The SAGE Handbook of Governance

Mark Bevir

• Editorial: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Año: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781473971158
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Public Policy

The study of governance has risen to prominence as a way of describing and explaining changes in our world. The SAGE Handbook of Governance presents an authoritative and innovative overview of this fascinating field, with particular emphasis on the significant new and emerging theoretical issues and policy innovations.

The Handbook is divided into three parts. Part one explores the major theories influencing current thinking and shaping future research in the field of governance. Part two deals specifically with changing practices and policy innovations, including the changing role of the state, transnational and global governance, markets and networks, public management, and budgeting and finance. Part three explores the dilemmas of managing governance, including attempts to rethink democracy and citizenship as well as specific policy issues such as capacity building, regulation, and sustainable development.

This volume is an excellent resource for advanced students and researchers in political science, economics, geography, sociology, and public administration.

Mark Bevir is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

1

Governance as Theory, Practice, and Dilemma

Mark Bevir

The word ‘governance’ is ubiquitous. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund make loans conditional on ‘good governance’. Climate change and avian flu appear as issues of ‘global governance’. The European Union issues a White Paper on ‘Governance’. The US Forest Service calls for ‘collaborative governance’. What accounts for the pervasive use of the term ‘governance’ and to what does it refer? Current scholarship offers a bewildering set of answers. The word ‘governance’ appears in diverse academic disciplines including development studies, economics, geography, international relations, planning, political science, public administration, and sociology. Each discipline sometimes acts as if it owns the word and has no need to engage with the others. Too little attention is given to ways of making sense of the whole literature on governance.

At the most general level, governance refers to theories and issues of social coordination and the nature of all patterns of rule. More specifically, governance refers to various new theories and practices of governing and the dilemmas to which they give rise. These new theories, practices, and dilemmas place less emphasis than did their predecessors on hierarchy and the state, and more on markets and networks. The new theories, practices, and dilemmas of governance are combined in concrete activity. The theories inspire people to act in ways that help give rise to new practices and dilemmas. The practices create dilemmas and encourage attempts to comprehend them in theoretical terms. The dilemmas require new theoretical reflection and practical activity if they are to be adequately addressed.

SCOPE AND ORGANIZATION

The Handbook of Governance reflects the breadth of a concept of governance as all of theory, practice, and dilemma. Governance in all these different guises stands in contrast to elder concepts of the state as monolithic and formal. For a start, theories of governance typically open up the black box of the state. Policy network theory, rational choice theory, and interpretive theory undermine reified concepts of the state as a monolithic entity, interest, or actor. These theories draw attention to the processes and interactions through which all kinds of social interests and actors combine to produce the policies, practices, and effects that define current patterns of governing. In addition, the relationship of state and society changed significantly in the late twentieth century. New practices of governance find political actors increasingly constrained by mobilized and organized elements in society. States and international organizations increasingly share the activity of governing with societal actors, including private firms, non-governmental organizations, and non-profit service providers. The new relationship between state and society admits of considerable variation, but it is an international phenomenon. New practices of governance extend across the developed and developing world, and they are prominent among strategies to regulate transnational flows and govern the global commons. Finally, current public problems rarely fall neatly in the jurisdictions of specific agencies or even states. Governance thus poses dilemmas that require new governing strategies to span jurisdictions, link people across levels of government, and mobilize a variety of stakeholders.

Governance draws attention to the complex processes and interactions that constitute patterns of rule. It replaces a focus on the formal institutions of states and governments with recognition of the diverse activities that often blur the boundary of state and society. Governance as theory, practice, and dilemma highlights phenomena that are hybrid and multijurisdictional with plural stakeholders who come together in networks.

Many of the ideas, activities, and designs of governance appear unconventional. A distinctive feature of the new governance is that it combines established administrative arrangements with features of the market. Governance arrangements are often hybrid practices, combining administrative systems with market mechanisms and non-profit organizations. Novel forms of mixed public–private or entirely private forms of regulation are developing. For example, school reform often now combines elder administrative arrangements (school districts, ministries of education) with quasi-market strategies that are meant to give parents greater choice (charter schools, voucher systems).

