There is a renewed interest in third sector organizations with hope for contributions to systems of new public governance and welfare services. This study is based on a survey to the local authorities in Sweden and aims to analyze how collaboration between public and third sector organizations occurs at the local level. A special focus for the study is idea-driven public partnerships (IOPs). The results indicate that collaboration mainly occurs outside of the core fields of welfare and also that the national level agreements set standards to be used in especially the larger local authorities who are more in need of formalized policies to handle the local relations. The institutionalized collaborative relations are diverse and mainly meant to promote a thriving third sector for its democratic values, but there are also certain welfare fields with less local remit such as sports, leisure time activities, and homelessness where NPOs are not crowded out by the public sector. Collaboration with IOPs are more common in larger local authorities and places with a larger proportion of immigrants.

Collaborative governance between public and civil society organizations (CSOs) in planning, managing, and providing welfare activities through horizontal organizing and equal relationships is described as necessary for addressing complex social problems. Synergies are expected when public organizations’ and CSOs’ different rationalities and goals are intertwined. However, theoretical frameworks illustrate collaboration as a dynamic process often involving conflicts. More studies are needed to explore the collaboration dynamics over time, investigating the conflicts that arise and how stakeholders handle them. This issue is addressed here through a cross-case analysis of four collaborative governance arrangements concerning welfare activities in Sweden, based on 63 semi-structured interviews, observations, and supplementary data. The results illustrate that more equal relationships were possible in three cases during the initial collaboration phase. However, demands from top-level municipal management for increased bureaucratization resulted in changes over time concerning defining the focus of collaboration and governance structure. To maintain influence, the CSOs used the strategies of adaptation, distancing, or exiting while the municipalities shifted from acting as partners to taking the ‘lead’. As a result, the CSOs’ influence diminished over time. Although the stakeholders’ differences motivate collaboration, these differences become problematic over time as the different perspectives fail to intertwine in an equal relationship when the projects’ activities are scaled up or linked to ordinary municipal operations. The marginalization of CSOs’ perspectives is problematic since collaboration, even in later phases, needs to be understood as dynamic, where CSOs’ perspectives are valuable for addressing complex social problems. The marginalization of CSOs in collaboration thus undermines both the idea of collaboration as an equal relationship and the possibility of addressing complex social problems through the intertwining of different perspectives.

This study investigates the role of sensemaking in individual actors' responses to tensions between institutional logics within a state-civil society partnership. It also links sensemaking to the partnership's practical activities. The study illustrates tensions that resulted from activation of sensemaking as actors drew on different institutional frameworks. Responses to tensions were legitimized by sensemaking processes, in turn affecting the partnership's practical activities. The study contributes to the literature by providing a nuanced understanding of individual actors' responses to institutional complexity, highlighting the role of sensemaking and demonstrating a link between sensemaking and the partnership's practical activities.

During the last decades, cross-sector partnerships have been presented as interactive and non-hierarchical decision-making processes. However, research has demonstrated that in practice, partnerships often involve tensions between institutional logics. Macro- and micro-level institutional logics studies often present diverging views of how individual actors handle such tensions. By combining a micro-perspective with the negotiated order theory, this study attempts to bridge this gap by portraying how partnerships can be characterized by negotiations and how such negotiations are always framed by an institutional and organizational context. The study demonstrates that although micro-level actors may handle logics to both influence others and justify their actions, their ability to act strategically is both based on role and perceived appropriateness in the specific organizational context. Furthermore, the implications of the dominance of a legalistic/bureaucratic logic and unequal sharing of decision-making power and responsibility for creating change are highlighted; in this case, micro-level negotiations on work structure, work processes, and decision-making resulted in a hierarchical relationship that contradicted the intentions of the partnership.