical literature on platforms and concrete
examples that meet our definition of a collaborative
platform. Our goal is to isolate distinctive logics of col-
laborative platforms, by which we mean their charac-
teristic modes of operation.
A first point is that collaborative platforms tend
to have high-level or open-ended goals or strategies
that are given meaning and substance through specific
collaborations (Selsky and Parker 2005, 2010). For
example, Oxford House Inc., is a collaborative plat-
form that helps recovering alcoholics create coopera-
tive housing arrangements. The overarching goal of
Oxford House is to help sustain sober living. However,
each individual Oxford House has the freedom to
develop its own specific approach as long as the prin-
ciples and values of the Oxford House framework are
followed (Jason et al. 2001).
One implication of maintaining broad goals that
are then given substance by configuring specific
modular frameworks is that platforms are described
as being “evolvable” (Baldwin and Woodard 2009).
The relationship between open-ended goals and the
evolvability of a platform can be seen in the case of
the adaptation over time of community health part-
nerships. Cheadle et  al. (2005) distinguish between
issue-specific health partnerships and partnerships
with broader and less focused goals (e.g., improv-
ing community health). They find that partnerships
with broader and less focused goals tend to expand
over time, incorporating multiple stakeholders and
elaborating new projects, whereas partnerships who
set out to address specific issues tend to narrow and
professionalize.
Evolvability is an important property because
platforms often have to discover their value-added
role adaptively. For example, a Ugandan agricultural
innovation platform had “…to go through a trajectory
of discussion and turbulence before it discover[ed] its
proper function” by “finding complementarities and
synergies with on-going value chain interventions”
(Nederlof et al. 2011, 121). This relationship between
open-ended goals and evolvability poses a challenge
for platform design, as O’Reilly observes: “How do
you design a system in which all of the outcomes aren’t
specified beforehand, but instead evolve through inter-
actions between government and its citizens, as a ser-
vice provider enabling its user community?” (Nederlof
et al. 2011, 15). Although platform goals may be broad
 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 1
and open-ended, we should not mistake this for ad hoc
informality. Platforms strive to provide a stable and
structured framework in which more dynamic and
adaptable processes can evolve.
Platforms tend to operate in a context of distrib-
uted action, which means they serve as an umbrella
for many diverse and semi-independent activities and
actors. Baldwin and Woodard (2009) describe this in
evolutionary terms, arguing that platforms promote
variation. However, platforms also promote integra-
tion by creating interfaces that integrate diverse and
semi-independent activities into an interacting system.
In doing this, they serve as “boundary objects” (Star
and Griesemer 1989) or “boundary organizations”
(Guston 2001).
Integrating distributed action may sound entirely
unexceptional. All organizations do this. Platforms,
however, push the limits on the distributed action side of
the equation. As noted earlier, collaborative platforms
facilitate, enable and regulate many-to-many ties. They
do this by promoting parallel and semi-autonomous
organizing, on the one hand, and aggregating or coor-
dinating these organizing efforts on the other. Oxford
House, Inc., for example, offers individuals interested
in forming an Oxford House with resources and guid-
ance for setting up their home and navigating local
zoning procedures or funding obstacles but provides
ample space for each home to develop its own initia-
tives and operate according to its own rules.
One of the ways that platforms achieve a working
balance between distributed action and integration is
through extensive use of intermediation. Kilelu et  al.
describe the intermediary role played by EADD:
“…[A]n important intermediation role of EADD
at the early stages was to mobilize farmers, sup-
port the interim leadership of the DFBAs to
draw up business plans, facilitate the set-up of
governance structures, and bring on board other
relevant actors as collaborators, broker their
interactions and support the interim leadership
to raise capital” (Kilelu et al. 2013, 70).
