Institutional Implications of Interactive Governance: Insights from Dutch Practice

Nowadays all kinds of processes of citizen involvement can be observed in practice. We label them as interactive governance in this article. Interactive governance brings with it new proto-institutions that can conflict with existing institutions of decision making. We analyze these institutional tensions in several Dutch local governments through comparative research. Our main conclusion is that there is a "missing institutional link" between the interactive process and the formal municipal decision-making process. Interactive governance needs better institutional embeddedness in order to prevent the interactive process from becoming meaningless and useless in formal decision making.     

Knowledge for Governance,Governance of Knowledge: Inclusive Knowledge Management in Collaborative Governance Processes

ABSTRACT

Different ways of knowing (WOKs) present in governance processes easily give rise to controversies and conflicts and forestall collective action. To resolve these conflicts it is necessary to understand what constitutes a WOK and how we can organize inclusion through collaborative governance. This paper argues that WOKs contain different knowledge elements: they contain different bodies of factual knowledge, formulate specific knowledge questions, and prefer different methods and knowledge institutes. WOKs also encompass different frames, interpretations, or normative perceptions of reality. And finally, different WOKs make use of different sources and types of organizing capacity.

Realizing successful collaborative governance processes means organizing inclusion of these different components of knowledge. This paper investigates the implications of this knowledge diversity for realizing collaborative governance processes and the challenges for inclusive knowledge management—through an in-depth case study of a collaborative governance process between the Netherlands and Flanders.

We conclude that realizing inclusion between various WOKs and their knowledge components contributes to the overall success of a collaborative governance process. However, managing inclusive knowledge is as much a matter of conscious strategies as it is the result of an emergent interaction process between stakeholders, experts, and officials within various WOKs. Furthermore, although knowledge inclusion facilitates successful negotiation between stakeholders, it doesn't guarantee a successful outcome of these negotiations.     

Policy Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change: Multilevel Governance of Central Banking Reform

Recent studies on institutional theory and the public policy field called for efforts to pry open the black box of institutional and policy change. This article offers a response to this call. It demonstrates that historical and discursive institutionalist approaches are complementary to explain how and why institutional change occurs. In addition, it shows how these approaches can add value to and benefit from the public policy and administration fields that seek to explain policy change and success. In particular, it emphasizes the interactions between structure and agency that contribute to the change. The empirical finding is based on qualitative analysis of central banking reform in Turkey. It suggests that institutional and policy change is more likely to occur when policy entrepreneurs, with joint membership in domestic and transnational policy communities, mediate various ideas and discourse within and among these communities in a punctuated institutional equilibrium.     

Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance

This article reviews and evaluates the literature on policy networks and policy communities that has emerged in the comparative public policy field. It argues that these concepts are important innovations because they suggest a renewed attempt to be both encompassing and discriminating in describing the policy process: encompassing because they refer to actors and relationships in the policy process that take us beyond political-bureaucratic relationships; discriminating because they suggest the presence of many communities and different types of networks. Yet if the concepts are going to continue to make a contribution, some problems must be resolved. The article suggests three that are particularly important: network and community concepts encounter obstacles in incorporating the influence of ma-cropolitical institutions and the power of political discourse; they have some difficulty in accommodating the internationalization of many policy domains; they have not addressed well the issues of policy innovation and policy change.     

Democratization,International Knowledge Institutions,and Global Governance

The central problem of democracy has long been theorized as how to place appropriate constraints on the responsible exercise of power. Today, this problem is most acute in global governance. This article examines the rapid rise in the creation of international knowledge institutions, arguing that these institutions reflect a growing effort by nations and publics to assert democratic constraints on the on the global exercise of power through their ability to structure processes of reasoning and deliberation in global society. Specifically, the article argues for the need to attend carefully to processes of knowledge‐making in international institutions, including the roles of international institutions in setting standards for the exercise of reasoning, their contributions to the making of global kinds through their work in classifying and reclassifying the objects of international discourse, and through their roles in opening up and constraining participation in international deliberation. The article concludes that the construction and deployment of policy‐relevant knowledge are a significant source of power in their own right in global governance that need to be subject to their own democratic critique.     

激励制度、问责约束与地方治理转型

正向激励与负向问责的二元维度,为理解中国地方政府的治理偏好提供了一个分析框架。地方分权与官员晋升锦标赛等正向激励制度,为地方政府促进经济增长提供了强劲动力,而人大监督、司法监督、社会监督等负向问责约束松弛,导致地方治理存在发展失衡、公共服务供给水平偏低等问题。提升地方政府的公共服务意识和能力,改进公共服务供给及质量,提升地方治理的回应性和公平性,关键在于加强责任政府的制度建设,强化自下而上及横向的问责约束。     

Statecraft, Social Policy, and Governance in Latin America

This article develops an analytical framework designed to examine social policy as a strategic approach to issues of state-society relations and the problem of governance in Latin America. It argues that in Latin America and particularly Brazil social protection policy flowed from initiating capacity concentrated originally in the state, and specifically in a techno-bureaucratic elite connected to a strong executive. The policy, however, produced structures wherein initiative capacity was dispersed into a multiple of intermediate points at the nexus between the state and civil society. This in turn led to an immobilized dissipation of initiative cizpacity in this specific policy area which was symptomatic of, and reinforcing to, a generalized immobilism or power implosion that periodically has gripped these sociopolitical formations, producing shifts from formally democratic to authoritarian regimes and vice versa.     

