Strengthening the governance framework: the partnership of government and academia in the state of Zacatecas

Abstract

This paper reviews the collaborative experience between government and academia in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico, as a means to strengthen the governance framework. The partnership between the two parties entailed efforts to constitute a public policy evaluation body, in addition to setting up an academic programme with the same orientation. The first section of this paper examines the nature of the concept of governance and its relevance in public policy framework; it also introduces the concept of collaborative governance and its success variables as a more adequate concept to construe or perform case studies. The second section reviews how the agreements between the parties were reached and details the partial outcomes of said partnership. The third section analyses the lessons learned through this experience, as well as its most pressing challenges and pitfalls, through the lens of critical success variables of collaborative governance, adding two more variables to this explanatory framework. We argue that this sort of experience can be a useful tool in fostering the governance framework, particularly at a subnational level, further interweaving the links between the public sector and academia, allowing for a greater knowledge transfer and an improvement of the policy framework. KEYWORDS: Governance, public policy, collaborative governance, evaluation, subnational, Zacatecas.