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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Key Concepts
- Sprache: Englisch
Governance is an easy-to read introduction to an increasingly important concept in political science. It provides a clear overview of how the concept has been used in the sub-fields of public administration and public policy, international relations, European studies and comparative politics.
There is no universally accepted and agreed definition of 'governance'. It remains an elusive theory, defined and conceptualized in various ways. In this book, Anne Mette Kjaer guides the reader through the key theoretical debates which have given rise to distinct interpretations of governance. Drawing on a wide range of empirical examples to illustrate her arguments, the author explores how governance has been used in different ways to describe political changes in the modern world. She goes on to weigh up the pros and cons of governance as an analytical term, and concludes with a discussion of the World Bank's role as an international organization which aims to promote 'good governance' in poor countries across the globe.
This is the first textbook to offer a systematic assessment of current debates around the concept of governance. It will be a valuable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of politics, international relations and public policy.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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CONTENTS
Cover
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: The Meanings of Governance What is governance?
What is governance?
Governance and institutionalism
Governance and core concepts
Outline of the book
Notes
2 Governance in Public Administration and Public Policy: Steering Inter-Organizational Networks
The traditional model of the public sector
Challenges to the traditional model
The new public management (NPM) reforms
Changes in the aftermath of public sector reforms
The impact of changes on central government
The impact of changes on local government: networks in service delivery
Governance in a modern complex setting
Democratic governance: holding networks accountable
Conclusion: governance in public administration and public policy
Notes
3 Governance in International Relations:
The neo-realist model of international relations
Challenges to the neo-realist model
The extent of changes: the need for governance in an era of globalization
Globalization and the need for governance: summing up
Is the state’s role in global governance declining?
What is the character of global governance?
Democratic global governance
Conclusion: governance in international relations
Notes
4 European Governance: Between International Relations and Public Policy
The emergence of the European Community (Union) and the IR debate
Policy-making and governance in the European Union
Democratizing the EU
Conclusion: governance in the EU
Notes
5 Governance in Comparative Politics I: The State and Economic Development
Societal approaches to the state
Bringing the state back in
Models of economic governance
The developmental state
‘Good governance’ in the development community
Governance in weak states: can the developmental state model be transferred?
Conditions for effective governance
Conclusion
Notes
6 Governance in Comparative Politics II:
Modernization theory and democratization
Transition theories
Institutional approaches to democratic governance
Governance and regime transitions
Measuring governance
Conclusion
Notes
7 Governance and the World Bank
‘Good governance’ as policy condition
Governance of the World Bank
The World Bank and global civil society
Conclusion
Notes
8 Conclusion
Summarizing the chapters
Disciplinary boundaries
Key discussions and common problems in governance theory
Notes
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Begin Reading
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1:
The parliamentary governance chain
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1:
The World Bank between the US and the world
List of Tables
Chapter 2
Table 2.1:
From local government to community governance
Table 2.2:
Crime control from local government to community governance
Table 2.3:
Comparing markets, hierarchies and networks
Chapter 3
Table 3.1:
Neo-realism versus liberalism
Table 3.2:
Views on the role of the state in an era of globalization
Table 3.3:
Views on global governance
Chapter 7
Table 7.1:
Neo-liberal and ‘global’ views in a Wolfensohn speech
Chapter 8
Table 8.1:
Summarizing governance theory
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KEY CONCEPTS
Published
Barbara Adam, Time
Alan Aldridge, Consumption
Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer, Disability
Mildred Blaxter, Health
Steve Bruce, Fundamentalism
Anthony Elliott, Concepts of the Self
Steve Fenton, Ethnicity
Michael Freeman, Human Rights
Anne Mette Kjær, Governance
Michael Saward, Democracy
John Scott, Power
Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism
Governance
Anne Mette Kjær
polity
Copyright © Anne Mette Kjær 2004
The right of Anne Mette Kjær to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2004 by Polity Press.Reprinted 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataKjær, Anne Mette.Governance / Anne Mette Kjær.p. cm. – (Key concepts in the social sciences)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-5095-6062-21. Legitimacy of governments. 2. Policy networks. 3. Corporate governance. 4. Democracy. 5. Globalization. I. Title. II. Series.JC497 .K52 2004 320¢.01¢1 – dc222003016302
For further information on Polity, visit our website: http://www.politybooks.com
Acknowledgements
Although this book makes no claim to have covered all issues related to governance, its aim is nonetheless to give a broad overview of political science governance debates. To that end, being employed with a large institution like the Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, where office doors are never closed, has been tremendously helpful. A number of colleagues were always ready to lend books or refer to debates and I am grateful for their help.
