Governing as Governance

Jan Kooiman

• Editorial: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Año: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781446230916
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Politics

The concept of `governance? has become a central catchword across the social and political sciences. In Governing and Governance, Jan Kooiman revisits and develops his seminal work in the field to map and demonstrate the utility of a sociopolitical perspective to our understanding of contemporary forms of governing, governance and governability.

A central underlying theme of the book is the notion of governance as a process of interaction between different societal and political actors and the growing interdependencies between the two as modern societies become ever more complex, dynamic and diverse.

Drawing upon a wide range of interdisciplinary insights, the book advances a comprehensive conceptual framework that seeks to capture the different elements, modes and orders of governing and governance. A series of useful distinctions are employed, for example, between self, `co?, and hierarchical modes, and between first, second, or meta orders to illustrate the many different structures and levels of modern governance today.

Theoretically rich and illuminating, Governing and Governance will be essential reading for all students and academics across the social and political sciences, public management and public administration.

PART I

GOVERNANCE, GOVERNING AND INTERACTION

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1

SETTING THE STAGE

Social-political governance

This study advances ideas presented in Modern Governance: Government-society Interactions (1993),¹ in which attention was drawn to interactions with a ‘co-’ public-private character, offset against a ‘do-it-alone’ government perspective. This study maintains this line of thinking, but broadens it by seeing governance as a societal quality made up of public as well as private ‘governors’, hence the term social-political. The essence of the argument is that governance of and in modern societies is a mix of all kinds of governing efforts by all manner of social-political actors, public as well as private; occurring between them at different levels, in different governance modes and orders. These mixes are societal ‘responses’ to persistent and changing governing ‘demands’, set against ever growing societal diversity, dynamics and complexity. Governing issues generally are not just public or private, they are frequently shared, and governing activity at all levels (from local to supra-national) is becoming diffused over various societal actors whose relationships with each other are constantly changing. There has, judged against traditional public governing activities, been an increase in the role of government as facilitator and as co-operating partner. As such it is more appropriate to speak of shifting than of shrinking roles of the state. However, a reshuffling of government tasks and a greater awareness of the need to interact with other societal actors does not render traditional government interventions obsolete. It merely implies a growing awareness of the limitations of traditional governance by the state on its own.

Responses to diverse, dynamic and complex societal issues require approaches involving previously uninvolved partners, looking not only at the market as seems to have been an almost universal response in recent years, but also looking at ‘civil society’ actors, as serious governing partners. The ‘why’ of modern governance can be best explained by an awareness that governments are not the only actors addressing major societal issues; that besides the traditional ones, new modes of governance are needed to tackle these issues; that governing arrangements will differ from global to local and will vary sector by sector. In diverse, dynamic and complex areas of societal activity no single governing agency is able to realise legitimate and effective governing by itself. Such governance is achieved by the creation of interactive, social-political structures and processes stimulating communication between actors involved, and the creation of common responsibilities next to individual and separate ones. There is a need to restructure governing responsibilities, tasks and activities, based upon differentiation and integration of various concerns and the agents representing them. In a world characterised by – possibly – increasing diversity, dynamics and complexity, social-political issues are the result of various interacting factors that are rarely wholly known and not caused by a single factor; technical and political knowledge is dispersed over many actors; and governing objectives are not easy to define and are often submitted to revision. The challenge for anyone involved in governing and governance is to make governing interactions productive. This requires a social-political perspective on those interactions, instead of seeing them exclusively as a matter for ‘traditional’ public governors.

In the past few years the literature on governance has grown tremendously in many different areas and disciplines.² In the next section I attempt to define it.

