Co-production with citizens: demarcating the modeof collaboration by looking from outside in

Co-production has become a dominant term to address how contemporary policy should be orchestrated. Therefore, wide ranges of collaboration structures are examined under the guise of co-production. As a consequence, what co-production entails in comparison to other concepts (e.g. collaborative governance, interactive governance, co-creation and community self-organization) is often blurred. In this chapter our goal is to demarcate the lines of the co-production concept, by comparing this body of literature to overlapping concepts. We conclude that co-production is best be considered as a ‘mode’ of collaboration between citizens and government. Furthermore, given the empirical focus of co-production it is recommended to preserve the term to address collaboration structures for public service delivery (rather than policy design or agenda setting). Last, in search of the collaborative nature of co-production, forms of interactive and collaborative governance can be studied within the concept of co-production, due to their focus on, for example, relational structures and dynamics.