The important role of intermediaries has been increas-
ingly noted in the literature on economic development
and environmental protection (Geels and Deuten 2006;
Hargreaves et al. 2013; Medd and Marvin 2007; Moss
2009). Geels and Deuten (2006) describe how indus-
trial intermediaries may evolve over time from serving a
knowledge “aggregating” role to a more “orchestrating”
role. Hargreaves et al. (2013) build on this model, but
argue that the energy-related intermediaries go beyond
this orchestration role to take a direct role in creating
networks and thus acting very much like the platforms
described here. Collaborative platforms often assume
the role of what Medd and Marvin (2007) call “strategic
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23
intermediaries.” One of the strategic intermediaries they
describe, the Merseyside Basin Campaign (MBC), fits
well with our definition of collaborative platforms; this
regional water coalition advances its agenda by promot-
ing local “river initiatives.” The innovation literature also
calls attention to the importance of “systemic interme-
diaries” operating at a strategic level between networks
and systems (Van Lente et  al. 2003). These systemic
intermediaries act as a catalyst for system innovation by
intermediating between subsystems, in part by creating
“platforms for experimentation and learning” (Klerkx
and Leeuwis 2009, 855). As these descriptions of inter-
mediation suggest, intermediaries operate as a nexus of
networks or collaborative efforts.2
Platforms often provide multi-level intermediation
between local collaborative projects and national or
international resources and political authority. This
vertical intermediation can be challenging. Desportes
et  al. (2016) describe the political and institutional
limits encountered by a collaborative platform created
in Cape Town, South Africa to deal with the issue of
flooding. The platform successfully mobilized collab-
oration among local residents, but “could not get the
flooding issue on the agenda of officials and politi-
cians beyond the Task Team” (Desportes et  al. 2016,
79). Some platforms explicitly address this challenge.
EPODE first organizes high-level political support in
a country before committing to building a local obes-
ity campaign. Agriculture innovation platforms often
operate on a national level to build political support
and on a local level to engage with farmers and other
stakeholders (Nederlof et al. 2011).
Intermediation is a more prominent logic of action
for platforms than control (e.g., via authority or regu-
lation), though control is not absent. Since platforms
typically build on the voluntary contributions of inde-
pendent or semi-independent stakeholders, they rarely
exercise a sufficient degree of power over stakehold-
ers to directly control their interactions. Yet they must
ensure some degree of integration or at least effect-
ive adjudication. To some degree, platform control
is ecological; it is achieved indirectly by designing
the institutional framework in which many-to-many
interaction is orchestrated. The literature on modu-
larity emphasizes that control is achieved via “design
rules” (Baldwin and Clark 2000; Tiwana, Konsynski,
and Bush 2010), particularly the design of “interfaces”
(Hagiu and Wright 2015).
Getting the balance right between intermediation
and control is important for what has been referred to
as the “generativity” of platforms (O’Reilly 2011). A
2 As Consoli and Patrucco describe for innovation platforms, a platform
becomes “the coordination of a bundle of inter-firms and inter-
organizations linkages” (Consoli and Patrucco 2008, 703).
 24
generative technology creates easily masterable “levers”
that make jobs easier, are easily adapted to new pur-
poses, and easily accessible to wide audiences (Zittrain
2006). Recall the core institutional interfaces of the
three platform examples presented in the introduc-
tion. EPODE’s social marketing techniques, the CTC’s
concept of MPAs, and the EADD’s use of hubs are all
potentially generative in the sense that they facilitate
the task of collaboration, are configurable to local con-
texts, and are made accessible to wide audiences.
A key design issue related to intermediation, control
and generativity is the relative openness of the platform.
Platforms are often associated with open innovation,
which allows users to freely access and utilize the basic
resources and infrastructure of the platform for their own
purposes. Boudreau (2010) distinguishes at least two dif-
ferent modes of opening a platform. One is to grant open
access to the platform, which remains under the control
of the platform owners; the other is to devolve a degree
of control over the platform. He finds that the later strat-
egy produces positive innovation effects. EPODE cam-
paigns, EADD diary hubs, and Coral Triangle MPAs
seem to reflect this later strategy of devolving a large
measure of control over the platform. As Jansen and
Estevez note, “The whole idea of platform is to create a
community, and by doing so lowering transaction costs,
increase reach and enable some level of control by users”
(Janssen and Estevez 2013, S5). Herein lies a challenge.
Referring to e-government platforms, Jansen and Estevez
note that: “[t]oo tight control might scare developers,
too loose might result in anarchy” (Janssen and Estevez
2013, S6). With respect to collaborative platforms,
greater control over access and participation can reduce
transaction costs and facilitate negotiation and coordin-
ation; it can also undermine legitimacy, discourage fresh
ideas, and limit possibilities for synergy.