The Danish Social Science Research Council provided a grant for a project of which this book became a part. I wish to thank Palgrave Macmillan for the kind permission to reproduce three tables from a book by Gerry Stoker. I am grateful to Georg Sørensen for suggesting that I engage in the book project in the first place, and particular thanks to Louise Knight at Polity for entrusting me with the task and in general to staff at Polity for their professionalism. For reading parts of the manuscript, I would like to thank Jens Blom-Hansen, Jørgen Elklit, Karin Hilmer Pedersen, Goran Hyden, Lars Johannsen, Knud-Erik Jørgensen, Ole Nørgaard, Liselotte Odgaard and Linda Weiss. I would also like to thank students attending my graduate seminar on ‘Governance’ for their engagement, and participants at the ‘Democratic Governance Network Conference, 2003’, particularly Jacob Torfing and Peter Bogason, for helpful comments on a paper based on the book. Two anonymous readers also provided very useful and thoughtful comments. The author remains, of course, the only person responsible for the book’s contents. I am grateful beyond words to Jesper Svennum, Ida and Frederik for being a constant source of joy.
Finally, I wish to dedicate this book to Birte and Mogens Kjær.
1Introduction: The Meanings of Governance
In the mid-fourteenth century, an Italian artist named Lorenzetti painted his famous frescos illustrating the stark contrasts between good and bad governance. One part of the frescos pictures a beautiful city where justice reigns, where young women are dancing, children playing, and men working. Some are ploughing, others cultivating vine. In contrast, the part of the frescos illustrating bad governance shows a satanic tyrant on a throne and justice lying tied up on the ground. There are no cultivated fields, no one is working, and the only activity is the killing of men and raping of women.1
Like Lorenzetti, political scientists have long considered governance to be important for the well-being of a country’s citizens. However, governance was traditionally associated with government, with the exercise of power by political leaders. The concept was not widely used in the post-Second World War years, but during the 1980s it re-emerged with a new meaning, now referring to something broader than government. Reference to processes and actors outside the narrow realm of government was now included; yet no common definition of governance seemed to emerge. Governance is used in various fields, such as economics, cultural geography and politics. A simple search on ‘governance’ in the Social Sciences Index results in 1,774 articles in the twelve years from 1986 to 1998. In the three years from 1999 to the present, the Index comes up with 1,855 articles. In other words, more articles on governance have been written in the past three years than in the preceding twelve. Moreover, the articles appear in a wide range of journals, from, just to mention a few, Far Eastern Economic Review, to Urban Studies and Environment and Planning, to Public Administration Review, American Political Science Review and Foreign Affairs. The usage of the concept of governance, then, is applied in many different contexts and with as many different meanings. There is not one coherent body of governance theory, and it is difficult to get a clear picture of what governance theory is about.
The purpose of this book is to give sense to the concept of governance by introducing the many ways in which it is used and by sketching the many different theoretical debates lying behind these ways. This is, of course, a big task, considering the amount of material already in existence. The book makes no claim to cover the whole range of usages. It deliberately excludes, for example, works on corporate governance (which belong in the field of economics) and concentrates on governance as it is used in political science. But placing this literature out of the scope of the book still leaves us with a concept that has multiple meanings.
This introductory chapter has three sections. The first section asks what governance is about: it outlines different definitions of governance in political science, and categorizes them within three political science sub-fields of public administration and public policy, international relations, and comparative politics. The second section finds that identifying a common ground for the three sub-fields is indeed possible if the concept is grounded more explicitly than is presently the case in the new institutionalism. The new institutionalism has become central in all corners of the political science discipline and can be used to identify a broad core that is basic to most governance theory. The final section discusses some key concepts in the governance literature that are important in all usages of governance, and it thereafter outlines the plan of the book.
What is governance?
