Key Concepts in Governance

Mark Bevir

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781473903654
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

?A comprehensive, multidisciplinary examination of the concepts embodied in governance and their wide-ranging applications and implications. An important read and reference for students and academics in the social sciences, particularly those engaged in public policy studies? - Professor Carolyn J. Heinrich, University of Wisconsin-Madison

?An authoritative short survey for which students and teachers alike will be profoundly grateful? - Professor Rod Rhodes, University of Tasmania and Australian National University

?Students of governance will welcome this book given the explosion of literature in the field. It provides a quick guide to key concepts and ideas but does so with considerable originality. We are offered not just a review of well-established positions but a distinctive take on the governance debate? - Gerry Stoker, Professor of Governance, University of Southampton

The language of governance has risen to prominence in the last 20 years as a way of describing and explaining changes in the nature and role of the state, but the concepts involved can be confusing as they are often new and come from diverse disciplinary and theoretical settings.

Key Concepts in Governance provides a clear introduction to the technical concepts and policies of contemporary governance through short definitional essays. Each entry features:

"a snapshot definition of the concept

"a contextualization of the concept

"an overview of relevant debates

"a guide to further reading.

The book also includes a substantial introductory chapter which gives an overview of governance studies as a whole, orientating and guiding the reader around the issues that the concepts address.

Highly readable, with clear cross-referencing, this is an ideal book for students on introductory courses and an indispensable resource for anyone interested in governance.

Part I: What is Governance?

What is Governance?

INTRODUCTION

Governance can be used as a specific term to describe changes in the nature and role of the state following the public sector reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. Typically, these reforms are said to have led to a shift from a hierarchical bureaucracy towards a greater use of markets, quasi-markets, and networks, especially in the delivery of public services. The effects of the reforms were intensified by global changes, including an increase in transnational economic activity and the rise of regional institutions such as the European Union. So understood, governance expresses a widespread belief that the state increasingly depends on other organizations to secure its intentions and deliver its policies.

By analogy, governance also can be used to describe any pattern of rule that arises either when the state is dependent upon others or when the state plays little or no role. For example, the term ‘global governance’ refers to the pattern of rule at the international level where the United Nations is too weak to resemble the kind of state that can impose its will upon its territory. Likewise, the term ‘corporate governance’ refers to patterns of rule within businesses – that is, to the systems, institutions, and norms by which corporations are directed and controlled. In this context, governance expresses a growing awareness of the ways in which forms of power and authority can secure order even in the absence of state activity.

More generally still, governance can be used to refer to all patterns of rule, including the kind of hierarchical state that is often thought to have existed prior to the public sector reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. This general use of governance enables theorists to explore abstract analyses of the construction of social orders, social coordination, or social practices irrespective of their specific content. Theorists can divorce such abstract analyses from specific questions about, say, the state, the international system, or the corporation. However, if we are to use governance in this general way, perhaps we need to describe the changes in the state since the 1980s using an alternative phrase, such as ‘the new governance’.

Whether we focus on the new governance, weak states, or patterns of rule in general, the concept of governance raises issues about public policy and democracy. The increased role of non-state actors in the delivery of public services has led to a concern to improve the ability of the state to oversee these other actors. The state has become more interested in various strategies for creating and managing networks and partnerships. It has set up all kinds of arrangements for auditing and regulating other organizations. In the eyes of many observers, there has been an audit explosion. In addition, the increased role of unelected actors in policy-making suggests that we need to think about the extent to which we want to hold them democratically accountable and about the mechanisms by which we might do so. Similarly, accounts of growing transnational and international constraints upon states suggest that we need to rethink the nature of social inclusion and social justice. Political institutions from the World Bank to the European Union now use terms such as ‘good governance’ to convey their aspirations for a better world.

A CONCEPTUAL HISTORY OF GOVERNANCE

The general concept of governance as a pattern of rule or as the activity of ruling has a long lineage in the English language. The medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote, for example, of ‘the gouernance of hous and lond’ (the governance of house and land). Nonetheless, much of the current interest in governance derives from its specific use in relation to changes in the state since the late twentieth century. These changes date from neoliberal reforms of the public sector in the 1980s.