The advantages of opening up platforms can be seen
in an example from crowdsourcing platforms. Roth et
al. (2013) describe two regional crowdsourcing plat-
forms with varying degrees of openness. One of them
allows only those from within the region to submit ideas,
whereas the other is open to submissions from beyond
the region. Roth et al. argue that the greater openness
of the later region makes it more likely to break out
of “regional lock-in.” A number of platform discus-
sions suggest that platforms can become more closed
as incumbent stakeholders take control. Stakeholders
may only be incentivized to make investments in plat-
form activities when they feel like they have a sense of
control over the fate of their investment. As a result,
greater openness may undermine their desire to invest
in the platform. Generativity may hang on the precise
balance struck between an open and a closed platform.
The ideas developed in this section point to how
collaborative platforms must act in a strategic manner.
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First, responding to voluntarism, platforms must build
on existing motivations for action; they must then
spot where intermediation is likely to create value that
can feedback to deepen subsequent commitment and
investment. By this logic, platforms are likely to do
well where opportunities for value creation via inter-
mediation are rich. We identify four types of positive
feedbacks that collaborative platforms might strategic-
ally target to build success.
Attractor Effects
The literature on commercial platforms talks about
their positive network effects—the idea that the more
developers and users affiliate with the platform, the
more that others will want to affiliate. Success begets
success. We refer to this type of positive feedback as
an “attractor effect.” In the context of collaborative
governance, stakeholders may become more willing
to invest time, energy and resources in collaborations
that appear to be producing tangible and successful
outcomes. For example, Weber describes the long-
term evolution of the Blackfoot Challenge, a successful
watershed collaboration in Montana. Over time, this
group has helped to organize over 100 projects. Weber
describes this collaboration as building on an attractor
effect “…the overall character of the Blackfoot
Challenge was a magnet that drew stakeholders to the
group” (Weber 2012, 41).
Ideally, platforms promote value-creating collabo-
rations, which then feedback to motivate wider par-
ticipation. In their study of agricultural innovation
platforms, Nederlof et al. note that the “[t]he challenge
is to find a match between quick wins, showing the
relevance of a platform and joint action” (Nederlof
et al. 2011, 122). We noted earlier that in the context
of community health partnerships, broad-based goals
tended to attract more collaborators over time, whereas
narrower goals did not. However, overly broad goals
may discourage concrete value creation and hence
fail to attract participation. Genskow (2009) investi-
gated Wisconsin’s efforts to “catalyze” watershed-level
collaboration on a statewide basis. Some watershed
organizations developed well and became institution-
alized; others never developed a clear focus or became
firmly established. He concluded that: “Agencies ini-
tiating collaborative resource management efforts are
more likely to succeed by providing a specific purpose
and focusing on specific issues and areas” (Genskow
2009, 422).
Learning
A number of scholars have explored the links between
collaborative governance and learning (Gerlak and
Heikkila 2011; Leach et  al. 2013; Pahl-Wostl 2007).
Here we focus on learning something in the course of
 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 1
collaboration—typically about collaboration itself—
that then positively feedbacks to reinforce the vitality
of the platform. For example, stakeholders working
together may learn over time how to collaborate suc-
cessfully; these lessons can then become the basis for
extending collaboration to new issues.
We can identify several scenarios for how learning
may serve as a positive feedback. First, stakeholders
working collaboratively might learn something about
the nature of the issue that leads them to expand or
adapt their collaborative effort. A good example of this
type of learning can be seen in the institutional adap-
tation of an estuary partnership described by Emerson
and Gerlak (2014)—the Piscataqua Region Estuaries
Partnership (PREP). Over time, PREP expanded its
geographical scope, bringing in new stakeholders as it
did so. The trigger for this expansion was a recogni-
tion of the limits of addressing estuary problems from
a narrow geographic base.
Second, collaborative knowledge acquisition can
deepen the commitment of stakeholders to participate
and has been found to be related to belief change (Leach
et  al. 2013). Third, positive learning feedback can
occur when stakeholders learn how to work together
in fruitful ways and build upon this knowledge in their
subsequent interaction. Crona and Parker’s (2012)
example of an environmental bridging organization,
the Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC), illus-
trates both of these processes. This organization’s cre-
ation of a “politically neutral” space for joint learning
reduced the cultural barriers to increased networking
among stakeholders. Collaborative knowledge acqui-
sition through the development of a regional water
model fed back to improve the model, which in turn
reinforced collaboration.
Leverage
Thomas et  al. (2014) argue that platforms are suc-
cessful when they exercise “architectural leverage.”
