The circulation of public officials in a fragmented system: Urban governance networks in Paris

Fragmentation and specialization—two characteristics of governance—have increased the number and variety of actors involved in the governing process, which can influence policy outcomes and legitimacy. To date, studies on governance or policy networks usually focus on one policy field and one moment in time. In this article, we analyse the dynamic aspect, thus how governance networks change over time, and examine whether the fragmentation and specialization of the governance system is mirrored in the circulation of public officials. Our case is the urban governance system of the Paris region, which is characterized by high fragmentation along policy fields and territory. The data show that Paris is governed by three sub‐systems that largely correspond to the different territorial levels of governance, but also to different types of organizations. Generally, territorial fragmentation seems to be stronger than policy field fragmentation. This structure is quite stable across time.     

Gouvernance hybride des parkings publics à Lubumbashi : quand la fiscalité informelle supporte la fiscalité formelle

“Hybrid governance” appears today as an emerging research current that focuses on the role of non-state institutions and actors to strengthen state institutions that lack legitimacy and capacity in developing countries. By examining the interactions between private and public actors involved in the governance of public motor parks in Lubumbashi, the second city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this article demonstrates that informal taxation can be a decisive support for the perception of an official parking tax.     

MAKING GOVERNANCE NETWORKS EFFECTIVE AND DEMOCRATIC THROUGH METAGOVERNANCE

In response to the growing discrepancy between the steadily rising steering ambitions and the increasing fragmentation of social and political life, governance networks are mushrooming. Governance through the formation of networks composed of public and private actors might help solve wicked problems and enhance democratic participation in public policy-making, but it may also create conflicts and deadlocks and make public governance less transparent and accountable. In order to ensure that governance networks contribute to an effective and democratic governing of society, careful metagovernance by politicians, public managers and other relevant actors is necessary. In this paper, we discuss how to assess the effective performance and democratic quality of governance networks. We also describe how different metagovernance tools can be used in the pursuit of effective and democratic network governance. Finally, we argue that public metagovernors must develop their strategic and collaborative competences in order to become able to metagovern governance networks.     

An exploratory analysis of governance dynamics,institutional reforms and development: a comparative study of India and Bangladesh

Governance has become a prominent issue over the last three decades or so in the intellectual and practical domains of public administration. Significant debates have proliferated about the significance, domains and types of governance and their implications for democracy and development, particularly in developing countries. Amidst the debates on the relationship between governance and development, political settlements analysis has become quite prominent that focuses on the implications of political settlement for reforming and enforcing institutions leading towards negative/positive economic development. This article aims to examine how the interlocked relationships among the members of the dominant power coalition in the governing system help reform the institutions, distribute privileges, maintain stability and affect economic development with particular reference to India and Bangladesh.     

The Effects of Media and their Logic on Legitimacy Sources within Local Governance Networks: A Three-Case Comparative Study

Although theoretical and empirical work on the democratic legitimacy of governance networks is growing, little attention has been paid to the impact of mediatisation on democracies. Media have their own logic of news-making led by the media’s rules, aims, production routines and constraints, which affect political decision-making processes. In this article, we specifically study how media and their logic affect three democratic legitimacy sources of political decision-making within governance networks: voice, due deliberation and accountability. We conducted a comparative case study of three local governance networks using a mixed method design, combining extensive qualitative case studies, interviews and a quantitative content analysis of media reports. In all three cases, media logic increased voice possibilities for citizen groups. Furthermore, it broadened the deliberation process, although this did not improve the quality of this process per se, because the media focus on drama and negativity. Finally, media logic often pushed political authorities into a reactive communication style as they had to fight against negative images in the media. Proactive communication about projects, such as public relation (PR) strategies and branding, is difficult in such a media landscape.     

