ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that collaboration is a core concept within the scholarship and practice of public administration, it has received remarkably little critical analysis. Much of what has been written about collaboration is inherently rationalist and treats it as an instrumental tool intended to bring about particular ends such as reduced inequalities or improved service user outcomes. Yet, the evidence to support a clear link between collaboration and improved outcomes is weak at best. We have previously argued (e.g. Dickinson and Sullivan 2013; Dickinson 2014) that this lack of evidence may be because collaboration is treated instrumentally so missing the work it does as cultural performance expressed through social efficacy. In this chapter, we seek to demonstrate the ways in which collaboration can be seen as an expression of cultural performance. We do this by re-reading evidence from case studies of collaborative working from England and Wales, where we have been involved in assessing collaborative performance. In doing so, we illustrate the persistent appeal of the concept of collaboration to policy makers and practitioners.
