Setting Up the Playground: How Public And Private Actors Collectively Shape The Governance Sphere

While scholars have extensively explored the role of public and private actors in the new governance context and different types of public-private interactions in the governance sphere, less attention has been given to the process of how public and private actors collectively shape the governance sphere as an issue-centric regulatory domain populated by public and private actors, advancing and administering particular modes of regulation for addressing a common problem or an issue of public goods (Cashore, Knudsen, Moon, & van der Ven, 2021). Drawing on a study of ‘carbon emission reduction’ for a period of 16 years (from 2001 to 2017) in the governance context of the United States and subscribing to the collective action theory (Flanagin, Stohl, & Bimber, 2006), we conduct a processual analysis across three time-brackets to examine how various actors shape the governance sphere by navigating throughout different collective action spaces in the governance context. We contribute by (1) bridging insights from governance and collective action studies to present an analytical model of the formation of the governance sphere around an issue of public concern that explains how a ‘regulatory configuration’ can emerge; (2) explaining shifting boundaries between public and private actors as leaders or coordinators of actors populations in the governance spheres; and (3) explaining how a governance sphere can be framed and reframed and a specific regulatory approach can diffuse or solidify through time by the relative positioning of various public and private actors in the collective action spaces. References: Cashore, B., Knudsen, J. S., Moon, J., & van der Ven, H. (2021). Private authority and public policy interactions in a global context: Governance spheres for problem-solving. Regulation & Governance, 15(4), Flanagin, A. J., Stohl, C., & Bimber, B. (2006). Modelling the Structure of Collective Action1. Communication Monographs, 73(1), 29–54.