Integrating citizen deliberation into climate governance: Lessons on robust design from six climate assemblies

Recent years have seen a “wave” of national climate assemblies, which bring together randomly-selected citizens to deliberate and make recommendations on aspects of the climate crisis. Assessments of the legitimacy of these interventions and their capacity to improve climate governance have focused on their internal design characteristics, but the fundamental question of how they are integrated into complex constellations of political and policy institutions is underexplored. This article constructs a framework for understanding their integrative design characteristics, drawing on recent work on “robust governance.” The framework is used to explore the connection of six national-level climate assemblies with political institutions, public debate, and civil society. Our findings highlight significant variety in the integrative design of these climate assemblies. This variety challenges the view of assemblies as a standardized object with predictable effects on legitimacy and governance capacity, while also refining deliberative systems theory's highly abstracted conceptions of integration and impact.     

META‐GOVERNANCE: VALUES,NORMS AND PRINCIPLES,AND THE MAKING OF HARD CHOICES

Meta‐governance – or governance of governance – is a concept that raises questions regarding how values, norms and principles underpin governance systems and governing approaches. Values, norms and principles pertain both to substantive governance issues, for instance, related to sustainable resource use, and to governance system issues in themselves, for instance, regarding their institutional design. This article deals primarily with the latter. Thus the interactive perspective serves as basis for developing a coherent set of meta‐governance principles. We argue that an explicit, deliberated and decided upon set of meta‐governance principles as an integral part of governance can help in making hard substantive governance choices easier. Interactive learning plays a key role in governance processes when public and private governing actors have to make such hard choices. In the article, examples from natural resource governance will serve as illustrations for the more conceptual argumentation and reasoning.     

THE FRENCH STATE AND ITS TERRITORIAL CHALLENGES

This article focuses upon the territorial challenges to the French state. There is a genuine policy puzzle in terms of how to join up separate agencies of the state that is far from unique to France. Introducing new evidence based on interviews with high ranking officials, politicians and representatives of territorial policy communities in 2010, the main body of the article focuses upon the two main territorial reforms of the Sarkozy presidency, the reform of the territorial state, and the local government reform. These cases reveal an original attempt to craft a political discourse based on public sector productivity and state puissance. The article explores the tension between synoptic models of reform, focused on the expectation of rapid and quantifiable macro‐level change that suits the short‐term returns of the political cycle; and institutionalized processes of meso‐level implementation, with different timescales, logics of appropriateness and configurations of actors.     

The Flypaper Effect Revisited: Intergovernmental Grants and Local Governance

Abstract

Local governance arrangements shape the incentives of local actors, which may in turn influence fiscal choices. By emphasizing the role of local government institutions in local fiscal choices, we seek to bridge between median voter and Leviathan models prevalent in the literature. We then offer some preliminary evidence to support this explanation by empirically testing several propositions regarding the flypaper effect in intergovernmental grants. One limitation of the median voter model is that the model does not consider political institutions and their influences on government expenditures. In this study, we attempt to capture the influence of political dynamics in determining public expenditures by considering institutional variables. Test results show that the political institutional variables could be one of the explanation variables for the flypaper effect.     

Civil Society’s Claims to Political Representation in Brazil

Civil society is laying claim to political representation in contemporary democracies, destabilizing long-standing ideas about democratic legitimacy. The participatory governance structures that have emerged alongside classic institutions of representative democracy encompass not only direct citizen participation but also political representation by civil society actors. Using original data from São Paulo, Brazil, we show that most of civil society actors that work for the urban poor claim political representation of their “constituency.” Theirs is more often than not an “assumed representation,” we suggest, because our data show that most lack formal members and do not select leaders through elections. Civil society actors (in contrast to political parties and labor unions) lack historically settled and politically sanctioned mechanisms to authorize and hold accountable their representation. This new layer of political representatives therefore faces a historic challenge—constructing novel notions of democratic legitimacy that can support their forms of representation. We examine what new notions of representations are emerging and trace the historic roots of the most widespread and promising that focus on remedying inequality in access to the state.     