Etymologically, governance can be traced back to the Greek verb kubernân (to pilot or steer) and was used by Plato with regard to how to design a system of rule. The Greek term gave rise to the medieval Latin gubernare, which has the same connotation of piloting, rule-making or steering. The term has been used as synonymous with government, as the definition in the Concise Oxford Dictionary implies. Here, governance is ‘the act or manner of governing; the office or function of governing’. To govern is ‘to rule or control with authority; to be in government’. During the 1980s, however, political scientists referred to the term as distinct from government and as including civil-society actors. The definitions below are illustrative:
Governance refers to self-organizing, interorganizational networks characterized by interdependence, resource-exchange, rules of the game, and significant autonomy from the state. (Rhodes, 1997a: 15)
Global governance is conceived to include systems of rule at all levels of human activity – from the family to the international organization – in which the pursuit of goals through the exercise of control has transnational repercussions. (Rosenau, 1995: 13)
Governance is the stewardship of formal and informal political rules of the game. Governance refers to those measures that involve setting the rules for the exercise of power and settling conflicts over such rules. (Hyden, 1999: 185)
These definitions of governance are a small sample of many that can be encountered when assessing the literature. Is there any core to be identified in these definitions or do they refer to completely different phenomena? As noted above, all of them refer to something broader than government. The new use of governance does not point at state actors and institutions as the only relevant institutions and actors in the authoritative allocation of values (Easton, 1965). They all, to some extent, focus on the role of networks in the pursuit of common goals; these networks could be intergovernmental or inter-organizational (Rhodes); they could be transnational (Rosenau) or they could be networks of trust and reciprocity crossing the state–society divide (Hyden).
Despite the similarities, the definitions are used in different sub-fields of political science, and therefore they refer to different debates. For example, in a seminal article on governance, Rod Rhodes (Rhodes, 1996) refers to governance as a vogue word for reforming the public sector. Yet governance is also used in other contexts. When Rosenau talks about governance, he most certainly does not refer to public sector reform, but rather to the emergence of global political problems requiring global solutions. When Goran Hyden talks about governance, he relates it to theories of development and democratization in the Third World. Hence, the three definitions can be placed within the fields of public administration and policy, international relations, and comparative politics.
Rod Rhodes’s definition of governance can be placed in the field of public administration and public policy. Scholars in this field study the tasks, organization, management and accountability structure of the public sector. Traditionally, this involved assuming that the public sector functioned best when it was apolitical, structured as a hierarchy, and based on a system of merit-recruitment and promotion. However, this traditional notion was increasingly challenged by scholars, who emphasized the essentially political nature of public bureaucracy (Peters and Wright, 1996: 628–9). They pointed at ‘pathologies’ of the public sector and found that it often did not work in an effective manner.
During the 1980s, a wave of public sector reforms characterized many western countries, entailing privatization, the transfer of private sector management principles to the public sector, and decentralization. Central government functions were decentralized to lower levels and in some regions political authority was increasingly transferred to supranational organizations. Additionally, in many countries, civil-society organizations have become more involved in the delivery of public services. The consequence has been an increasing fragmentation of political systems. Scholars have begun to take notice of the plurality of actors and organizations involved in the pursuit of common goals, and they are rejecting the sharp distinction between public and private that characterizes traditional public administration theory. The question of how to steer these self-organizing inter-organizational networks becomes crucial.
Rosenau’s account of global governance belongs in the field of international relations. The study of international relations has long been dominated by the realist paradigm, which maintains that states are the most important units in the international system and that the study of international relations is mainly about the relations between states. Since there is no government reigning over all states, the international system is anarchic, and states are in constant preparation for war. However, the realist paradigm has been challenged by many significant developments. One is the internationalization, or globalization, of the world economy, which has raised the discussion of the extent to which states really are in control of their territories. If they do not have full sovereignty, they are no longer the only important units in international relations. Another development is the growth of non-governmental movements and organizations, and the creation of global organizations such as the WTO to respond to problems that have a global, or transnational, nature. In other words, increasing globalization has raised a need for global governance in many arenas such as trade regulation, the environment and conflict resolution.
Hyden’s understanding of governance belongs in the comparative politics field. Comparative politics refers to the scholarship engaged in the systematic comparison of political systems (Almond et al., 2000; Mair, 1996: 309). Before the Second World War, this would most often involve the comparison of different countries’ constitutions. During the 1950s and 1960s comparisons became increasingly based on inputs to the political system: political culture, parties and interest groups, and electoral behaviour. In the 1980s, the study of state institutions was brought back in. The comparison of the effects of different institutions on various outputs, for example studying the consequences of federal or unitary systems for tax policies, became commonplace. The focus on the state soon became supplemented with the comparison of state–society interactions. Hyden’s governance work can be seen as a part of this focus on state–society interaction in comparative politics. His approach refers to the literature on democratization processes.
