Conditions for Synergy between bottom-up Citizen Initiatives and Local Government

Increasingly, citizens organize themselves to deliver public services for their community. For example, the maintenance of public spaces, the provision of community centers, and the delivery of social services is more and more picked up by groups of citizens who want to take responsibility for their own neighborhood. This kind of bottom-up initiatives could contribute to deal with societal challenges and support from the local government would be a valuable strategy. Although highly different, all these initiatives need some kind of governmental support or facilitation. This support can be rather modest, in terms of getting permission for organizing activities. But more often also financial or policy support is needed, in combination with supporting activities from public officials. And even a more enduring and formalized relationship between the initiative and governmental agencies can help to unlock the potential of bottom-up initiatives. However, such a productive or even synergetic collaboration between citizen initiatives and local institutions is anything but self-evident. Many initiatives stagnate and citizens become disappointed because of the long-during decision-making processes, the bureaucratic standards they cannot meet, or because the government takes over the lead during the process. This gives rise to the question what conditions contribute to such a productive relationship between bottom-up initiatives and local government. Based upon a large-scale research program we currently execute, we present in this paper three clusters of conditions which are crucial for such a relationship. The first set of conditions has to do with the local government itself and the way in which it is organized and behaves. We distinguish between three characteristics which have to do with the institutional set of rules, mode of governance and the political and managerial attitude. The second set of conditions has to do with the citizen initiative. We distinguish between task characteristics, actor characteristics and organizational characteristics. And finally, characteristics of the way in which the relationship is organized, are the third set of conditions to take into account. Here we have to look at the characteristics of the relation (in terms of trust and reciprocity), the arrangements used to structure these relations, and the capabilities of the persons who organize this relationship. In this paper we present a comprehensive framework in which we describe the conditions for productive collaboration between citizen initiatives and local governments as well as the way in which these conditions contribute to the ultimate outcome in terms of a vital relationship between citizen initiatives and local government.