Democratic Governance: A Genealogy

This essay draws on my book, Democratic Governance (Princeton University Press, 2010), to provide a genealogy of governance and to explore its implications for democracy. My arguments can be quickly stated: governance rose and spread as a consequence of new modernist theories and the public sector reforms that were inspired by these theories; policy actors respond to the challenges of governance by supplementing representative institutions with yet more modernist expertise.     

From Innovation to Convention: Legitimate Citizen Participation in Local Governance

In governance structure legitimacy is required not only of the governing system, local authorities or public organisations but also of other participants, including citizens. The legitimacy cannot be judged either by traditions of representative democracy or by innovative theories of deliberative or participatory democracy. The article analyses scientific publications on citizen participation in local governance. It asks how empirical studies on local sustainable development planning (SDP) and New Public Management (NPM) practices construct legitimate citizen participation. In general, studies on citizen participation have not conceptualised the relations between citizens and power holders as questions of legitimacy. However, the studies approaching citizen participation in the local processes of SDP and NPM include various empirical, theoretical and normative arguments for citizen participation. These arguments recognise, accept and support particular activities, arguments and outcomes of citizen participation, and include and exclude agents and issues. They construct and reflect the definition of legitimacy in the local governance. As constructed by scientific texts, justifications for citizen participation reproduce a discursive structure in which citizen participation becomes marginalised and citizens’ views excluded. The results illustrate that discursive structures of legitimate citizen participation support conventional governing practices and hinder innovative practices in local governance.     

WAS LOCAL GOVERNANCE SUCH A GOOD IDEA? A GLOBAL COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The idea of local governance has gained much prominence but can elected local government be sustained in a role as network coordinator alone? To investigate this question this article focuses attention on four societal roles that local government systems undertake. They can support political identity, underwrite economic development, facilitate social welfare provision or act as a lifestyle co‐ordinator through the practice of community governance. Tying our investigation to the embedded societal roles of local government in different systems opens up the opportunity for a global comparative perspective. It also supports an argument that a sustainable system of local government is likely to be one that is able to combine societal roles to a substantial degree and those systems left with community governance as their key societal function are particularly likely to find themselves pushed to the sidelines of governing arrangements.     

Governance in Whitehall

Governance theory raises conceptual and theoretical questions about the coordination of complex social systems and the evolving role of the state within that process. A central aspect of the governance debate focuses on the ability of national governments to address salient social issues. This article examines the British Labour governments' attempts to facilitate cross-departmental inter-organizational collaboration within Whitehall in an attempt to develop innovative responses to seemingly intractable social problems. The government's desire and strategy to increase its capacity to orchestrate 'joined-up' government can be interpreted as both an acceptance and a response to the challenges of modern governance. The article locates the structural, procedural and cultural responses to this challenge within the theoretical and analytical framework of governance theory. It concludes by suggesting that meaningful change in the way public policy is designed and implemented may well demand a more deep seated reappraisal of the structure of Whitehall and the dominant values of the British political elite than is currently anticipated.     

The democratizing impact of governance networks: From pluralization,via democratic anchorage,to interactive political leadership

Initially, governance networks were intended as tools for making public governance more effective. Yet, scholars have argued that governance networks also have the potential to democratize public governance. This article provides an overview of theoretical arguments pertaining to the democratizing impact of governance networks. It claims that the initial celebration of the pluralization of public governance and the subsequent call for a democratic anchorage of governance networks should give way to a new concern for how governance networks can strengthen and democratize political leadership. Tying political leadership to networked processes of collaborative governance fosters ‘interactive political leadership’. The article presents theoretical arguments in support of interactive political leadership, and provides an illustrative case study of a recent attempt to strengthen political leadership through the systematic involvement of elected politicians in local governance networks. The article concludes by reflecting on how interactive political leadership could transform our thinking about democracy.     

