Self-Governance and Co-Production: Beyond Markets and States

When we started the course, one of the first questions we asked you to consider was the difference between the terms ‘governance’ and ‘government.’

Since then, we’ve learned that governments are far from the only providers of governance in society. In fact, governments usually cannot provide public services to citizens in the same way that private firms provide services to consumers.

For governments to achieve important goals like public health or public safety, they must often work in tandem with public entrepreneurs and self-governing organisations that directly serve communities. We call this process co-production.