Networks, partnerships, and inclusion
Although discussions of the new governance often highlight NPM, public-sector reform is a continuous process. Typically, managerial reforms gave way to a second wave of reform focusing on institutional arrangements (networks and partnerships) and administrative values (public service and social inclusion). The second wave of reforms included a number of overlapping trends, which are often brought together under labels such as “joined-up governance,” “one-stop government,” “service integration,” “whole-of-government,” or “aktivierender Staat” (German: “activating state”). Some commentators even describe this second wave as a “governance approach” or “new governance” defined in contrast to NPM.
Several connected reasons can be given for the altered nature of public-sector reform. One is the shifting tide of intellectual and political fortunes. To an extent, the fortunes of public choice theory and neoliberalism ebbed while those of reformist social democrats and network theorists rose. The rise of New Labour (see Labour Party) within the United Kingdom is perhaps the most obvious example of this tide. A second reason is a growing sensitivity to a new set of external problems, including terrorism, the environment, asylum seekers, aging populations, and the digital divide. Many of these problems led people to turn to the state rather than markets and to do so with concerns about equity rather than efficiency. Yet another reason for the changing content of public-sector reform resides in the unintended consequences of the earlier managerial reforms. Observers emphasize that NPM led to a fragmentation of the public sector; because public services are delivered by networks composed of a number of different organizations, there is a need to coordinate and manage networks. Observers also emphasize that NPM raised dilemmas of accountability; even if the autonomous and semiautonomous organizations involved in delivering services are more efficient, they are not always easy to hold accountable on matters of equity. These worries about accountability were exacerbated by exposures of corruption in the private sector and by studies emphasizing the public’s lack of trust in government.
The main thrust of the second wave of reforms was to improve coordination across agencies. This ambition to join up networks reflected concerns that the earlier reforms led to the fragmentation of public-service delivery. Joined-up governance promotes horizontal and vertical coordination between the organizations involved in an aspect of public policy. Although the boundary between policy making and policy implementation is blurred, joined-up approaches look rather different in each case. Joined-up policy making brings together all the agencies involved in dealing with intractable problems such as juvenile crime or rural poverty. Joined-up policy implementation coordinates the actions of agencies involved in delivering services so as to simplify them for citizens. An example is one-stop shops at which the unemployed can access benefits, training, and job information.
Joined-up governance often draws on the idea that networks can coordinate the actions of a range of actors and organizations. Indeed, its proponents often suggest that, in many circumstances, networks offer a mode of coordination superior to that of both hierarchies and markets. For example, networks tie an enabling or facilitative leadership within a network to greater flexibility, creativity, inclusiveness, and commitment. Hence, joined-up governance is as much about fostering networks as it is about managing them. Indeed, the second wave of reforms characteristically attempted to promote networks or partnerships rather than markets. Such partnerships were created between public, private, and voluntary bodies as well as between different levels of government or different state agencies. In many countries the emphasis shifted from competitive tendering to the public sector’s building long-term relationships based on trust with suppliers, users, and other stakeholders. Public-private partnerships are said to have a number of advantages based on their ability to combine the strengths of each sector. For example, they can ease the burden of capital investment on the public sector while reducing risks of development for the private sector.
Partnerships and joined-up governance are often advocated as ways of promoting social inclusion as well as increasing efficiency. Ideally, they increase citizen involvement in the policy process. Citizen groups participate as partners in aspects of policy making and policy implementation. The second wave of public-sector reforms sought to activate civil society. Partnerships and joined-up governance were supposed to provide settings in which public-sector bodies could engage stakeholders—citizens, voluntary organizations, and private companies—thereby involving them in democratic processes. It was also hoped that involving stakeholders in the policy process would build public trust in government.
Governance beyond the state
The literature on the new governance highlights the role of markets, networks, and non-state actors. It thereby weakens the distinction between states and other domains of social order. All social and political regimes appear to depend on a pattern of rule, or form of governance, no matter how informal it might be. Hence, the term governance has come to refer to social and political orders other than the state.
Some patterns of rule appear in civil society. The most-discussed of these is corporate governance, which is the means of directing and controlling business corporations. The interest in corporate governance is linked to theoretical questions in microeconomics about how to account for the stability of firms. Most responses to these questions parallel those that rational choice theorists give to questions about the origins of social norms, laws, and institutions. Yet the main source of interest in corporate governance is probably public, shareholder, and governmental concerns about corporate scandals, corruption, abuse of monopoly power, and the high salaries paid to top executives. Three broad themes dominate the resulting literature on corporate ethics. They are openness through disclosure of information, integrity through straightforward dealing, and accountability through a clear division of responsibilities.
Regional governance
The rise of new regional regimes and institutions, such as the European Union (EU), plays two roles in discussions of the new governance. Many commentators suggest, first, that the cause of the new governance is that the rise of these regional regimes has eroded the autonomy of nation states. And, second, the new regional regimes are often taken to be examples of a networked polity and so of the new governance rather than an elder government.
The EU constitutes the most prominent case of the new regional governance. Studies of the EU gave rise to an extensive literature on multilevel governance. The EU is a level of governance above the nation state, which in turn often contains various levels of local and federal government. The literature on multilevel governance in the EU posits links in the EU between the European Commission, national ministries, and local and regional authorities. It emphasizes the rise of transnational policy networks especially where policy making is depoliticized and routinized, supranational agencies depend on other agencies to deliver services, and there is a need to aggregate interests.
Transnational policy networks are arguably the defining feature of a new pattern of regional (and also international) governance. However, it is important to recognize that these transnational networks do not always lead to the deep linkages associated with the EU. Regional projects can consist of little more than loose preferential trading agreements. It must also be recognized that transnational agreements do not always correspond to actual geographic regions. Much North-South regionalism consists, for example, of agreements between one or more developed states and one or more less-developed states—agreements that secure access to one another’s markets while also diffusing particular regulatory and legal standards.
International governance
The concept of international governance has much the same relation to the new governance as does that of regional governance. On one hand, some commentators suggest that international processes are eroding the importance of the state; the relevant processes include the internationalization of production and of financial transactions, the rise of new international organizations, and the growth of international law. And, on the other hand, the international sphere is itself portrayed as being a case of governance in the total or near absence of the state or government.
Regional governance is, moreover, a prominent part of the pattern of rule that currently operates at the international level. Of course, global organizations, such as the United Nations (UN) or the World Bank, help to create and sustain the laws, rules, and norms that govern international politics. Nonetheless, these organizations aside, many of the interactions and agreements between states and other global actors are situated in the context of the transnational policy networks associated with the new regionalism. If the Cold War was a bipolar era based on the predominance of the United States and the Soviet Union, international governance now consists of a multipolar regionalism, albeit perhaps in the context of U.S. dominance.
The new regional and transnational organizations appear to share certain broad characteristics. They are typically fairly open to countries from outside the region; they are perhaps less a series of protectionist pacts and more a series of interconnected webs within an increasingly global economy. Their policy objectives extend beyond the economy to areas such as security, the environment, human rights, and “good” governance. And last, they often incorporate a variety of non-state actors as well as states themselves. This new type of regional governance has combined with increased economic flows and elder international organizations to transform the world order—that is, to create a new form of international governance.
Theories of governance
Although interest in governance in the early 21st century owes much to public-sector reforms that began in the 1980s, these reforms and the interest they inspired cannot be easily separated from theories such as rational choice and the new institutionalism. It is important to recognize that the meaning of governance varies according to not only the level of generality at which it is pitched but also the theoretical contexts in which it is used.
