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Most public services delivered through contemporary contracting out of public private partnership demonstrate agencies and firms will form the relational governance of a dynamic equilibrium between a control-oriented standard contract and a trust-oriented relational contract. In this article, the cultures and arts campaigns representative of such ethnic groups as the Hoklo, Hakka, Mainlanders, Indigenous peoples, and New Immigrants held in Taoyuan City in recent years were selected as cases for exploring the characteristics of relational governance. In-depth interviews were conducted with the stakeholders in relevant agencies, firms and ethnic groups. The research goal is to explore the dynamics, performance perception, and collective actions of relational governance which formed by agencies, firms, and ethnic groups in the contracting out local arts and cultural campaigns. The multiple case studies in this article have found that the key factors affecting campaign performance is institutional characteristics, namely, the outsourcing of campaigns led by the ethnic representative agency. In other words, the Hakka and Indigenous campaigns are often contracted out by dedicated agencies, thus the ethnic groups and firms also jointly fulfill and bear accountabilities. Campaign outsourcing is more inclined toward the trust-oriented relational governance. By contrast, Hoklo, Mainlanders, and New Immigrants campaigns are planned and outsourced by ordinary agencies, thus the ethnic groups’ involvement is limited, mostly taking part only in campaign shows. Campaign outsourcing is inclined toward the control-oriented relational governance. It was also found that the setup of the ethnic representative agency and the ethnic groups’ participation are crucial to improving performance of ethnic cultural and arts campaigns, which are more in line with the spirit of contemporary democratic governance. Based on the research finding, agencies were suggested to employ more trust-oriented relational governance, establish partnership with firms, and encourage professional ethnic groups coproducing local ethnic cultural and arts campaigns. |
