System Context in Collaborative Governance

The viability of collaborative governance, especially at the local level, entails a proactive system context that encourages stakeholders’ collective solutions in tackling debilitating complex public problems. The capacity of the local system context or environment to help set the pace for collaborative governance convening using statutes, laws, and mandates coupled with political and cultural variables creates the needed synergy for collective cross stakeholders’ action. As one of the critical variables in fostering collaborative governance, the system context has inextricable connectedness with internal and external variables as it usually manifests in interdependencies of sectors, stakeholders, and instruments impact’s purpose, resolve, structure and collaborative success as measured by created outputs and outcomes for societal benefits. The tendency of the local system context to complicate the dimensionality and operationalization of collaborative governance due to contingencies does not negate viability in realizing an established agenda for the health and general well-being of target populations. This chapter elucidates the concept of local system context within the collaborative governance regime while relating the elemental parts and interconnectedness with other critical variables in fostering creative and sustainable solutions. The chapter relates the case of system context based on the HIV/AIDS collaborative governance experiment at Eligible Metropolitan Areas (EMAs). It problematizes conceptual and practical intervention strategies as a conduit for addressing complex public problems.