Neoliberalism

Neoliberals argue that the state is inherently inefficient when compared with markets. Often they also suggest that the post-war Keynesian welfare state is in crisis; it has become too large to be manageable, it is collapsing under the burden of excessive taxation, and it is generating ever higher rates of cyclical inflation. Neoliberals believe that the post-war state cannot be sustained any longer, especially in a world that is now characterized by highly mobile capital and by vigorous economic competition between states. Hence they attempt to roll back the state. They often suggest, in particular, that the state should concentrate on making policy decisions rather than on delivering services. They want the state to withdraw from direct delivery of services. They want to replace state provision of public services with an entrepreneurial system based on competition and markets. In Reinventing Government, David Osborne and Ted Gaebler distinguish between the activity of making policy decisions, which they describe as steering, and that of delivering public services, which they describe as rowing. They argue that bureaucracy is bankrupt as a tool for rowing. And they propose replacing bureaucracy with an ‘entrepreneurial government’, based on competition, markets, customers, and measurement of outcomes.

Because neoliberals deride government, many of them look for another term to describe the kind of entrepreneurial pattern of rule they favor. Governance offers them such a concept. It enables them to distinguish between ‘bad’ government (or rowing) and necessary governance (or steering). The early association of governance with a minimal state and the spread of markets thus arose from neoliberal politicians and the policy wonks, journalists, economists, and management gurus who advised them.

The advisers to neoliberals often draw on rational choice theory. Rational choice theory extends a type of social explanation found in micro-economics. Typically, rational choice theorists attempt to explain social outcomes by reference to micro-level analyses of individual behavior, and they model individual behavior on the assumption that people choose the course of action that is most in accordance with their preferences. Rational choice theorists influence neoliberal attitudes to governance in large part through a critique of the concept of public interest. They insist that individuals, including politicians and civil servants, act in their own interest, which undermines the idea that policy-makers act benevolently to promote a public interest. Indeed, their reduction of social facts to the actions of individuals casts doubt on the very idea of a public interest over and above the aggregate interests of individuals. More specifically, rational choice theorists provide neoliberals with a critique of bureaucratic government. Often they combine the claim that individuals act in accordance with their preferences with an assumption that these preferences are typically to maximize one’s wealth or power. Hence they argue that bureaucrats act to optimize their power and career prospects by increasing the size of their fiefdoms even when doing so is unnecessary. This argument implies that bureaucracies have an inherent tendency to grow even when there is no good reason for them so to do.

Because rational choice theory privileges micro-level analyses, it might appear to have peculiar difficulties explaining the rise of institutions and their persistent stability. Micro-economic analysis has long faced this issue in the guise of the existence of firms. Once rational choice theorists extend such micro-analysis to government and social life generally, they face the same issue with respect to all kinds of institutions, including political parties, voting coalitions, and the market economy itself. The question is: if individuals act in accordance with their preferences, why don’t they break agreements when these agreements no longer suit them? The obvious answer is that some authority would punish them if they broke the agreement, and they have a preference for not being punished. But this answer assumes the presence of a higher authority that can enforce the agreement. Some rational choice theorists thus began to explore how they might explain the rise and stability of norms, agreements, or institutions in the absence of any higher authority. They adopted the concept of governance to refer to norms and patterns of rule that arise and persist even in the absence of an enforcing agent.

Social Science

The neoliberal concept of governance as a minimal state conveys a preference for less government. Arguably, it often does little else, being an example of empty political rhetoric. Indeed, when social scientists study neoliberal reforms of the public sector, they often conclude that these reforms have scarcely rolled back the state at all. They draw attention instead to the unintended consequences of the reforms. According to many social scientists, the neoliberal reforms fragmented service delivery and weakened central control without establishing markets. In their view, the reforms have led to a proliferation of policy networks in both the formulation of public policy and the delivery of public services.