Defining governing and governance

Governing is varied, and the aim of this book is to conceptualise it in such ways and terms as to encompass limited governing action by individual citizens, as well as large scale efforts by interested public and private actors to influence major social-political developments. To some degree, governing can be seen in models, in practice, governing can be observed everywhere. Social-political governance is a fact of life, and by defining governing in terms of interactions, in which societal diversity, dynamics and complexity are expressed, I seek to make social-political processes analysable and interpretable. For instance, creativity, intuition and experience are just as important as goal-directness, criteria of efficiency and working ‘according to rules’. Emotions play a part, as does power, calculation as well as coping with uncertainty. But this breadth of response does not mean that ‘anything goes’.

A working definition of ‘social-political’ or ‘interactive’ governing and governance, or simply governing and governance – the elements of which will be clarified in the course of the book – looks as follows:

Governing can be considered as the totality of interactions, in which public as well as private actors participate, aimed at solving societal problems or creating societal opportunities; attending to the institutions as contexts for these governing interactions; and establishing a normative foundation for all those activities.

Governance can be seen as the totality of theoretical conceptions on governing.

I call the conceptual perspective for this book social-political governance. Social-political governance means using an analytical and normative perspective on any societal governance that is ‘collective’. Collective not in the sense that the care and development of these activities is looked upon as a public task (the ‘state’), a responsibility of the private sector (the ‘market’), or of the third sector (‘civil society’) in isolation, but as a shared set of responsibilities. Public governing carried out with an eye to ‘private carrying capacities’; and private governing carried out with an eye to ‘public carrying capacities’. Some of those activities are of a self-governing nature, others are considered to be co-governing, and there is also a place for authoritative or hierarchical governing.

The perspective of this study also can be called interactive governance. This adjective might be used because conceptually interaction plays a dominant role and because forms, models and modes of governing interactions are key conceptual elements in this book. Interactions as a social phenomenon, and governing interactions as a specific type of them, are a rich source for analysing and synthesising insights into many facets of governance. In particular, in governing interactions the diversity, dynamics and complexity of governance issues in modern societies can be expressed. Interaction thus becomes a ‘linking pin’ between societal attributes and governance qualities. As such, the governability of social-political entities is decided by the quality of its governing interactions. The totality of these interactions in all their diversity, dynamics and complexity is the start of the analysis and at the same time its end. These ideas are, broadly, the theme and subject matter of this book.

Crossing boundaries

Governance as a concept is not new, but currently it is being treated more systematically, and this might be expected to continue. In previous analyses the state was the central governing actor; in newer ones state-society relations are the focus.³ There is great scope for a governance paradigm to arise, to be championed, lauded and debated as a subject of inter-scholarly rivalry, inevitably to be replaced by a newer, rival theory. We are still in a period of creative disorder concerning governance, optimistic that: ‘governance theory has tremendous potential in opening up alternative ways of looking at political institutions, domestic-global linkages, transnational co-operation, and different forms of public-private exchange’.⁴ Whether this potential will be fulfilled depends on certain conditions being met. In particular a number of boundaries will have to be crossed: conceptual boundaries, boundaries between theory and practice and last but not least between ‘world views’.

It is commonplace to say that many, if not all, major issues facing us these days cannot be properly seen within one dimension. However, in practice this is what many governors and governed alike would have us believe: if we just do this or that a problem will be solved or an opportunity seized, but this is not what a diverse, dynamic and complex world looks like today. If governance is going to make an impression as a societal practice and as a scholarly activity it has to be multi-faceted. Scholarly work discussing, supporting or criticising governance of whatever kind has to be multi- or interdisciplinary in nature. However, crossing disciplinary boundaries as an individual can only be a limited activity. In order to develop systematic ideas on governance I restricted myself to such social science disciplines as political science, public administration/management, sociology, international relations and some institutional economics. When I discuss complexity, diversity and dynamics I make use of some recent insights from the natural sciences: already ‘translated’ for social science use by others.