By leverage, they mean that the platform creates
multiplier effects: “leverage refers to a process of gen-
erating an impact that is disproportionately larger
than the input” or “exercising an influence dispro-
portionate to one’s size” (Thomas et  al. 2014, 206).
They argue that “leverage is achieved through devel-
oping shared assets, designs, and standards that can
be recombined, thereby facilitating coordination and
governance…” (Thomas et  al. 2014, 206). As this
statement suggests, modularity can facilitate platform
leverage. EADD’s promotion of diary hubs offers a
good example of how collaborative platforms might
achieve architectural leverage.
One key strategy for achieving leverage is to build
on pre-existing efforts and motivations. In their study
of community health partnerships, Cheadle et al. note
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25
the importance of “‘starting where the people are’—
that is identifying issues that are of immediate con-
cern to community residents” (Cheadle et  al. 2005,
649). In the context of agricultural innovation plat-
forms, Nederloff et al. point to the value of identifying
“…‘farmer “champions’ who are highly motivated and
therefore used to help mobilise farmers in their com-
munity, and to co-ordinate activities including input
distribution and reporting on progress” (Nederlof
et al. 2011, 126).
A closely related strategy of generating leverage on
collaborative platforms is customizing different activi-
ties for different stakeholders. Ton and Vellema argue
that “Platform facilitators need to maximize the pos-
sibilities for spin-off activities with sub-sets of mem-
bers in the early stages of platform development, even
when these may not be the most important activities
in the long term for the group as a whole” (Ton and
Vellema 2010, 1). In their study of EPODE, Borys et al.
observe the strategic importance of the “ability to gen-
erate social multiplier effects (e.g., through the involve-
ment of stakeholders in ‘different forms of dialogue
and partnerships’ and ‘effective channels of communi-
cation’) and a combination of multiple interventions”
(Borys et al. 2012, 312).
Synergy
Platforms can produce positive feedback effects by
bringing stakeholders together with synergistic know-
ledge, skills, resources, and perspectives.3 Nederlof
et  al., describe successful momentum on a Ugandan
agricultural innovation platform:
“Although literature may suggest otherwise,
namely that diversity within a group impairs
joint action and strategising, the diversity within
this platform turned out to be a valuable asset.
To be able to represent the diverse perspectives in
a fair way depended on good (external) facilita-
tion as well as on finding complementarities and
synergies with on-going value chain interven-
tions, such as contract farming or group-based
bulking” (Nederlof et al. 2011, 121).
The EADD adopted a strategy of building synergies
around local hubs by enabling “…the formation of dif-
ferent lateral networks to address a variety of emerg-
ing issues relevant to the overall innovation process…”
(Kilelu, Klerkx, and Leeuwis 2013, 75).
We summarize the key points made in this section
about collaborative platforms in table 2.
3 Pitsis, Kornberger and Clegg argue that in the context of
interorganizational collaboration, synthesis means “something new
and different is created from the combination of the two parts” (Pitsis,
Kornberger, and Clegg 2004, 47).
 26 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 1

Table 2.  The Concept of Collaborative Platforms

Agenda Scale and scope: Extend scale and scope of collaborative governance
Adaptive governance: Adapt to changing conditions and contexts by creating and reconfiguring
collaborative efforts as needed
Institutional nexus: Catalyze and orchestrate multiple or ongoing collaborative governance projects
Distinctive logics Strategic Intermediation: Prioritizes intermediation (over control) as a way of mobilizing and integrating
distributed action
Design rules: collaboration facilitated and managed through design of modules or platform interfaces,
access rules and participation eligibility and requirements
Structure Modularity: Manages the tension between centralized intermediation and decentralized action through
modular structures
High variation and integration: Extends the capacity to mobilize distributed action while providing a
framework for integrated action
Strategy Generative: Manage the balance between open and closed participation in order to encourage both
commitment and diversity
Positive feedback: Invest in and expand existing energies with an eye toward producing positive value-
creating feedbacks (via attraction, learning, leverage and/or synergy)

Collaborative Platforms In Wider Platforms have responsibilities for managing both

Perspective
The platform concept has the potential to describe a
family of governance strategies—a potential some-
times obscured by a narrow association of the concept
with software or internet platforms. Building on the
ideas about intermediation and design rules developed
in the previous discussion, this final section surveys a
range of platform types, not all which are collaborative
platforms as we have defined them. Thus, this section
suggests the wider applicability of the platform con-
cept for governance and public administration, while
locating how collaborative platforms fit within this
family of platforms.
