Co‐production during and after the Covid‐19 pandemic: will it last?

Co-production is blooming under Covid-19, but can we expect it to last? Most likely, in post-COVID-19 times people and institutions will easily slip back into ‘business as usual’. This article addresses the relevance of co-production under COVID-19 and argues for the need of co-production initiatives to persist well beyond the pandemic. The conditions that made co-production emerge are likely to change, as emergency regulations and funds are abandoned and as the sense of urgency disappears. Areas of public life where there could be a more lasting effect are those where the basic conditions for successful co-production are already in place and where only a push was necessary for co-production to take off. These conditions include basic commitment, complementarity and supportive regulative frameworks, all of which can be sustained beyond the crisis with targeted choices and sufficient support.