In the book I refrain from the term ‘theory’ for what I am trying to do, instead conceptualising or conceptual perspective are employed. This is a deliberate choice, because I am of the opinion that the two are different scholarly activities. In this book governance is examined through an exploration ‘in breadth’ of its many aspects and manifestations, rather than as a systematic theoretical exercise ‘in depth’. The relation between concepts and theory is perhaps double-sided, maybe even paradoxical: without theory there are no concepts; without concepts there is no theory. ‘The proper concepts are needed to formulate a good theory, but we need a good theory to arrive at the proper concepts’⁵. I will cautiously proceed, treading a fine line between conceptualising, analysis and advancing theory. The following chapters are the first necessary step on the borderline between concept formulation and theory development. The result of which can be found in the various statements (in tinted boxes throughout the book), which both summarise the discussion on aspects of governance, and also can be considered as the beginning of a systematising of insights on governance as a theoretical construct, especially in Part V of the book. The application of the governance perspective to empirical situations has been published or will be reported elsewhere.⁶ It has always been my conviction not only that conceptual ideas need empirical testing, but also that experiences in real-life governing and the examination of them go hand in hand. This belief in the iteration between practice and reflection found its first expression in the late 1960s, when during a four-year period as assistant to the leader of the Dutch Parliamentary Labour Party, I had the opportunity to look at day-to-day political governing ‘from the inside’. This resulted not only in a study on the Dutch Parliament, it also profoundly strengthened my idea that theorising on governing and governance can only be developed when interaction between theory and practice occurs. Since then, wherever possible, I have looked for occasions to put my ideas on governance to the test. Many of the doctoral dissertations I have had the privilege to supervise, and much of the contract or other forms of applied research I have participated in, used elements of the governance perspective in their conceptual base. I consider this book a conceptual outcome of this iterative process and as such a product of a boundary-crossing and interactive process.

The governance approach focuses on the interactions taking place between governing actors within social-political situations. These interactions give human actions their irreversible and unpredictable character as attempts are made toward understanding the diversity, complexity and dynamics of these situations. In doing so there is scope for influencing societal features that occur between the ‘modern’ and the ‘post-modern’. In this respect I find a kindred spirit in Toulmin, who has identified two philosophical traditions that contributed to modernity: one based upon the principle of rationality, the other based upon principles of humanism.⁷ I call a combination of elements taken from these two traditions ‘cross-modern’; elements of both traditions may, I believe, lead towards an improved governability of ‘cross-modern’ (Western) societies. This implies a growing awareness and acceptance of different modes of governance, including ‘self-governing’ capacities of social systems, ‘co-governing’ arrangements and ‘hierarchical’ governing; each contributing in single and mixed modes to questions of governability in a broader sense. Pragmatic (meta) principles such as openness to difference, a willingness to communicate, and a willingness to learn are important criteria in coping with societal diversity, dynamics and complexity. Substantive criteria on which basis actors are willing and able to interact with each other and accept each other’s boundaries are also needed.

Because of the lack of an overall and overarching social-political ideal, the only other way to establish such criteria is to accept the ‘cross-modern’ character of Western democracies. That is to say, not only to accept the ‘rational’ and the ‘humanistic’ roots of our societies, but to develop new substantive criteria on the basis of the juxtaposition and combination of both. This is the inherent richness on which our democratic societies are built: a wellspring that has not yet dried up. To pursue scientific endeavours is to put one foot in the past and one in the future. This is what my perspective on governance does. Therefore, I use terms that are familiar (cybernetics, problems) and some that are promising but less familiar (emergence, opportunities). In ‘cross-modern’ situations it seems preferable to apply useful concepts from more than one tradition.

Many things in life are not either-or, but and-and. Global standardisation may be useful and necessary; the same applies to local variety and autonomy. To accept that insights and truths are always inter-subjective is not to deny that – inter-subjectively – some insights are more useful than others, and some truths seem better than others. Replacing a ‘this is true’ statement by ‘this could also be true’ makes diversity of opinion the lifeblood of social-political science and of social-political governance. If insight and truth is in the eye of the beholder, then what we need are social-political governing processes (and structures) that take ...