A common feature of all platform organizations is
that their purpose is to create a basis upon which a
distributed set of activities can develop. However, the
intermediary role of platforms and their role in estab-
lishing and managing the “design rules” of platform
participation may vary considerably. This variation
reflects underlying conditions of interdependence.
Platforms exhibit two types of interdependence.
Vertical interdependence refers to the interdependence
between the platform and its constituents (members,
allies, suppliers, participants, etc.). Horizontal inter-
dependence refers to the interdependence between the
constituents themselves. Both dimensions run from a
more limited form of interdependence that Thompson
(1967) called “pooled” to a more intense form he
referred to as “reciprocal.”4
4 Interdependence is both a condition and a choice. People or groups
face a condition of interdependence when they find themselves
dependent upon others to achieve their goals. They can also decide to
enter into a relationship of deeper interdependence with others. This
distinction is useful for keeping in mind that interdependence is both an
exogenous and an exogeneous factor and also that interdependence is
both a functional and a political situation.
vertical and horizontal interdependence. When hori-
zontal interdependence is pooled, the role of the inter-
mediary is to aggregate or pool the separate inputs
of different constituents (Geels and Deuten 2006).
A crowdsourcing platform, for example, typically uses
a web portal to aggregate the ideas from a wide variety
of individuals or groups. The platform plays little role
in trying to orchestrate such activity. However, as the
interdependence of constituent groups becomes more
reciprocal, intermediaries must engage in more “rela-
tional work” to help coordinate them (Moss 2009).
The intermediary must often play a more catalytic
role to enact interdependence. Hanleybrown, Kania,
and Kramer’s (2012), for instance, find that “back-
bone organizations” must facilitate dialogue between
partners.
Vertically, the focus is on the kind of relationship
that must exist between the platform and its constit-
uents in order to properly align inputs and outputs.
When the interdependence between the platform and
participating groups is pooled, each may have their
respective roles and they may interact in a limited fash-
ion to achieve those roles. However, as interdepend-
ence becomes more reciprocal, tighter coordination
between the platform and its participants becomes
important. Much of the literature that focuses on the
relationship between a core technological platform
(e.g., an automobile chassis) and its modular compo-
nents is concerned with this vertical relationship. In
such cases, the platform owners tend to set out very
precise “design rules” specifying the design of modules
and the interface for plugging in to the platform.
Figure  1 focuses on the two institutional axes of
this discussion—design rules and intermediation. Our
discussion begins in the lower right cell of figure  1,
where design rules are minimal and intermediation
is primarily aggregative. Crowdsourcing platforms

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Figure 1.  Logics of Platform Governance.
generally require pooled intermediation and limited
control over distributed inputs (though the web por-
tal interface is standardized). The UN’s refugee agency,
UNHCR, for example, created a crowdsourcing plat-
form called “UNHCR Ideas” to encourage “open
innovation” around its practices (Bloom 2014). In a
pilot run, the platform posted the following challenge:
“how can access to information and services provided
by UNHCR and partners be improved for refugees
and people of concern residing in urban areas?” The
Web site allowed these participants to submit and vote
on ideas and to post comments on online discussions.
Although crowdsourcing can be more interactive than
many traditional consultation techniques, creating
some opportunity for collaboration, crowdsourcing
interactions do not generally represent full-fledged
collaborative governance (e.g., collective decision-
making processes that are formal, deliberative and
consensus-oriented).
Knowledge and benchmarking platforms suggest
somewhat greater vertical interdependence between
platforms and their constituents than does crowd-
sourcing. Knowledge platforms exercise a clearing-
house function, collecting relevant knowledge from
constituents and disseminating it back to those same
constituents. The International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), for example, fosters the creation of web-based
National Nuclear Safety Knowledge Platforms “for
sharing reference information”; these platforms “can
serve national, regional, and global stakeholders as
an authoritative source of information, maintained
directly by the respective Member State.”5 Although
this clearinghouse role does not require elaborate
collaborative intermediation between participating
groups, the IAEA does envision that these knowledge
5 https://gnssn.iaea.org/main/Pages/NationalPlatforms.aspx/ accessed
November 30, 2016.
