From The Purchase Of Services To Co-governance

Under the idea of government-nonprofit collaboration and public service outsourcing, the provision of community services in China has changed from direct service delivery by street governments and Urban Resident’s Committees to their procurement of services from nonprofit organizations. Such collaboration requires the government to seek collaborators through competitive or noncompetitive means, and to build formal contract as the foundation of collaborative relations. Nonetheless, due to the immaturity of the public service market and the insufficient number of qualified nonprofit organizations, the due to the lack of capacity of government to manage contracts, the procurement of services face many difficulties. It is also noticed that in the process of service collaboration, government has to accommodate the emerging trend of collaborative governance that involves nonprofits into local government system.Based on the practices of government-nonprofit collaboration in the YJ street in Shanghai, this paper examines the limits of government procurement of services and the mechanisms that lead to the emergence of collaborative governance. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed in this paper.