Abstract: In the past thirty years, multisector collaboration among governments, enterprises, nongovernmental organizations and citizens has been more commonly practiced over the world in order to meet the challenges presented by increasingly complicated social problems and the shortage of government funds. Collaborative governance, as a new field of inquiry, has attracted much attention from western scholars. Recently, as China is trying to reform its social management system, domestic scholars have also started research in this developing trend, often by analyzing western literature related to this phenomenon. However, these scholars seldom refer to the papers on collaborative governance as they are not yet thoroughly familiar with the concept. To make better use of the research results by the western scholars and to pave the way for further study in this area, the author traces the origin and evolution of the concept of collaborative governance in western literature, discusses different definitions by western scholars, compares collaboration governance with some related concepts and then defines collaborative governance in his own way.

Key words:  social management, collaborative governance, conceptual analysis