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27
platforms can be used to facilitate cross-organizational
collaboration.
Like crowdsourcing and knowledge platforms,
benchmarking platforms aggregate performance infor-
mation from a set of distributed participants (e.g.,
“information pooling”). However, the vertical rela-
tionship between the platform and its participants
tends to exhibit more reciprocal interdependence.
Benchmarking platforms often create reporting require-
ments for their participants. And once the platform has
pooled this information, it often provides feedback to
participants about their individual and collective per-
formance. They may also provide central knowledge
and support to help participants improve their per-
formance over time. The Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) has exten-
sively used benchmarking as a strategy for encouraging
improvements in national performance (Groenendijk
2009). Benchmarking platforms are not necessarily
forms of collaborative governance either, though they
often have more elements of collaboration than know-
ledge or crowdsourcing platforms. For example, the
concept of “democratic experimentalism,” as devel-
oped by Sabel and Zeitlin (2010), combines bench-
marking with elements of collaborative governance.
The process of establishing goals, specifying reporting
requirements, and evaluating performance is under-
stood to be a multilateral and deliberative process.
Figure  1 describes crowdsourcing, knowledge and
benchmarking platforms as representing increasingly
stronger design rules. The intermediary role of all
three, however is often limited to pooling or aggregat-
ing constituent inputs. A network-of-networks plays a
more extensive intermediating role without imposing
extensive design rules. The meta-network intermedi-
ates between existing networks while limiting interven-
tion into member networks. The World Social Forum,
for example, creates a neutral space for a variety of
 28
anti-globalization social movements (Patomäki and
Teivainen 2004). To prevent divisiveness, however, the
Forum scrupulously avoids taking any collective pos-
ition itself. This neutrality is a critical design rule, but
few other rules are imposed. Another example is the
United Kingdom’s Communities and Climate Action
Alliance Network (CCAA), which explicitly describes
itself as a “network of networks.”6 The Network fos-
ters collaboration among a number of networks work-
ing on climate change and energy issues, including
networks like the Low Carbon Communities Network,
the Transition Network, and the Scottish Communities
Climate Action Network. CCAA describes itself as an
“informal grouping of representatives from networks
that support grass roots action” with a “light touch
secretariat” and where “[e]ach network member takes
responsibility to communicate with its own network.”
As this description suggests, the CCAA is a collabora-
tive platform, but its role in promoting is restricted to
intermediating between the component networks.
Matching platforms exhibit limits on collaboration
in a different sense. Air BnB has popularized the idea
of platforms that promote peer-to-peer sharing. Such
platforms help match people who have something to
sell or contribute with someone who is looking to buy
or is in need of something. Whether self-interested
or gifted, these relationships tend to be bilateral
exchanges. They depend upon the platform to identify
and facilitate the exchange, but vertical coordination
with the platform is otherwise quite limited. The plat-
form’s role is to intermediate the bilateral exchange.
Matching platforms are now being experimented with
as a governance strategy. For example, Global Hand
describes itself as “a matching service” for aligning
available donor resources with humanitarian and
development needs. Run by a Hong Kong-based inter-
national NGO, the Crossroads Foundation, Global
Hand actually goes beyond a narrow matching role
to play a more significant role in promoting collab-
oration, describing itself as “…a non-profit brokerage
facilitating public/ private partnership” (http://www.
globalhand.org/, accessed December 3, 2016; see also
Ogelsby and Burke 2012 and Lee and Restrepo 2015).
Standardization or certification platforms tend
to create strong design rules while playing a modest
intermediating role. These platforms establish stand-
ards that participants then adopt—typically volun-
tarily. In some cases, these platforms also certify that
participants have adequately met the standards in
question, often by relying on third-party certifiers. The
6 https://ccaanet.wordpress.com/current-activities/ accessed Nove­
mber 8, 2016. The Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent (table 1)
has also been described as a “network of networks” (Wyborn and
Bixler 2013).
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standards themselves and the certification process can
be understood as well-articulated design rules specify-
ing what participants must do in order to participate
in the platform. Collaboration may enter in two ways.
