Collaboration

AbstractChapter 5 examines the pursuit of joined-up governance in mitigating the harms of alcohol consumption. Drawing on interview material, I map the cyclical rise and fall of collaboration amid an embittered political debate and complex administrative terrain. I argue that the perennial appeal of collaboration helps actors to forge (and undermine) alliances in pursuit of their preferred outcomes in the face of siloed disjunctures and mutual distrust. I link these insights to ideas about policy learning, boundary spanners and governmentality to further understandings of what makes collaboration ‘work’ even as it fails.