政策谣言的生发与治理

政策谣言即未经证实合乎政策事实的民间政策传言;只有那些完全缺乏政策事实的政策传言才是真正的政策谣言,其他的属于准政策谣言。政策谣言的生发诱因主要包括政策价值的重要性、政策信息的模糊性、社会环境和个体心理、政府公信力缺失等多个方面。互联网和新媒体时代的到来,助推了政策谣言的传播;政策谣言的典型传播机制主要有社会流瀑、群体极化和偏颇吸收等。政府应从五个方面提升政府的政策谣言治理能力和水平:增强政府公信力;强化政策的宣传、解读与回应;提升政务信息公开水平;建立健全辟谣工作系统,分类治理政策谣言;加强对新媒体信息传播的监管。     

政策能力与国家公共治理

最近二三十年以来,由于市场经济放任模式一再出现危机以及失灵现象,国家公共政策能力问题摆到了政府和学者们的面前。政策能力成为当前各国政府关注的热点,也成为学术研究的重点。然而。政策能力并不是孤立的’它与国家能力、行政能力之间存在着内在的关联性。它们之间既存在上下结构关系,又存在着相互的联动关系。这三个方面的能力共同构成了所谓的公共治理能力。不同国家对政策能力自然具有各自的评价标准,更应具有形成这方面能力的支持系统。论文对以上这些复杂的关系做一尝试性的梳理。     

区块链治理研究:技术、机制与政策

新技术引发新业态并进而提出新的治理需求,是伴随区块链技术发展及产业应用过程中出现的新议题,但作为一种颠覆性技术,区块链本身的复杂性对决策者提出挑战。"记录""交易""组织"构成了分析区块链技术原理的基本框架,而针对个体行为的相关激励、约束条件的设置则成为区块链机制设计的核心。基于对区块链技术原理和机制设计的理解,从代码层、机制层、行为层等三个层面形成区块链治理的公共政策框架,既为未来的制度创新提供分析视角,也对具体的政策议题提供解决思路。     

Formal Procedures, Informal Processes, Accountability, and Responsiveness in Bureaucratic Policy Making: An Institutional Policy Analysis

This study examines the role of public notice and comment in the development of 42 rules. These procedures can provide useful information to policy makers about the preferences of those who stand to be affected by agency actions. More importantly, they serve as cues for the accommodation of interests and the resolution of conflict through processes that are grounded in agencies' accountability to political officials. Yet, an examination of the interrelationship between formal, procedural constraints and the informal processes surrounding them reveals that the effects of notice and comment in promoting bureaucratic responsiveness are limited in ways that have received little systematic analysis. A consideration of the tension between the instrumental goal of procedural accountability and the political tasks that often dominate bureaucratic policy making suggests that it is desirable to return to the original use of notice and comment as a device for exposing agencies to the views of affected interests.     

Regional Governance and Institutional Collective Action for Environmental Sustainability

This research investigates why various mechanisms of cooperation among local authorities are chosen using the theoretical lens of institutional collective action (ICA). The article analyzes 564 local collaboration agreements drawn from four urban regions of China to explain the choices of environmental collaboration agreements among cities. Examples of three forms of interlocal agreements—informal, formal, and imposed agreements—are analyzed. Ordinal logistic regressions are estimated to test which factors predicted by the ICA framework influence the form of collaboration selected. The results indicate that the involvement of national or provincial government, the number of policy actors involved, heterogeneity of economic conditions, and differences in administrative level among the actors involved influence how collaboration agreements are structured. Examining the choice of agreement type contributes to the understanding of interlocal collaboration and provides practical insights for public managers to structure interlocal collaboration.     

政策不作为:基本类型、驱动因素与治理展望

考察并审视政策过程可以发现,公共政策实践中政策不作为现象大量存在。政策不作为是指决策者对社会问题“无所作为”的情况,包括五种类型:有计划的政策不作为、意识上的政策不作为、受迫的政策不作为、不情愿的政策不作为和无意的政策不作为。政策不作为的驱动因素,包括政策制定者的行为模式、公共组织的信息病态、政府机构和程序的缺陷运作以及网络结构的不协调和可行性缺乏。基于此,应从政策不作为研究的四个探索方向即识别政策不作为、解释政策不作为、评估政策不作为和治理政策不作为入手,通过对其深入分析,不断丰富和推进政策科学对政策不作为的研究。     