The 1990s saw a massive outpouring of work that conceived governance as a proliferation of networks. Much of this literature explores the ways in which neoliberal reforms created new patterns of service delivery based on complex sets of organizations drawn from all of the public, private, and voluntary sectors. It suggests that a range of processes – including the functional differentiation of the state, the rise of regional blocs, globalization, and the neoliberal reforms themselves – have left the state increasingly dependent on other organizations for the delivery and success of its policies. Although social scientists adopt various theories of policy networks, they generally agree that the state can no longer command others. In their view, the new governance is characterized by networks in which the state and other organizations depend on each other. Even when the state still remains the dominant organization, it and the other members of the network are now interdependent in that they have to exchange resources if they are to achieve their goals. Many social scientists argue that this interdependence means that the state now has to steer other organizations instead of issuing commands to them. They also imply that steering involves a much greater use by the state of diplomacy and related techniques of management. Some social scientists also suggest that the proliferating networks often have a considerable degree of autonomy from the state. In this view, the key problem posed by the new governance is that it reduces the ability of the state to command and even to steer effectively.

Social scientists have developed a concept of governance as a complex and fragmented pattern of rule composed of multiplying networks. They have done so in part because of studies of the impact of neoliberal reforms on the public sector. But two other strands of social science also gave rise to this concept of governance. First, a concept of governance as networks arose among social scientists searching for a way to think about the role of transnational linkages within the European Union. Second, a concept of governance as networks appeals to some social scientists interested in general issues about social coordination and inter-organizational links. These latter social scientists argue that networks are a distinct governing structure through which to coordinate activities and allocate resources. They develop typologies of such governing structures – most commonly hierarchies, markets, and networks – and they identify the characteristics associated with each such structure. Their typologies often imply that networks are preferable, at least in some circumstances, to the hierarchic structures of the post-war state and also to the markets favored by neoliberals. As we will see, this positive valuation of networks sometimes led to what we might call a second wave of public sector reform.

Resistance and Civil Society

Radicals, socialists, and anarchists have long advocated patterns of rule that do not require the capitalist state. Many of them look towards civil society as a site of free and spontaneous associations of citizens. Civil society offers them a non-statist site at which to reconcile the demands of community and individual freedom – a site they hope might be free of force and compulsion. The spread of the new governance has prompted such radicals to distance their visions from that of the neoliberal rolling back of the state. Hence we find two main uses of the word ‘governance’ among radicals: they use it to describe new systems of force and compulsion associated with neoliberalism, and they use it to refer to alternative conceptions of a non-statist democratic order.

There is disagreement among radicals about whether the new governance has led to a decline in the power of the state. Some argue that the state has just altered the way in which it rules its citizens; it makes more use of bribes and incentive, moral exhortation and threats to withdraw benefits. Others believe that the state has indeed lost power. Either way, radicals distinguish the new governance sharply from their visions of an expansion of democracy. In their view, if the power of the state has declined, the beneficiaries have been corporations; they associate the hollowing out of the state with the growing power of financial and industrial capital. Radical analyses of the new governance explore how globalization – or perhaps the myth of globalization – finds states and international organizations acting to promote the interests of capital.

Radicals typically associate their alternative visions of democratic governance with civil society, social movements, and active citizenship. Those who relate the new governance to globalization and a decline in state power often appeal to parallel shifts within civil society. They appeal to global civil society as a site of popular, democratic resistance to capital. Global civil society typically refers to non-governmental groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and the International Labor Organization as well as less formal networks of activists and citizens. Questions can arise, of course, as to whether these groups adequately represent their members, let alone a broader community. However, radicals often respond by emphasizing the democratic potential of civil society and the public sphere. They argue that public debate constitutes one of the main avenues by which citizens can participate in collective decision-making. At times they also place great importance on the potential of public deliberation to generate a rational consensus. No matter what doubts radicals have about contemporary civil society, their visions of democracy emphasize the desirability of transferring power from the state to citizens who would not just elect a government and then act as passive spectators but rather participate continuously in the processes of governance. The association of democratic governance with participatory and deliberative processes in civil society thus arises from radicals seeking to resist state and corporate power.

