Does State‐Civil Society Collaboration Offer an Effective Means of Pandemic Response? A Case Study of COVID‐19 Response in Bengaluru, India

ABSTRACT Does collaboration between the state and civil society offer a powerful tool to achieve an effective pandemic response? We address this question using a case study of the COVID‐19 response in Bengaluru, India. We review the collaborative governance literature and analyze India's pandemic‐related laws, regulations, reports, and academic studies. We supplement these with interviews with governmental and non‐governmental actors involved in the COVID‐19 response. We find that, overall, collaborative governance does not succeed in Bengaluru, attributing failure to weak institutionalization, low trust, and poor state‐civil society relations. Only in rare situations do we encounter the successful collaboration identified in the literature as key to effective response. Furthermore, given the structure of Indian governance, we suggest that collaborative governance is unlikely to be effective across India. Our results contribute to a broader understanding of why and in what circumstances collaborative governance fails.