The three fields of political science should not be seen as entirely separate. On the contrary, the frequent blurring of their boundaries means that sharp divisions can no longer exist. For example, European integration used to be a preoccupation of international relations theory, but multi-level governance and the impact of the EU on national policy-making have made the EU a concern for comparative public policy as well. In general, the globalization of the economy has rendered obsolete the clear boundaries between domestic and international politics. The notion of state sovereignty, i.e. that a state has full decision-making authority within its territory, has been challenged by social and economic developments where the state has been found to lose authority. For example, international finance flows make it difficult for national policy-makers to control the interest rate. And member states of the European Union find they have to comply with rulings of the European Court of Justice, while creditor governments find they have to comply with policy conditions of the International Monetary Fund in order to achieve funding.
Since national policy-making is affected by domestic as well as international events in the real world, the disciplinary boundaries in political science have also been questioned. The increasing use of the concept of governance can be seen as a reaction to a change in political practices, together with changing realities involving, among other things, increasing globalization, the rise of networks crossing the state–civil society divide and increasing fragmentation. Such developments call for a debate about how to steer in an increasingly complex world (Hirst, 2000). There is thus ground for arguing that sharp divisions among academic sub-fields should be abandoned. The reasons why they have not been abandoned here are twofold: first, surprisingly, the use of governance has developed quite separately in the different fields and the debates on governance in each field relate to distinct theoretical debates. James Rosenau (2000), for example, criticizes traditional IR theory for focusing on intergovernmental, rather than transnational, relations. And Goran Hyden criticizes traditional transition theory for presupposing that transitions will invariably end with democracy. Hence, although governance theories are often reactions to perceived inadequacies in earlier theoretical paradigms, they nonetheless have distinctive theoretical roots (Jessop, 1995). The second reason for upholding the distinction is analytical and practical. An overview of the usages of governance is presented in a clear way if related to different sub-fields. Upholding the distinction is thus a way to structure the overview.
In sum, at this point we can say that governance refers to something broader than government, and it is about steering and the rules of the game. The reference to rule-making and rules of the game provides a hint that there is an additional common feature of governance in the three sub-fields of political science. They all, to some extent, grow out of a focus on institutions and institutional change. Therefore, to search for a broad common definition of governance, a brief sketch of institutionalism is warranted.
Governance and institutionalism
Various versions of the new institutionalism have been called ‘historical institutionalism’, ‘rational choice institutionalism’, ‘sociological institutionalism’, ‘normative institutionalism’ or ‘international institutionalism’, to mention a few (Hall and Taylor, 1996; Peters, 1999). The differences between various institutionalisms boil down to two assumptions about human behaviour, one rational and one sociological. In the rational behavioural model, preferences are exogenous: the individual lists his or her alternatives for action, decides which alternative would best maximize utility and then acts accordingly. March and Olsen have called this the logic of consequentiality (March and Olsen, 1989: 22–3; 160–2).
In the sociological behavioural model, preferences are endogenous: the individual has been socialized into having certain values and norms that determine behaviour. For instance, if an individual has grown up in a working-class family, that person is most likely to identify with a political party that represents the working class and hence vote accordingly. The individual evaluates a situation and acts according to what is most appropriate in that situation, rather than considering the consequences. Hence, March and Olsen call this the logic of appropriateness. They argue that it is the latter logic which guides behaviour: ‘Action is often based more on identifying the normatively appropriate behaviour than on calculating the return expected from alternative choices’ (ibid.: 22). According to March and Olsen, we often act according to what is most appropriate and then, afterwards, justify our action with a consequential logic. For example, an individual votes for a social-democratic party because she has grown up in a working-class neighbourhood, but she justifies her behaviour by arguing that social-democratic policies benefit her economic situation more than right-wing policies.
Elinor Ostrom has argued that the two models can be conceptualized so as to make up a general approach to the study of institutions (Ostrom, 1991). Her point is that we are all constrained by cultural values and norms. In that sense, we all take into consideration what constitutes an appropriate action. However, the norms and values rarely give us specific guidelines as to which exact action to take. Within the rules in which we find ourselves, we can choose between various courses of action: ‘Some actions are ruled in (permitted) and some are ruled out (forbidden)’ (ibid.: 239). Individual choices are bounded by what is appropriate, but we choose among the permitted actions using a logic of consequentiality. In that sense, the two behavioural assumptions do not imply using different approaches for the study of institutions. They both share the assumption that behaviour is rule-bound, and the core task for institutional analysis becomes one of identifying the rules that are relevant for the political phenomenon one wishes to study.
