ABSTRACT
Proponents of the theoretical concepts of multistakeholder dialogue and multistakeholder governance are becoming more numerous. Andrews et al. (2006) claim that one way for local public administrations to increase their performance is “to work in partnership with the voluntary and especially the private sector when delivering services”, although they recognize that the benefi ts of working in partnership can be restrained by the new costs of contracting – “particularly costs relating to transactions, trust and rent seeking”. From the traditional for-profi t enterprise literature perspective, the most widely discussed concept might have been that of stakeholder dialogue (see inter alia Kristensen 2001; Moon 2002; Zadek 2005; Pedersen, 2006; O’Riordan and Feisbrass 2008).