First, the standards themselves are often set through a
collaborative process. Second, stakeholders must often
engage in a collaborative process to meet the stand-
ards. For example, the Marine Stewardship Council
(MSC) is a program that certifies sustainable fisher-
ies. It has established a sustainable fisheries standard
that includes three core principles and 28 performance
indicators. These standards are understood by MSC to
be benchmarks that represent international best prac-
tices for sustainable fisheries management. However,
the MSC goes beyond voluntary reporting and pool-
ing of performance information, since participants
receive the MSC “blue label” only if they are certified
by a third-party certifier. The MSC itself is a non-profit
international organization governed with collaborative
input provided through a formal stakeholder council.
Although the MSC provides technical and institu-
tional support to fisheries that wish to be certified and
encourages them to work in a collaborative fashion, it
does not play a major role in intermediating collabor-
ation at the fishery level.7
Bridging organizations typically play a strong cata-
lytic role in promoting collaboration while imposing
minimal design rules on participating stakeholders
(Brown 1991). A  good example is the Ecomuseum
Kristianstads Vattenrike (EKV), a Swedish organiza-
tion that serves as an important bridging organization
in an effort to preserve environmental and cultural val-
ues associated with a large wetland. The organization
is the center node in a wider network of “collabora-
tive learning projects” encouraged or initiated but not
administered by EKV (Hahn et  al. 2006, 581). EKV
does exert some control over these projects through
the initiation of projects and the selection of partici-
pants. However, most of EKV’s energy is spent on
strategically identifying “win-win” strategies, on trust
and consensus-building, and on linking local projects
to extra-local institutions and funders. In other words,
EKV is actively engaged in projects, but its role can be
described as primarily intermediation rather than con-
trol. Nevertheless, it has successfully initiated over 200
local projects.
We find that many of the platforms that best fit
our description of collaborative platforms exert more
control over the design rules than does the EKV. We
call one version of these institutions franchise plat-
forms because they tend to create a basic framework
or technology for collaborative governance and then
replicate this in different places in a manner similar to
7 https://www.msc.org/ accessed December 3, 2016.
 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 1
commercial franchises. By controlling the design of the
basic collaborative framework and then replicating it,
these collaborative platforms facilitate the scaling up
of collaboration. The three examples that we began the
article by describing all appear to be, to a greater or
lesser degree, franchise platforms: EPODE promotes
a basic social marketing technology around which
local collaborative anti-obesity campaigns are organ-
ized; the CTC promotes local collaboration around the
basic module of a marine reserve; and EADD replicates
its basic “hub” concept in different farm communities.
Local anti-obesity campaigns, marine reserves, and
dairy hubs are franchises that establish or promote
certain basic design principles while allowing for local
customization via collaborative governance.
Finally, functional modular platforms exercise both
a strong intermediary role and strong design control
and are understood here to be analogous to what the
platform literature calls technological platforms, such
as those characterizing automotive platforms. The
modular components of this kind of platform must be
able to easily interface with the platform and then work
as part of a functional whole. This systemic functional-
ity requires a strong degree of design control over the
modular units. We found few examples of collabora-
tive platforms with this type of functional modularity.
However, the California water collaborative known as
CALFED comes close. Although it has been superseded
by new initiatives, while it existed CALFED estab-
lished a collaborative platform that facilitated and
guided many different smaller collaborative projects.
As described by Booher and Innes, CALFED consisted
of a “shifting set of diverse ad hoc task groups” organ-
ized under the auspices of a central policy committee
(Booher and Innes 2010, 5). According to Booher and
Innes, these groups understood that they were part of
a larger functioning system:
Participants understood that there must be bal-
ance and linkages among projects to keep all
stakeholders at the table. Most understood that
they needed to support the whole package and,
thus, the whole system, if they were to get what
they needed (Booher and Innes 2010, 6).
Booher and Innes describe how this water planning
and management institution was coordinated by “col-
laborative interaction heuristics” that they refer to col-
lectively as the “CALFED way.”
Conclusion
Much of the early development of collaborative gov-
ernance has been local and reactive in nature. Public
agencies, local communities, foundations, and NGOs
have often “failed into” collaborative governance as
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by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth
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29
they sought to break political stalemates and man-
age pressing problems. The first generation of schol-
arship on collaborative governance focused on how
these local and reactive efforts have worked in prac-
tice. Increasingly, however, collaborative governance
is being viewed as a more global and proactive pol-
icy instrument, one that can be deployed on a larger
scale and extended from one local context to another.
Although we know a good deal about specific instances
of collaborative governance, we know much less about
treating collaborative governance as a generic policy
instrument.