The issue here is not whether Ostrom’s argument can be supported. In governance theory, both sociological (cultural) and rational (calculus) approaches can be found. However, the important point to make here is that governance theory has a broad institutional grounding. A common definition of an institution may be: formal and informal rules, behavioural codes and norms that constitute prescriptions ordering repeated, interdependent relations (see, for example, North, 1990; or Hall and Taylor, 1996). Institutions may thus be informal requirements and norms about what is appropriate, but they also exist in the form of written documents, such as constitutions.
Two key questions in institutional analysis are:
How do institutions affect political behaviour?
How do institutions emerge and change?
Most institutional analyses have focused on the first question, and they have often studied the effects of formal institutions. For example, the consequences of type of, say, party system (two-party vs. multiparty system), electoral system (proportional vs. majoritarian) or government structure (unitarian vs. federalist) for political behaviour have been studied (Rothstein, 1996: 135–6). One example of an institutional approach is Sven Steinmo’s study of tax policy. He shows that a country’s tax system is greatly influenced by that country’s constitutional structure. The United States has a federal structure. It is a fragmented political system with many checks and balances, and this, according to Steinmo, has led to an ineffective, complex tax system with a relatively low revenue yield (Steinmo, 1993: 8).
In spite of their virtues of illustrating the significance and autonomy of institutions, these approaches do share one problem. They all have a hard time explaining institutional change. Many of these approaches have a tendency to reify institutions and give them objective existence. For instance, if the (unwritten) constitution gives the British government a high degree of autonomy, then why are some British governments more autonomous than others? As Joel Wolfe has aptly argued, ‘Mrs Thatcher’s immediate predecessors, as concerned about and determined to reverse Britain’s political deliberation and economic decline as she, failed to find that the British constitutional order gave them automatic autonomy’ (Wolfe, 1991: 244). Wolfe goes on to argue that institutions cannot explain why some governments implement policy reforms effectively while others do not: ideology and the way strong individuals use ideology as a tool to carry out changes play a role at least as significant as institutional structures.
Governance theory is mainly occupied with institutional change and it involves human agency. Governance theory thus introduces an element of change which is often lacking in institutionalism. Ideally, governance thus combines rulestructures with agency. From an institutional perspective, governance is about affecting ‘the frameworks within which citizens and officials act and politics occurs, and which shape the identities and institutions of civil society’ (March and Olsen, 1995: 6). A broad institutional definition would thus refer to governance as the setting of rules, the application of rules, and the enforcement of rules (see also Feeny, 1993: 172). Although this is a broad and quite abstract definition, it nonetheless provides a common ground to all of the different perceptions of governance.
It goes without saying that such a broad definition only applies at a general level. The sub-disciplines in political science abound with definitions and usages of governance that refer to more substantial policies or features of social systems. For example, Gerry Stoker (1998: 17) has criticized the use of governance as the ‘acceptable face of spending cuts’. By underlining the positive impact on efficiency when involving private sector actors, policy-makers have used governance as a reason to reduce public expenditure. However, as academics, we should not allow governance to be hijacked by proponents of neo-liberal policy.2 Rather, governance analysts explore the processes by which rules about the pursuance of public goods are designed and enforced. Thus, rather than referring to a specific organizational set-up, such as the minimal state, or a specific policy, such as privatization, governance theory more openly explores changes in political practices and their implications for political rules of the game.
Second, some governance theorists identify governance more closely with government: ‘Governance is the capacity of government to make and implement policy, in other words, to steer society’ (Pierre and Peters, 2000: 1). This definition refers more to traditional steering capacities of states and it introduces an important distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ governance (Peters, 2000). Inherent in the old governance is a traditional notion of steering by national governments from the top down. It has to do with the degree of control the government is able to exert over social and economic activities. The new governance has more to do with how the centre interacts with society and asks whether there is more self-steering in networks. Self-organizing networks can block implementation and thus have a negative impact on the capacity to steer, or they can increase efficiency by cooperating in policy implementation. In new governance theory, networks may thus have both negative and positive impacts on steering capacity (Peters, 2000: 40–1). Thus, governance analysts often explore the nature of governance: is it old or new? Has the role of the state declined? Or if it has not declined, has it changed?
Finally, some use governance in both the old and the new sense: ‘Governance is the institutional capacity of public organizations to provide the public and other goods demanded by a country’s citizens or their representatives in an effective, transparent, impartial, and accountable manner, subject to resource constraints’ (World Bank, 2000a: 48). This definition of governance is typical of an international organization in the development community, such as the World Bank, which, through ‘good governance’ programmes, wishes to support reforms that strengthen the recipient governments’ capacity to steer, while, at the same time, aiming to promote and strengthen participation by civil society in governing. The aim is to have not only smaller but also better, and more efficient, government.
