Strengthening the rule of law in collaborative governance

Due to the incomplete legal foundation for collaborative governance, which leads to a set of problems, it is significant to promote the legal framework. Promoting the legal framework starts by enhancing 'the rule of law' in collaborative governance. This conceptual paper provides a framework for understanding the enhancement of the rule of law in collaborative governance. The enhancement of four important principles of the rule of law in key arenas of power in a collaboration is discussed. These four principles include predictability of the law, accessibility of the law, supremacy of the law, and equality before the law. Similarly, the arenas of power in a collaboration include participant selection in the antecedent phase of collaboration, process design and content selection in the process phase of collaboration, and performance measurement in the outcome phase of collaboration. This framework will shed light on the enhancement of the rule of law and the management of power relationships in collaborative governance.