These radical ideas are not just responses to the new governance; they also help to construct aspects of it. They inspire new organizations, and new activities, by existing social movements. At times, they influence political agreements – perhaps most notably the international regimes and norms covering human rights and the environment. Hence social scientists interested in social movements sometimes relate them to new national and transnational forms of resistance to state and corporate power. To some extent these social scientists again emphasize the rise of networks. However, when social scientists study the impact of neoliberal reforms on the public sector, they focus on the cooperative relations between the state and other institutionalized organizations involved in policy-making and the delivery of public services. In contrast, when social scientists study social movements, they focus on the informal links among activists concerned to contest the policies and actions of corporations, states, and international organizations.

THE NEW GOVERNANCE

The current interest in governance derives primarily from reforms of the public sector since the 1980s. The new governance refers to the apparent spread of markets and networks following these reforms. It points to the varied ways in which the informal authority of markets and networks constitutes, supplements, and supplants the formal authority of government. It has led many people to adopt a more diverse view of state authority and its relationship to civil society.

Recent public sector reform has occurred in two principal waves. The first wave consisted of the New Public Management (NPM) as advocated by neoliberals. These reforms were attempts to increase the role of markets and of corporate management techniques in the public sector. The second wave of reforms consisted of attempts to develop and manage a joined-up series of networks informed by a revived public sector ethos. They were in part responses to the perceived consequences of the earlier reforms.

Some advocates of NPM imply it is the single best way for all states at all times. The same can be said of some advocates of partnerships and networks. Studies of both waves of reform can imply, moreover, that change has been ubiquitous. It is thus worth emphasizing at the outset both the variety and the limits of public sector reform. Reforms have varied from state to state. NPM is associated primarily with neoliberal regimes in the United Kingdom and United States, as well as a few other states, notably Australia and New Zealand. Although many other developed states introduced similar reforms, they did so only selectively, and when they did so, they often altered the content and the implementation of the reforms in accordance with their institutions and traditions. Typically, developing and transitional states adopted similar reforms only under more or less overt pressure from corporations, other states, and international organizations. Public sector reform has also varied across policy sectors within any given state. For example, even in the United Kingdom and the United States, there have been few attempts to introduce performance-related pay or outsourcing to the higher levels of the public service, which are responsible for providing policy advice. The varied extent of public sector reform should itself make us wary of overstating the degree to which governance has been transformed. Of course there have been extensive and significant reforms. But bureaucratic hierarchies still perform most government functions in most states.

The New Public Management

The first wave of public sector reform was NPM. It is inspired by ideas associated with neoliberalism and public choice theory. At first NPM spread in developed, Anglo-Saxon states. Later it spread through much of Europe – though France, Germany, and Spain are often seen as remaining largely untouched by it – and to developing and transitional states. In developed countries, the impetus for NPM came from fiscal crises. Talk of the overloaded state grew as oil crises cut state revenues, and the expansion of welfare services saw state expenditure increase as a proportion of gross national product. The result was a quest to cut costs. NPM was one proposed solution. In developing and transitional states, the impetus for NPM lay more in external pressures, notably those associated with structural adjustment programs.

NPM has two main strands: marketization and corporate management. The most extreme form of marketization is privatization, which is the transfer of assets from the state to the private sector. Some states sold various nationalized industries by floating them on the stock exchange. Other state-owned enterprises were sold to their employees through, say, management buyouts. Yet others were sold to public shareholders, including telecommunications, railways, electricity, water, and waste services. Smaller privatizations have involved hotels, parking facilities, and convention centers, all of which are as likely to have been sold by local governments as by central states.

Other forms of marketization remain far more com...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Fm
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I What is Governance?
• PART II The Concepts
• Bibliography