Network governance and collaborative governance: a thematic analysis on their similarities, differences, and entanglements

Through a thematic analysis on major themes researched in network governance and collaborative governance, this paper identifies the entangled relationship between these two research streams. We note the common and distinct themes in these two research streams that reveal four entanglements in the research and practice of network governance and collaborative governance. We propose future research could focus more on the implementation and comparative studies, adopting microperspectives of collaborative governance and network governance at the grass-root level in juxtaposition with interorganizational and institutional levels that are led by non-public actors for value co-creation in different institutional contexts.