We have argued that the concept of platforms is
one way to think about how collaborative governance
is being promoted and facilitated as a generic policy
instrument. Building on an organization-theoretic
understanding of platforms, the concept is used here
to refer to a relatively stable organizational framework
upon which multiple shorter-term or more specialized
projects or networks can be built. These collaborative
platforms help to facilitate “many-to-many” (multilat-
eral) collaborative relationships.
Beyond describing how collaborative platforms are
being used to scale up or deepen collaborative gov-
ernance, the theoretical goal of the article has been
to expand the use of the platform concept beyond
IT and into public administration and governance.
Platforms exhibit organizational properties that are as
yet poorly understood, but which are potentially valu-
able for understanding how the public sector copes
with demands to balance stability and change. As sta-
ble frameworks upon which more flexible organizing
frameworks can be built, platforms are seen as recon-
figurable—that is, they may be flexibly organized and
reorganized to meet changing needs. Reconfigurability
is often facilitated by the modularity of platforms,
which allows peripheral “modules” to be plugged in to
the core platform in a customized way. Platforms are
often designed to enable heterogenous and highly dis-
tributed action and to integrate highly variable com-
ponent parts. When these ideas of reconfigurability,
modularity, and high variability are combined, plat-
forms are said to be evolvable, meaning that they are
adaptable to changing external conditions and respon-
sive to feedback from their own activities. Positive
feedback effects are regarded as critical mechanisms of
platform evolution.
In exploring how these general ideas might apply
to collaborative platforms, we have been struck by the
importance of intermediation for managing many-to-
many collaborative relationships. Collaborative plat-
forms typically have limited coercive authority and this
capacity to align and arbitrate the action of different
stakeholders is often critical to their success. Given the
importance of positive feedbacks, this intermediary
 30 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 1
role must be quite strategic. Our examination sug-
gests that strategic intermediation by collaborative
platforms must be conducted with an appreciation for
how they can produce attractor effects, learning, lever-
age and synergy. Platforms, however, can also achieve
a measure of control by establishing design rules that
guide access and participation. As illustrated in our
examples of local obesity campaigns, marine reserves,
and dairy hubs, control over the design of modular col-
laborative projects may be a critical mechanism in the
scaling-up of collaboration.
These two key insights about intermediation and
design rules were used to explore a range of govern-
ance platforms in the final section of the article. We
found that the intermediary role of some platforms
is primarily aggregative and their role is largely to
pool distributed inputs. Other platforms play a more
catalytic role in generating collaborative interactions
between constituent groups. A  similar scale of vari-
ation was described for design rules. In some cases,
platforms establish minimal design rules, whereas in
other cases these rules are more elaborate and con-
trolling. From this perspective, a number of different
examples of governance platforms are discussed, not
all of which meet our definition of collaborative plat-
forms (figure 1). This analysis led us to identify fran-
chise platforms as a common type of collaborative
platform. As illustrated by our examples of EPODE,
the CTC, and EADD, franchising (via modular col-
laborative projects) appears to be a key mechanism of
scaling-up collaboration.
Future research might deepen our understanding of
collaborative platforms by further addressing at least
four key analytical questions. First, how can collabora-
tive platforms maintain the open-ended and evolvable
nature of platform goals while facilitating the produc-
tion of concrete outputs and outcomes? Second, how
can platforms recognize and prioritize opportunities
for strategic intermediation? Third, what is the right
balance between imposing design rules to facilitate
collaboration and the need for local autonomy and
customization? Finally, what are the range of strate-
gies that platforms can use to create attractor effects,
learning, leverage, and synergy? Detailed case studies
may be the best way of advancing our understanding
of these dynamics at this stage in our knowledge of col-
laborative platforms. Such research could more fully
reveal the strengths and weaknesses of collaborative
platforms as a governance strategy.
Acknowledgments
We greatly appreciate the thoughtful suggestions received from the editor
and three anonymous reviewers. We also appreciate the feedback we received
when we presented earlier versions of this article at American Society of
Public Administration and Midwestern Political Science Association annual
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by Adam Ellsworth, Adam Ellsworth
on 14 December 2017
meetings, and at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental
Affairs. Special thanks to Satoshi Miura, Eva Sørensen, and Jacob Torfing for
fruitful conversations and encouragement.
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