This leads to a broader concern in all governance theory: how to steer, but also how to improve accountability. In this sense, governance resurrects an old discussion about the relationship between legitimacy and efficiency (Peters, 2000). So, having identified governance as broadly referring to the setting and management of political rules of the game, and more substantially with a search for control, steering and accountability, some core concepts in governance theory should be clarified: these are legitimacy, efficiency, democracy and accountability.
Governance and core concepts
We have defined governance broadly as the setting, application and enforcement of the rules of the game. Such rules need to be legitimated if they are to be stable. If rules are upheld through the use of raw force or arbitrary power, individuals are likely to resist, either through exit or through violent action (Hirschman, 1970). But how is legitimacy generated? A useful distinction here is between ‘input-oriented’ and ‘output-oriented’ legitimacy (Scharpf, 1997b: 152–5). Input-oriented legitimacy derives from agreement of those who are asked to comply with the rules. Output-oriented legitimacy derives from the effectiveness of rules to produce tangible results. Hence, input-oriented arguments concern the establishment of democratic procedures, accepted by a majority, for taking collectively binding decisions; while output-oriented arguments refer to ‘substantive criteria of buon governo, in the sense that effective policies can claim legitimacy if they serve the common good’ (ibid.: 153).
Thus, legitimacy may derive from democracy as well as from efficiency. The issue is whether it is possible to have both or whether there is a trade-off between the two. It is sometimes argued that democracy can entail ‘too much talk and too little action’, and hence democratic procedures may weaken decision-making efficiency. Yet the argument can also be turned on its head: if democratic inclusion of citizens is not ensured, their cooperation in achieving social and economic outcomes will probably not be obtained. Hence, the argument goes, democratic legitimacy matters not only in a normative sense, i.e. that it is desirable in its own right; it matters also because democratic procedures are necessary in order to ensure active endorsement of citizens and therefore efficient policy outcomes. In the words of Gerry Stoker (2003: 9), ‘to launch a waste recycling scheme or change driving habits requires an extensive dialogue and high levels of trust between the public and authorities’. Thus, democracy and efficiency can arguably be seen to have a mutually constitutive relation.
When is an institution or a process of governance democratic? Referring to the two models of action described above, the rational and the sociological, we can outline two different models of democracy, the aggregative model and the integrative model. The rational model of behaviour assumes that preferences are exogenous and fixed. Hence the model would fit with an aggregative notion of democracy, in which political actors convert individual wants and resources to collective action through bargaining, pay-offs and coalition formation (March and Olsen, 1995: 7–26). Such a democratic process requires some institutional guarantees, most notably a set of civil and political rights, as well as regular free and fair elections. The cultural (sociological) model of behaviour assumes that preferences are endogenous; they are continuously evaluated when individuals adapt to surrounding norms and expectations. Identities and roles are socially constructed. Preferences are not fixed, and citizens and officeholders are presumed to act according to norms associated with their roles, rather than in pursuit of personal advantage and interests. When ordinary people act in the role of citizen, they are capable of considering the common good. Democracy in this sense involves supporting and creating civic institutions and participatory processes that facilitate the construction, maintenance and development of democratic identities (March and Olsen, 1995: 27–45).
The two interpretations of democracy, the aggregative and the integrative, need not be mutually exclusive. Representative democracy can be supplemented with more participatory forms. In this text, deliberative democracy is suggested as one possible way to address the problem of democratic control posed by self-governing networks at sub-national as well as transnational levels. However, Paul Hirst suggests a more radical form of democratization, which he terms associative democracy (Hirst, 1994, 2000). The idea is to supplement representative democracy with constitutionally ordered self-governing associations. This would involve a continuous flow of information between governors and the governed, whereby the former seek the consent and cooperation of the latter. In an increasingly complex world, argues Hirst, associative democracy would be a way to increase the accountability of employees in all sorts of organizations to the wider public. It is not necessary here to settle on one distinct meaning of democracy, but rather to point out that most governance theory takes the view that representative democracy on its own is an increasingly inadequate institutional method to achieve democratic accountability in the modern world. Thus, although governance scholars by no means reject majority rule they nonetheless argue that it needs to be supplemented with other forms as well.