Another distinctive feature of governance is that it is multijurisdictional and often transnational. Current patterns of governance combine people and institutions across different policy sectors and different levels of government (local, regional, national, and international). Examples include varied efforts to regulate food standards and safety. International food safety standards are set in Rome by Codex Alimentarius – a joint body of the World Health Organization and the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization; however, if the USA imports fish from China, the presumption is that Chinese officials at the national and local level enforce these standards. The practice of regulating food safety operates simultaneously at international, national, and local levels.

A third distinctive feature of governance is the increasing range and plurality of stakeholders. Interest groups of various sorts have long been present in the policymaking process. Nonetheless, a wider variety of nongovernmental organizations are becoming active participants in governing. One reason for the pluralization of stakeholders is an explosion of advocacy groups during the last third of the twentieth century. Another reason is the increasing use of third-party organizations to deliver state services. Arguably, yet another reason is the expansion of philanthropists and philanthropic organizations, both of which are becoming as prominent as they were in the nineteenth century. For example, the Gates Foundation has both mounted a multicity effort to reform urban school districts and embarked on a massive public health campaign in developing countries. The increasing range and variety of stakeholders has led to the emergence and active promotion of new practices and institutional designs, including public–private partnerships and collaborative governance.

Yet another distinguishing feature of governance reflects and responds to the fact that governing is an increasingly hybrid, multijurisdictional, and plural phenomenon. Scholars have called attention to the way that governing arrangements, different levels of governance, and multiple stakeholders are linked together in networks. Environmental scientists have shown how natural areas like watersheds or estuaries are often governed by networks of stakeholders and government agencies. Scholars of urban politics have called attention to the way urban, suburban, and exurban areas get organized in broader regional networks. International relations scholars have noted the increasing prominence of inter-ministerial networks as ways of governing the global commons. More recently, policymakers, often influenced by theories from the social sciences, have begun actively to foster networks in the belief that they provide a uniquely appropriate institutional design with which to grapple with the new governance. Joined-up governance and whole-of-government approaches are widespread in states such as Australia and Britain, in policy sectors such as Homeland Security, and in transnational and international efforts to address problems such as failed states.

So, the Handbook of Governance concentrates on the theories, practices, and dilemmas associated with recognition of the extent to which governing processes are hybrid and multijurisdictional, linking plural stakeholders in complex networks. A concern with the new theories, practices, and dilemmas of governance informs the main themes that recur throughout the individual chapters. The contributors generally focus on:

• The new theories of coordination that have drawn attention to the presence or possibility of markets and networks as means of coordination.
• The new practices of rule that have risen since the 1970s, especially the apparent growth of markets and networks.
• The dilemmas of managing and reforming hybrid patterns of rule that combine aspects of market, network, and hierarchy.

Even when a chapter title refers to a broader topic, the essay itself focuses on the relation of that topic to the theories, practices, and dilemmas of governance. For example, the chapters in the first section on theories of governance concentrate on how these theories illuminate new practices of governance and/or how they have been modified in response to the dilemmas posed by the new governance.

The very organization of the Handbook of Governance reflects an emphasis on the connections between governance as theory, practice, and dilemma. Few scholars sufficiently recognize the extent to which the new governance is a product of new formal and folk theories that led people to see and act differently. The first section of the Handbook focuses on those theories in the social sciences that arose and prospered in the twentieth century, transforming our understanding of society and politics. Many of these theories challenged the older idea of the state as a natural and unified expression of a nation based on common ethnic, cultural, and linguistic ties and possessing a common good. Many of them made people more aware of the role of pressure groups, self-interest, and social networks in the policy process. Later, toward the end of the twentieth century, some of these theories then inspired attempts to reform the public sector and develop new policy instruments. Certainly, the new public management owed a debt to rational choice and especially principal–agent theory, while joined-up governance drew on developments in organizational and institutional theory. The second section of the Handbook examines the changing practices of governance. Public sector reforms have transformed practices of governance across diverse levels and in diverse territories. The reforms have given rise to complex new practices that rarely correspond to the intentions of the reformers. What does the state now look like? What role do non-governmental organizations play in the formation and implementation of policies and the delivery of services? The final section of the Handbook explores some of the dilemmas that this new governance poses for practitioners.

