New Public Governance, the Third Sector, and Co-Production

13  ‘Don't Bite the HandThat Feeds You?’

On the Partnerships betweenPrivate Citizen Initiativesand Local Government

Karolien Dezeure and Filip De Rynck

INTRODUCTION: PARTICIPATION AND CO-MANAGEMENT

This chapter examines partnerships between Belgian citizen initiatives and local government in the realm of arrangements for local service delivery in Flanders. We address the following questions: How does local government cope with the private initiatives set up by groups of citizens in several policy domains over time? Do these arrangements evolve into governance in terms of co-management or partnerships? How are these arrangements perceived by the private initiatives from the perspective of their autonomy? To cope with those questions, we merge ...