The argument that the traditional model of democratic accountability cannot stand on its own brings out the importance of the concept of accountability to governance theory. Accountability implies responsibility: To be accountable is to be held responsible. ‘To talk about accountability is to define who can call for an account, and who owes a duty of explanation’ (Day and Klein, 1987: 5). Governance has a lot to do with defining mechanisms of accountability. In Athenian democracy, the delegates of the people were directly responsible for their behaviour. Ten times a year they reported to the assembly of citizens in Athens. Accountability was direct and continuous. In representative democracy, the governors are accountable to the people and the civil servants are accountable to the governors. With the growth of the welfare state, these relatively simple accountability chains have become longer and more complicated. Professional bodies with monopoly on expertise in certain fields provide services and are held accountable mostly by members of their own peer group. The growth of local government complicates accountability further. Local governors are accountable to their local constituencies as well as to the centre. Service providers, or ‘street-level bureaucrats’, are accountable to users of the services, but they are also accountable to the public employer. In addition, corporatist structures involving trade unions and employers’ organizations tend to privatize accountability (Day and Klein, 1987: 10–15; see also chapter 2).
Governance scholars see the growth of policy networks at local and transnational levels as further complicating accountability structures. How central government funding for health services is spent, for example, may be difficult to detect when a plurality of health authorities, private sector providers and voluntary organizations become involved in service provision. Accountability may simply disappear in such a web of institutions because defining who did what is no longer straightforward (Rhodes, 2000: 76–7; Day and Klein, 1987: 13). This development infers a lack of control on the part of central government (Peters, 2000), because inability to make someone accountable implies a lack of power and control (Day and Klein, 1987: 21). To compensate for the mounting inefficiency of traditional accountability mechanisms, more participation by citizens has been called for, in order to reintroduce direct accountability and thereby short-circuit the increasingly complex structures of accountability. Participation in, for example, user committees helps to ensure that service providers are responsive to the users’ needs. This, however, raises the paradox that participation in the networks may in itself be a part of the privatization of accountability. Members of the network may develop identical interests and initiate goals that will promote them. This, in turn, may not be in accordance with the aggregated interest of the electorate. Representative democracy is there to ensure that all interests are considered. Most governance scholars therefore seem to prefer both accountability mechanisms, so that accountability is ensured through traditional parliamentary routes, as well as through more participatory means.
To sum up, governance is about managing rules of the game in order to enhance the legitimacy of the public realm. Legitimacy may be derived from democracy as well as from efficiency. Regarding governance theory in general, the focus has been on efficiency, but there is a growing literature on democratic accountability which should not be ignored. This text sketches the debates as they have evolved, and the efficiency concerns therefore take up more space than the concerns with democracy. However, each chapter ends with a look at the literature on democracy within the particular sub-field. The concern with democracy may be more normative than the concern with efficiency. However, it is a concern that is of growing importance in the governance debate and it is therefore appropriate to give it due attention.
Outline of the book
In public administration and public policy (chapter 2), the object of governance studies is mainly to describe how policy networks come into existence, how they function and how they change. Networks can be defined as ‘informal rules governing interactions between the state and organized interests’ (Blom-Hansen, 1997: 676). The relevant actors are politicians, top officials in interest organizations or representatives of civil-society associations, as well as public sector employees. In many of these studies, the focus is on outputs, the argument being that networks are often more efficient at delivering services than hierarchies or markets. However, there is also an increasing concern with democracy: to whom or what are the networks accountable and who sets these rules? Hence, there is also an ongoing debate about how to establish procedures of democratic accountability within the context of policy networks.
In international relations (chapter 3), the main question is how to establish rules and procedures that can help solve problems arising from intensified globalization. Such problems may be threats to the global environment, the challenge of combating poverty through global redistribution, or global trade agreements. The relevant actors are states, as well as transnational or supra-national organizations. The main focus has long been, and still is, the efficiency of global decision-making, that is on outputs. Key to this are the challenges of establishing rules at the global level to regulate the environment, abolish landmines or combat drug-trafficking – all of primary concern to governance scholars. In particular, the debate focuses on how to ensure compliance on the part of nation-states. Yet, although establishing a parallel to national representative democracy at the global level is far from feasible, there is a growing concern among governance theorists about how to hold international organizations accountable. In addition, some international governance scholars have an explicit normative concern with global democracy.