GOVERNANCE AS THEORY

The twentieth century witnessed the rise of all kinds of new, and often formal, approaches to social science. These theories led people to see the world differently and then to remake the world. No doubt few people bother to think about social life in terms of the formal models of rational choice. But a folk recognition of the largely self-interested nature of action, even the action of public officials, spread far more widely. Moreover, as it spread, so political actors increasingly tried to introduce reforms to deal with self-interest – to mitigate its adverse consequences, to regulate it and keep it within limits, or to harness it to improve efficiency. In this way, new theories inspired both the recognition and the active formation of apparently new features of governance. Equally, of course, social science theories have often struggled to catch up with some of the apparently improvised changes in governance. The reader might even want mentally to rearrange the Handbook to trace a progression not from theoretical innovations to the practices these theories inspired, but from the rise of the new governance to attempts to comprehend it in theoretical terms; that is from Sections III and II to I, rather than from I to II and III.

So, the chapters in Section I on theories of governance play a dual role: on the one hand, they introduce the reader to some of the general ways of thinking that have helped to inspire the recognition and formation of the new governance; on the other, they show how theories that may have been designed for other uses have since been modified to accommodate the new governance.

Pluralists have long challenged reified concepts of the state. Empirically they point to the complex interactions, processes, and networks that contribute to governing. In addition, more radical and normative pluralists challenge mainstream concepts of sovereignty and argue for a greater dispersal of authority to diverse social organizations. In Chapter 2, Henrik Enroth discusses the pluralism of policy network theory as it impacts governance. Policy network theory rose out of an earlier pluralism, with its attempts to disaggregate the state and focus on groups. Some policy network theorists have recently adopted anti-foundational, nominalist perspectives that have led them to pay more attention to meanings and to decenter even the concept of a group. Networks appear as undifferentiated parts of a social life characterized by contests of belief as they inform diverse actions. Enroth presses forward with this nominalist perspective, asking how it modifies our grasp of interdependence, coordination, and pluralism.

The dramatic rise of rational choice theory provided another powerful challenge to elder, reified concepts of the state. In Chapter 3, Keith Dowding discusses the ways rational choice influenced both the understanding and practice of governance. Rational choice theory is an organizing perspective or methodology that builds models of how people would act if they did so in accord with preferences having a certain formal structure. This perspective gave rise to theories about the non-predictability of politics, the problems of commitment, the hazards of principal–agent relations, and conflicts in democracies. Dowding shows how these rational choice theories inspired worries about the welfare state. Public choice in particular then inspired some of the managerial reforms associated with the new governance. Interestingly, Dowding also suggests that rational choice provides a critical perspective on just those reforms. Contemporary practices of governance rely too greatly on the superficial support public choice theory gave to choice and markets. Policy actors should pay more attention to rational choice analyses of the chaos and instability associated with weak institutions.

Chapter 4 looks at interpretive theories of governance. Interpretive theories reject the lingering positivism of most other approaches to governance. Social life is inherently meaningful. People are intentional agents capable of acting for reasons. Indeed, social scientists cannot properly grasp or explain actions apart from in relation to the beliefs of the actors. Many interpretive theorists conclude that social explanations necessarily involve recovering beliefs and locating them in the context of the wider webs of meaning of which they are a part. Governmentality, post-Marxism, and social humanism all share a concern with meanings and their contexts. Typically, these interpretive theories lead to a more decentered view of governance. Governance consists of contingent practices that emerge from the competing actions and beliefs of different people responding to various dilemmas against the background of conflicting traditions. Similarly, interpretive theory often challenges the idea of a set of tools for managing governance. Interpretive theorists are more likely to appeal to storytelling. Practitioners orientate themselves to the world by discussing illustrative cases and past experiences. They use stories to explore various possible actions and how they might lead the future to unfold.

