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Notes from Lecture 1- from government to governance?
- role of government has diminished in governance arrangements but still is there
- we need government in governance
- governance existed also before the last shift in the last 30 years – but there was less
explicit attention before
- government is also governance! They are complementary - gov is helping shaping
governance arrangements
- governance isn’t better than government in itself – its all about situation
Governance – conceptual clarification
Government is the production of ordered rule through formal institutions of the state and
their monopoly of legitimate coercive power
Government as governance:
> steering/governing is done by the government
> hierarchical relation btw gov and soc
> sectoral units and agencies for matters to be governed like health, econ affairs, environ..
> mng for the public interest, reflecting it and working to reach it
> manageable society
> classic image of this mng society comprises:
> people viewed as egoistic utility maximisers (short-term materialistic interests vs
long-term effects)
> science needs to lend legitimacy to governmental policies (they can inform the gov
about environmental risks but also have to deal with intrinsically with uncertainties)
> gov seen as central steering actor in soc: gov imposes restrictions on soc to enforce
implementation of environmental targets
> one of the problems of this image is that gov targets remain an external fact for
actors in society; gov permanently in a fighting position; regulation and financial incentives
don’t work well with wicked problems of sust
Governance:
> production of ordered rule too but..through a joint public and private mobilisation of
resources – so output is equal to gov but processes are different and the role of gov is also
different
> generic definition of governance: denotes the process of steering soc and the econ
through collective action and in accordance with common goals
in Stoker 1998 – key aspects of governance
> institution and actors from gov are involved but also other actors are
> there is some blurring of roles and responsibilities in governance arrangements
> power dependence in relationships btw institutions
> governance plays emphasis on autonomous self-organising networks of actors
, > governing via the use of new techniques to steer and guide rather than command and
control (so softer and more flexible approaches)
What type of concept is this? Descriptive? Explanatory? Or normative or prescriptive
concept? (= suggesting good directions to take)
Historical context of governance debate
- 1970s – macroeconomic shift from Keynesianism toward supply-side neoliberalism and
globalisation: market-based approaches governance emerged as an alternative of state-
centric model of service delivery – gov needed to make place for market and market-based
actors
western state of post-WW2 is faced with rising expectations from citizens about quality
of life while also contracting economies in the 1970s thus limited public resources (trilateral
commission)
also thinkers like Habermas talked about the legitimacy of the welfare state and their
capacity to meet demands
debate on government failures
discovery of wicked problems which were also reframed problems and new complexity of
existing problems found
Emergence of neoliberal state – run government as a corporation to be more efficient
New public mng approach: about privatisation of public enterprises, contracting out of
public services, commercialisation of the remaining public sector today there is
ancreasing fragmented public sector which stimulates need to find some level of
coordination btw all the agencies involved governance as governing through distributed
networks agencies and contractors
International development
> a well functioning state is considered critical precondition for successful econ dev
> but not always present in developing countries good governance
> spread of managerial techniques by World Bank, IMF etc
EU in 1990s also historical process that few into shift from gov to governance
> intergovernmentalists (focus on federalism) vs supranationalists (rules overrule nations
rules)
> governance as a new form of political integration that bypass these two positions
> governance networks and partnerships to increase input and output legitimacy
Bob Jessop thus talked about destateification of politics as state gradually loses monopoly in
public policy-making – also led to decentering of powering and authority as decisions are
taken in many different places (which comes with problems: how to co-create public
solutions when we have decentralised stakeholders? – and, governance is distributed
process engaging many stakeholders via many different policies)
Governance Theories
> intellectual context of 1970s and 80s: different thinkers converging on concept of
governance
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