Institutional Determinants of Co-Production: Norway as an Illustrative Case

Abstract

This article focuses on collective engagement through voluntary organizations to advance a theoretical understanding of the determinants of varying patterns of co-production, and we conduct an empirical investigation of how these determinants shape local-level co-productive relationships in Norwegian municipalities. We use a policy fields approach in which we compare four policy areas that each constitute an institutional field. The study uses a qualitative design, with data from 89 interviews in 12 municipalities. We find strong systematic differences between the fields, suggesting that the institutional space for local co-production is structured by national welfare policies and public management practices. We also identify feedback processes in co-production between the design and implementation stages of the policy process. We conclude that, unlike the often-prescriptive embrace of co-production in the literature and among policymakers, co-production is a more suitable organizational form in some service areas than others, depending on the institutional context.