论网络空间治理体系与治理能力的现代性制度供给

在当代技术背景下,网络空间治理体系与治理能力现代化建设应该理性选择由现代性与技术二者相互建构而形成的现代性制度供给的路径。在理性选择制度主义路径的理论前提下,网络空间治理体系与治理能力现代性制度供给的逻辑在于遵循由网络空间的开放性、公共性与虚拟现实性共融共生的合规律性,而其所发挥的功能体现在社会动员与政治整合、利益分配以及维持政治和社会秩序稳定等方面。为此,应该科学定位网络空间治理体系与治理能力现代性制度供给的实践:就其过程而言,应不断提升网络空间治理体系与治理能力现代性制度供给的意愿和能力,并努力克服制度供给的滞后性和偏差性;就其供给质量而言,应努力将外在的制度约束转化为人们的内心服从和行动自觉;就其实际操作而言,应力求协调并平衡强制性制度供给与自发性制度供给、特定制度供给和散布性制度供给以及正式制度供给与非正式制度供给之间的关系,确保各类型的制度供给能够相宜相生、相辅相成、相得益彰,以增强制度的效能与效用。     

制度能力与治理绩效——以上海社区为例

本文考察了社区治理绩效的影响因素.通过对上海45个小区调查数据的统计分析,文章发现居委会的制度能力与社区治理绩效之间存在显著的关系.居委会动员社区外资源的能力有助于提高其服务效率、居委会直选投票率,居委会与物业之间的合作关系也有助于提高直选投票率.该研究发现意味着,随着住房市场化和封闭式小区的出现,传统的基于楼组长动员网络的社区治理技术面临挑战,居委会有必要采取新的社区治理实践和技术来强化其制度能力的建设,从而更好地服务、管理社区.本文将制度能力作为一种分析工具引入城市社区治理的研究,丰富了社区治理研究的理论视角.同时,本文认为今后的研究需要进一步完善居委会制度能力的测量指标,并进一步阐明制度能力影响治理绩效的作用机制.     

政策知识生产：知识属性、过程特征与主要模式

政策知识生产理论是基于知识视角的政策制定理论的组成部分。政策知识生产过程,即生产者将各种分散知识集中、整合、集成,产出现状知识、预测知识、因果知识、目标知识、协调知识等,为政策方案提供知识基础。政策知识属性有公共产品性质、专门知识、创新本质、操作性知识、集中性知识等。这些属性决定了政策知识生产过程的一般特征是智力投入为主、不确定性与可设计性并存、通过知识转换而创新等,独特特征是生产者多样性与决策者角色多重性。以专门/隐性知识等的分布特征、持有者是否主动转移其知识为标准,政策知识生产模式可归纳为单干、合作、收购、重组、剧场式、广场式、常规信息系统、博览会式、社会调查式等数种。知识生产理论需要与政策价值理论结合起来,才能形成完善的政策制定理论。     

Conclusion to Special Issue on the Institutional Balance and the Future of EU Governance: The Treaty of Nice, Institutional Balance, and Uncertainty

Debates about institution–building within the European Union focus on how national power and transnational representation and accountability should be organized institutionally within the context of regionalism. An "institutional balance" allows the EU to benefit from administrative capacity and the representation of both national executives and national electorates while not being transformed into either a transnational political system or a traditional federation. The Treaty of Nice laid the groundwork for enlargement by re–examining issues of representation that had previously been accepted as givens. In so doing, the member states made clear that the evolution of the EU was going to be subject to uncertainty and institutional fluidity.     

Race, Ethnicity, and Law Enforcement Profiling: Implications for Public Policy

The proposed Traffic Stops Statistics Study Act of 2001—Title II of Senate Bill 19 of the 107th Congress—was the third consecutive legislative proposal aimed at addressing the perceived problems of racial profiling and police abuse in the detention of minority motorists for allegedly unjustifiable reasons. The measure followed Senate Bill 821 from the 106th Congress and House Bill 118 from the 105th Congress. This study looks at the purpose of these bills, explores the reasons supporters believe that federal policy mandating law enforcement agencies to collect racial data on motorists stopped and detained is needed, and examines a number of public policy questions that a Traffic Stops Statistics Study Act might raise.     

State Renewable Energy Governance: Policy Instruments,Markets, or Citizens

Since the 1990s, state governments in the United States have diversified policy instruments to encourage the electric power industry to deploy renewable sources for electricity generation. This study identifies the trends and variations in renewable energy (RE) policy governance among states and examines the effectiveness of policy instruments in the deployment of RE sources for electricity production. This study explores 18 state legislative, RE‐related regulations, programs, or financial incentives existing between 2001 and 2010 in 48 states in the United States. Renewable energy policies were classified into three types of policy approaches: command‐and‐control, market‐based, and information instruments. Results suggest that authoritative approaches are more likely to be effective in the governmental intervention toward a pre‐existing market, and information instruments and citizen participation became important in the power industry in the 2000s. In addition, it gives us some evidence that federal assistance under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 influenced the overall growth of the renewable electricity industry, in addition to state government–led policy designs.