In studies of European governance (chapter 4), multi-level governance implies a shift from a policy-making process which was primarily intergovernmental to a process that involves the supra-national level, i.e. the EU Commission, the Court of Justice and the Parliament; the national level, i.e. the Council of Ministers; and the sub-national level, i.e. the regions. Efficiency in regulation of the single market, the environment and labour-market policy, to mention just a few areas, has been the main concern. However, some governance theorists have raised the critique that the occupation with multi-level governance has been biased towards output legitimacy and therefore it has ignored the democratic deficit of the EU. Although the contributions combining governance theory and democracy in the EU still form a small part of the total literature on European governance, they nonetheless exist and deserve attention.3
In comparative politics (chapters 5 and 6), there are two main debates of importance to governance. The first (chapter 5) is what may be termed comparative political economy and concerns the role of state regulation in economic and social development. The task is to identify the rules guiding public policy-making and implementation; these rules could be institutions or networks securing public–private cooperation, or they could be rules of recruitment based on achievement rather than merit. The actors involved in setting and altering the rules are presidents, top officials, or representatives of a certain industrial sector, but they may also be local officials who engage in networking and capacity-building in the local community. The literature on economic governance and regulation is large and the focus here is on the state and economic growth in developing countries rather than in developed societies. There will, however, be references to the latter as well.
The other debate is about democratization (chapter 6). By its very nature, this concern is with input legitimacy and it is a normative concern. However, the debate has also been analytical; in particular, the discussion on the role of structures vis-à-vis that of actors in democratization has been important. The study here is thus of regime rules, the task being to identify the rules governing access to power, and how they change, as well as the individuals and groups who implement the changes. These may be civil-society groups, political elites, or representatives of international organizations or other governments.
Main themes in governance and comparative politics are thus democratization, state capacity and the nature of state–society relations (Peters, 2000). Studying governance processes in comparative politics implies asking questions about how best to establish rules that are stable, promote legitimacy and enhance efficiency. It is about identifying models of governance that work and discussing whether these models can be applied in other countries with other sociocultural and economic structures. It implies investigating the capacity of the centre to govern, with variations of that capacity. Governance in comparative politics is thus an explorative concept, addressing issues of regulation, steering and democratic control.
Chapter 7 examines governance and the World Bank. The World Bank is an international organization that raises many governance concerns. The Bank is engaged in development programmes in poor countries and it is constantly searching for ways to promote ‘good governance’. The Bank therefore calls for a debate on ‘the optimal’ model of economic governance, a call which has also been raised in comparative political economy. In addition, the Bank’s call for responsive, accountable government touches upon issues of democratization, and the feasibility of simultaneous political and economic liberalization. But a preoccupation with World Bank practices also provokes a discussion on the accountability of the Bank itself and its role in global governance. Finally, chapter 8 sums up the debates and gives some consideration to common concerns and common problems in governance theory.
Notes
1.
The description of the frescos draws upon Koch (2002).
2.
See also Kickert, Klijn and Koppenjan (1999: 3), who ‘disagree with the ideas of the new public management’.
3.
The reason why a separate chapter on the EU is warranted is that there is a separate theoretical debate about the EU. The rise of local and transnational networks and the concern with governance do imply that the EU is not a unique case but is a part of the changes taking place globally.
2Governance in Public Administration and Public Policy: Steering Inter-Organizational Networks
The transformation of the public sector involves ‘less government’ (or less rowing) but ‘more governance’ (or more steering). (Rhodes, 1996: 655)
In public administration, the governance debate is about changes that have taken place in the public sector since the 1980s. From a model based on Weberian principles of hierarchy, neutrality and career civil servants, public sector reforms introduced other models of governing: those of markets and networks. The (intended or unintended) outcomes of these reforms have been to reduce the direct ‘hands-on’ control of service delivery and instead to increase steering through policy networks.
This chapter looks at how governance emerged as a central concept in public administration and discusses the questions raised by governance theory. It starts by sketching the traditional model of public administration and its basic assumptions. It then goes on to discuss the deficiencies and the critique of this model, the wave of public sector reform of the 1980s and 1990s, the results and consequences of the reforms, and how governance emerged as a part of that debate. The final section will discuss questions of democratic governance raised in relation to the new steering challenges.
The traditional model of the public sector
Max Weber was one of the first scholars to systematically sketch the principles of a modern bureaucracy. Modern public servants, according to Weber, should be career bureaucrats, recruited on the basis of ability rather than ascription. In what Weber called a bureaucratic state, ‘public moneys and equipment are divorced from the private property of the official’ (Weber, 1978: 957). Modern bureaucracy is characterized by general rules, and it is decisive that the ‘freely creative administration would not constitute a realm of free, arbitrary action and discretion of personally motivated favor and valuation’ (ibid.: 979). Thus, in an ideal bureaucracy, public and private interests are completely separated.