Robert Christensen and Mary Tschirhart look, in Chapter 5, at organization theory. They distinguish four broad categories of organizational theories, depending on whether they concern the micro or macro level and whether they are deterministic or voluntaristic. Micro-level theories concentrate on individual organizations. Voluntaristic microlevel theories focus on strategic choices. They treat action as constructed, autonomous, and enacted. They generally explain the behavior of an organization in terms that echo the micro-level views of rational choice and interpretive theory as examined in the previous two chapters. In contrast, other forms of organizational theory either avoid clear micro-level assumptions or take a much more deterministic view of behavior. These forms of organizational theory overlap with the institutional and systems theories considered in the next two chapters. Deterministic micro-level theories inspire system-structural views. Macro-level approaches concentrate on populations or communities of organizations. The more deterministic macro-level theories take a natural selection view. Voluntaristic macro-level theories focus on collective action.

In Chapter 6, Guy Peters discusses three institutionalist theories of governance. Normative institutionalism focuses on the role of values, symbols, and myths in defining appropriate actions for individuals and thereby shaping institutions. Rational choice institutionalism uses the assumptions of rational choice theory to understand institutions and to design better ones. Historical institutionalism stresses the persistence of path-dependent rules and modes of behavior. Institutionalists have pondered the dilemmas of entrenching the new governance that increasingly relies on networks to link public sector and other actors. They have drawn attention to the importance of institutionalizing a new network by developing its culture and inner functioning. And they have highlighted the need for a new network to develop effective relationships with its political environment. Institutionalists have also tried to explain the rise of the new governance. Institutions can be treated here as dependent or independent variables. Typically, as dependent variables, institutions appear as, for example, responses to dilemmas and challenges in a changing environment. As independent variables, different institutions might help explain, for example, varied patterns of governance, decision-making, and even good decisions. Yet Peters argues that a fuller account of how institutions explain aspects of governance must evoke a micro theory such as that associated with either rational choice or interpretive theory.

Anders Esmark uses Chapter 7 to discuss systems theory. Systems theorists conceive of coordination as a property of systems. General systems theory explores the abstract principles of organized complexity, asking how systems produce or exhibit order and coordination at the level of the whole. Social systems theory uses the language and ideas of general systems theory to study interactions, organizations, and societies. Typically, systems theorists locate the rise of the new governance within a more general narrative about modernity. Modernity consists of increased functional differentiation: over time, society increasingly develops discrete organizations to fulfill ever more specialized functions. The new governance of markets and networks consists of ever increasingly specialized and differentiated organizations performing discrete tasks. These specialized organizations are often autopoietic or selfgoverning. Systems theory characteristically explores issues of metagovernance, such as if it is possible to govern these self-governing organizations, how states try to do so, and how we might do so.

In Chapter 8, Bob Jessop argues that the theory and practice of metagovernance emerged as a response to governance failure. The failings of hierarchy led to public sector reforms intended to advance marketization. The failings of these reforms then led to an expansion of networks. But networks too fail, especially if communication among the relevant actors is distorted. So, on one level, metagovernance consists of appropriate responses to the characteristic failings of the different modes of governance. It responds to bureaucratic failure with meta-control and meta-coordination, to market failure with meta-exchange, and to network failure with meta-heterarchy. On another level, however, metagovernance involves rearticulating the nature and balance of different modes of governance. It relies on institutional design and the governmentality of subjectivities to create and sustain particular modes of governance. Jessop concludes by suggesting that metagovernance itself is necessarily incomplete and subject to failure. Policy actors should adopt a satisfying approach, deliberately cultivating a flexible set of responses, a critical self-reflexive awareness of their goals and projects, and a willingness to aim at success while knowing failure is more likely.

Jeff Sellers looks at governance in the context of state–society relations in Chapter 9. The new governance ...