GOVERNANCE FROM THE BOTTOM UP: COMPLEXITY AND DIVERGENCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

This symposium article examines how the threefold governance framework of the symposium actually works across multiple policy sectors and multiple politically systems. It undertakes a comparative survey of governance‐related developments across three policy sectors: environment, education/higher education and forests. To control for differentiation in political structures, the article studies the policy sectors with respect to three political systems Canada, England and Germany, taking into account the role of the European Union, the federal systems and international actors. This broad macro comparative focus enables the authors to make one of the first empirical efforts to assess the presence and sweep of governance arrangements across both policy sectors and states; and to assess the degree of convergence around particular governance practices.     

The limits of proceduralism: Critical remarks on the rise of ‘throughput legitimacy’

‘Throughput legitimacy’ is among the most successful conceptual innovations that scholars of public policy and administration have produced in recent years. I argue that this new understanding of legitimacy needs to be seen in the context of an increasing proceduralism in political science and public administration. Throughput legitimacy attracted so much attention because it is the perfect normative companion to the analytical concept of governance. Governance is procedure, and throughput legitimacy tells us what good procedures are. In my critical discussion of this innovation I examine the analytical value of the concept, as well as its normative and practical implications. I argue that, regarding concept formation, throughput legitimacy may enrich existing typologies of legitimacy but at the same time has a severe problem of fuzzy borders. Politically, throughput legitimacy lends itself to apologetic uses when it is applied as a tailor‐made normative standard for technocratic, non‐majoritarian institutions.     

How limited representativeness weakens throughput legitimacy in the EU: The example of interest groups

Are the interest groups (IGs) that constitute European umbrella organizations capable of cooperating in a way that contributes to the throughput legitimacy of the EU? To answer this question, the representativeness of supranational actors is developed as the central criteria of throughput legitimacy, thereby reconfiguring throughput legitimacy as a two‐level concept. Representativeness is operationalized as consisting of regular contacts between the constituent and the umbrella organization as well as the satisfaction of the former with the representation by the latter. The article looks empirically at agricultural, environmental and anti‐poverty groups. Whereas there are different degrees of contact depending on the policy area, the satisfaction with the representation by the umbrella is compromised for all three IGs. This is closely linked to lowest common denominator policies which reduce the representativeness of the umbrellas and therefore the throughput legitimacy of the EU, a problem that also exists for other actors of supranational governance.     

The role of social structure for governing natural resources in decentralized political systems: Insights from governing a fishery in Indonesia

This empirical research investigates whether distinct network configurations between actors facilitate or impede successful local natural resource governance in decentralized political systems. Network analysis is applied to disentangle the interaction between actors involved in a decentralized fishery governance system in Indonesia from a polycentric perspective. Using an embedded network case study design, the study examines whether common interaction patterns are observed in local study sites with more successful governance outcomes compared to study sites with less successful outcomes. Three common patterns are identified: (i) higher frequency of interaction of local actors, and (ii) stronger activity of local non‐governmental actors in the polycentric governance network are found in the sites with more successful outcomes. Furthermore, the results show (iii) a higher centralization of the local governance networks with rent‐seeking actors in strong brokerage positions where highly unsustainable resource use prevails. This points to the existence of a ‘dark side’ of brokerage.     

State building and the non-state: debating key dilemmas

This article unpacks the relationship between state building and the non-state. While accepting both the positive and corrosive characteristics of non-state actors and informal practices of governance, it attempts to (1) advance an argument in favour of mainstreaming ‘non-state’ forms that are positive and useful for state building; and (2) highlight the tensions between the practice of state building and the reality of the non-state. In thinking beyond the state and non-state dichotomy, the article seeks to identify factors that are necessary if state-building programmes are to work in complex environments. Drawing on received wisdom from recent experiences, this conceptual study focuses on important contextual, local, political and legitimacy issues to highlight prominent dilemmas. The conclusion suggests four policy-relevant lessons that reinforce the argument in favour of mainstreaming the non-state agenda into the critical thinking about security and development.