Territorial governance and commons: A new perspective for collaborative governance[Governança territorial e comuns: Nova perspectiva para uma governança colaborativa]

The territory appears today, in the North and in the South, as the privileged scale to answer the challenges of a sustainable development. Many States refer to the territory to renew their public action, particularly in Brazil between 2003 and 2016. Territorial governance mechanisms play an important role in organising collective action between multiple actors, but their implementation is encountered problems and raises questions. The article analyses how territorial governance arrangements that mobilise the notion of common and companion methodologies largely respond to these difficulties. Action research carried out in Brazil over a period of fifteen years has analysed the key elements of the companion processes of territorial governance arrangements that have made it possible to construct these arrangements as commons. These include the co-construction of a mission and rules shared for the use of the common, emotional intelligence and conflict, the role of the gatekeepers in multi-level governance, social experimentation and progressive institutionalisation. From these experiences, perspectives for renewing public action are drawn.