Study title

Qualitative data (interview, focus group and observation) collected for the Leicester case study of the "Collaborative Governance Under Austerity and Eight-Case Comparison" project. The purpose was to compare the role of collaboration in governing austerity in eight cities: Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Melbourne, Montreal and Nantes. The primary objective was to understand whether, and if so how, collaboration among public officials, citizens, business leaders and other actors contributes to austerity governance. Austerity governance, defined as a sustained agenda for reducing public spending, poses new challenges for the organisation of relationships between government, business and citizens in many parts of the world. This project compares how these challenges are addressed in eight countries: Australia, Canada, France, Greece, Ireland, Spain, the UK and the USA. Governments have long sought effective ways of engaging citizen activists and business leaders in decision making, through many formal and informal mechanisms - what we term collaborative governance. The focus of our research is how collaboration contributes to the governance of austerity. Governments and public service leaders argue that collaboration with businesses, voluntary organisations and active citizens is essential for addressing the many challenges posed by austerity. The challenges include transforming public services to cope with cuts, changing citizen expectations and managing demand for services and enhancing the legitimacy of difficult policy decisions by involving people outside government in making them. But at the same time, collaboration can be exclusionary. For example, if there are high levels of protest, governmental and business elites may collaborate in ways that marginalise ordinary citizens to push through unpopular policies. Our challenge is to explore different ways in which collaboration works or fails in governing austerity and whether it is becoming...