Governance Networks in the Public Sector

Erik Hans Klijn, Joop Koppenjan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781134587049
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Governance Networks in the Public Sector presents a comprehensive study of governance networks and the management of complexities in network settings. Public, private and non-profit organizations are increasingly faced with complex, wicked problems when making decisions, developing policies or delivering services in the public sector. These activities take place in networks of interdependent actors guided by diverging and sometimes conflicting perceptions and strategies. As a result these networks are dominated by cognitive, strategic and institutional complexities. Dealing with these complexities requires sophisticated forms of coordination: network governance.

This book presents the most recent theoretical and empirical insights into governance networks. It provides a conceptual framework and analytical tools to study the complexities involved in handling wicked problems in governance networks in the public sector. The book also discusses strategies and management recommendations for governments, business and third sector organisations operating in and governing networks.

Governance Networks in the Public Sector is an essential text for advanced students of public management, public administration, public policy and political science, and for public managers and policymakers.

1 Governance networks in the public sector An introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315887098-1

1.1 Introduction: governance networks as the answer to complexity

Government, business, and civil society in our contemporary network society are increasingly faced with complex societal problems. Attempts to deal with these problems may result in enduring processes of policymaking, policy implementation, and public service delivery that are hard to manage. Many examples can be given of such complex governance processes:

• Complex decision-making processes in relation to realizing, operating, and maintaining public infrastructural works (like railways, roads, airports, water projects, waste incinerators, power plants, and wind turbine parks) in which governments are confronted with a wide variety of stakeholders (private firms, citizens’ groups, other public actors, environmental interest groups, and so on).
• Restructuration processes of inner cities in which municipalities need to work together with non-profit organizations (like housing associations), private actors (developers) and citizens’ groups.
• Attempts at developing policies and achieving outcomes in fighting crime and improving social security that require coordinated efforts by various governmental organizations like the police, justice departments, emergency services, information bureaus, but also the involvement of private sector organizations and citizens, and collaboration between various layers of government and among nation states.
• Organizing integrated healthcare and social services for older people, which requires close cooperation between various health, welfare, social, and housing organizations that may be public, private, or non-profit, financed by, for instance, government or insurance companies.
• Processes of policy implementation or law enforcement, for instance in the food industry where governments try to regulate complex food production chains, in which various parties under conditions of competition may trade off food safety against other values.
• Processes aimed at preventing and managing large-scale accidents, crises, natural disasters, or large-scale social disturbances and their aftermaths, like the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, large-scale power blackouts, or outbreaks of epidemics like Ebola, that require coordination in order to create resilient networks.

These examples have in common that they involve difficult issues that require in-depth knowledge on their nature and possible solutions; they also, however, involve many actors, and this may result in a chaotic process with unexpected and unwanted outcomes, or in a process that becomes stuck in enduring and intense debates and conflicts that are not easily resolved. To say it differently: these problems are characterized by a high degree of wickedness (Rittel and Webber 1973; Radford 1977; Mason and Mitroff 1981). Thus, the wicked nature of these problems is not only caused by the lack of information or knowledge or the technologically advanced nature of the issue; but probably even more by the presence of various actors, with diverging or even conflicting interests and perceptions.

A further feature of these issues is that they cut across the traditional jurisdictions of organizations, divisions of responsibilities between layers of government (local, regional, national, supranational), and the boundaries between the public, private, and societal domains.

In Box 1.1 and Box 1.2, two examples of wicked problems with which governments are confronted are discussed in more detail: the worldwide debates on hydraulic fracturing that requires action from governments, and the challenges that youth care agencies encounter when providing help to so-called multiple problem clients.

Box 1.1 The debates on hydraulic fracturing as wicked problems

The shale gas revolution that occurred in the USA and Canada from the 1990s onwards has resulted in initiatives in many countries to introduce hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking). It has also led to conflicts among gas and oil industries proposing projects and influencing governments to adopt favourable policies, and local protestors and environmental groups that fear the environmental impact and require local and national governments to come up with strict regulations or even a ban on these practices. These debates are going on in various countries in governance networks at state and federal governmental levels over policies to be adapted or changed, and at the local and regional level regarding specific projects.

Shale gas is obtained by drilling and creating cracks in deep-rock formations through which natural gas, petroleum, and brine are released. In the course of time, new techniques have been introduced, such as horizon drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing implies the injection of a high pressure fluid, usually chemicals, and sand suspended in water, into a wellbore, in order to create cracks. Applying these techniques on a massive scale (high volume fracturing) has increased the commercial success of this way of exploiting fossil energy sources, to such a level that, in the USA, a shale gas revolution has been claimed. In 2012, shale gas made up 39% of US national gas production.

The technique is highly controversial though. Proponents extol the economic benefits in terms of increased employment, competitive advantages for chemical industries, and geopolitical advantages (such as the USA becoming independent from the oil producing countries). Opponents express concerns about contamination of ground water, depletion of fresh water, emission of methane, triggering of earthquakes, noise and surface pollution, and falling property prices. Research on these topics is far from conclusive, and concerns have been raised about studies funded either by pro-fracturing foundations and corporations or by environmental groups, bringing the independence of studies in doubt. Researchers and media in the US have reported difficulty in doing studies and reporting on the results because of industry and governmental pressure.

Whereas the attitude of governments towards fracturing in for instance the USA and China is positive, some countries have restricted it, and others have banned it temporarily, awaiting results of investigations, or altogether, as France did in 2011. The European Union is drafting regulations for risk management in industries applying hydraulic fracturing (Carr et al. 2011; Heikkila et al. 2014; Wikipedia 2014).

Box 1.2 Dealing with multiple problem clients in youth care as a wicked problem

Public services are rarely isolated. Quality is only achieved in connection with other services. When a youngster is referred to youth care services, there may be a background of problems at school, at home, with the law, and with psychiatric conditions, all intertwined in a way that is impossible to disentangle. If they are to achieve any result, the different care providers need to cooperate. Integration and connectivity, in other words, are important preconditions. The various existing public service delivery institutions (for instance schools, youth care, neighbourhood workers, police, justice departments) traditionally focus on their core activities and have difficulty dealing with these transboundary problems. In various countries, centres are established for youth care, as front offices for these clients, to enhance collaboration. They may be regarded as an attempt to achieve network governance. These centres seek to improve cooperation between professionals and their institutions, and thereby make youth care more accessible and better aligned to demand. This has benefits for youngsters with more than one problem. The envisioned cooperation between care providers, however, has not been automatically successful as a result of these centres. Authorities, often local authorities, often lack the expertise to know who should coordinate what, with whom, and when. The youth care centres struggle with their dual role – they are supposed to provide guidance in the care chain as a whole, as well as cooperate as one partner with other partners. This makes it more difficult for them to allow other care providers sufficient freedom to act and gain their trust. Moreover, the various care providers are not always on the same team as it were: they may also be competitors when it comes to scarce resources (Lemaire and Provan 2009; Koppenjan 2012).

Governments, businesses, and civil society are often unable to tackle these issues by themselves because they lack the resources or problem-solving capacities to do so. The complexity of these issues and interdependencies between actors result in intensive interactions between actors. As a result, governance networks emerge: networks of enduring patterns of social relations between actors involved in dealing with a problem, policy, or public service (Marin and Mayntz 1991; Thompson et al. 1991; Marsh and Rhodes 1992; Kickert et al. 1997).

As a consequence, traditional methods of dealing with problems, policymaking, and public service delivery – which often hold complex issues to be an intellectual design question, and approach them by giving research and expertise a central role and assigning them to specialized units within hierarchical organized bureaucracies – no longer suffice. The wicked problems that confront governments, private companies, and societal groups in the current complex society require a different, new approach (Koppenjan and Klijn 2004; Coyne 2005; Head 2008; Weber and Khademian 2008; Hoppe 2011). They require a shift from a more traditional top-down way of problem solving to a more horizontal cooperative approach, which is often referred to as the shift from government to governance (Pierre and Peters 2000; Sørensen and Torfing 2007; Osborne 2010; Klijn and Koppenjan 2012).

1.2 Government, governance, and governance networks: a conceptual clarification

Although many authors acknowledge the importance of governance, it is not easy to determine what exactly is meant by it. Various authors use this term in different ways (Kooiman 1993; Rhodes 1996; Pierre and Peters 2000; Frederickson 2005; Osborne 2006; Sørensen and Torfing 2007). In this section, we seek to clarify what actually is meant by it and present the definition that we use in this book. We start by specifying what we understand by government.

Government: the Traditional Public Administration Model

Government refers to public problem solving, policymaking, and service delivery according to the Traditional Public Administration Model that dominated the public administration practice in many countries all over the world for a large part of the twentieth century (Hughes 2012; Koppenjan 2012). Its success resulted in the rise of the welfare state in Western countries, and, in particular, the bureaucratic organization of the governmental apparatus was copied worldwide. In this model, problems, policies, and services are assigned to specialized governmental units. Integration and coordination is realized by command and control within the bureaucracy, characterized by task differentiation and procedures. Within Western democracies, the political decisions regarding problems, policies, and services are taken by elected administrators at the top of the bureaucracies, who in turn are held accountable by representative bodies of elected politicians (parliaments, councils, and so on). These political decisions are implemented in a neutral way by civil servants who follow rules and ideally are inspired by a motiv...