ENTRY # 175
In this chapter, we offer our theory of the stateless state,
building on the anti-foundational philosophy and the interpretive theory. We do
not provide a historical survey of the extensive and varied literature on
social science theories of the state (...) Rather, we
focus on recent developments in the literature analysing the state; namely
the various claims that there has been a change in the pattern and exercise of
state authority from government to network governance; from a hierarchic or
bureaucratic state to governance in and by networks. We identify three waves
in this literature discussing the changing state; from government to network
governance, metagovernance and bringing the state back in again, and decentred
governance and its anti-foundational move to the stateless state.
The literature on governance focuses on the institutional legacy of neoliberal
reforms of the state. Governance is associated with the changing nature of
the state following the public sector reforms of the 1980s. The reforms are
said to have precipitated a shift from a hierarchic bureaucracy toward 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 dows and the rise of
regional institutions such as the European Union. The resulting complexity and
fragmentation are such that the state increasingly depends on other
organizafions to secure its intentions and deliver its policies. Governance
evokes a world in which state power is dispersed among a vast array of
spatially and functionally distinct networks made up of many public, voluntary,
and private organizations with which the centre now interacts. The governance
literature offers a compelling picture of the state; indeed Marsh (2008b, 738)
is concerned it ‘may be becoming the new orthodoxy’ (see also Kerr and Kettell
2006, 13). We will decentre this hrst-wave approach to network governance,
examining the work of the Anglo-governance school.
The
second wave of metagovemance accepted the shift
from bureaucracy to markets to networks but disputed it led to any significant
dispersal of state authority. It focused on metagovemance or ‘the governance of
government and governance’ (Jessop 2000, 23; 2007fi). Metagovernance is an
umbrella concept that describes the role of the state and its characteristic
policy instruments in network governance. Given that governing is
distributed among various private, voluntary, and public actors, and that power
and authority are more decentralized and fragmented among a plurality of
networks, the role of the state has shifted from the direct governance of
society to the ’metagovernance’ of the several modes of intervention and from
command and control through bureaucracy to the indirect steering of relatively
autonomous stakeholders. We also decentre this attempt at bringing the state
back in (yet again) ( Jessop 2007a, 54).
Third, we argue for a third-wave narrative of ‘decentred
governance’ that challenges the idea there are inexorable, impersonal
forces driving a shift from government to network governance. As we have seen, to
decentre is to focus on the social construction of a practice through the
ability of individuals to create, and act on, meanings. Thus, we argue that
governance is constructed differently by many actors working against the
background of diverse traditions. In effect, we pronounce the death of the
Anglo-governance school, of metagovernance, and of the state. We argue, in
their place, for the analysis of the various traditions that have informed the
diverse policies and practices by which elite and other actors have sought to
remake the state.
Finally, we explore the implication of this shift to a narrative of decentred
governance. We challenge a craving for generality that characterizes the
earlier waves of network and metagovernance and define governance as a series
of family resemblances, none of which need be always present. There is no list
of general features or essential properties that are supposed to characterize
governance in every instance. Rather, there are diverse practices composed of
multiple individuals acting on changing webs of beliefs rooted in overlapping
traditions. Patterns of governance or state authority arise as the contingent
products of diverse actions and political struggles informed by the beliefs of
agents as they arise against a backcloth of traditions. We discuss the new
research topics prompted by this conception of the stateless state.
The first wave of governance: the
Anglo-governance school
Social scientists typically describe network governance as
consisting of something akin to a differentiated polity characterized by a
hollowed-out state, a core executive fumbling to pull rubber levers of control,
and, most notably, a massive growth of networks. Of course, people define
governance in all kinds of ways. Nonetheless, social scientists typically
appeal to inexorable, impersonal forces, to logics of modernization, such as
the functional differentiation of the modern state or the marketization of the
public sector, to explain the shift from hierarchy to network governance by
markets and especially networks. Indeed, neoliberal reforms did not lead to
markets but to the further differentiation of policy networks in an
increasingly hollow state. Social scientists typically use a concept of
differentiation here to evoke specialization based on function. They offer a
modernist-empiricist account of network governance. They treat governance as
self-organizing, inter-organizational networks; as a complex set of institutions and
institutional linkages defined by their social role or function. They make any
appeal to the contingent beliefs and preferences of agents largely irrelevant.
The Anglo-governance school
In Britain, the first wave of governance
narratives challenges the longstanding Westminster narrative, claiming
to capture recent changes in British government in a way the Westminster
narrative did not. They start with the notion of policy networks or sets of
organizations clustered around a major government function or department. These
organizations commonly include the professions, trade unions, and big
business. So, the story continues, central departments need the cooperation
of such groups to deliver services. They allegedly need their cooperation
because British government rarely delivers services itself; it uses other
bodies to do so. Also, there are supposed to be too many groups to consult so
government must aggregate interests; it needs the legitimated spokespeople for
that policy area. The groups in turn need the money and legislative authority
that only government can provide.
Policy networks are a long-standing
feature of British government; they are its silos or velvet drainpipes. The
Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher sought to reduce their power by
using markets to deliver public services, bypassing existing networks and
curtailing the ‘privileges’ of professions, commonly by subjecting them to the
rigorous financial and management controls of the new public management.
The new public management, or managerialism, is conventionally seen
as a prime example of governmental control technologies or rationalities. The
term encompasses managerialism and marketization. Managerialism refers to introducing private sector
management methods to the public sector. It stresses hands-on
professional management, explicit standards, and measures of performance;
managing by results; value for money; and, more recently, closeness to the
customer. Marketization refers to introducing incentive structures (such as
market competition) into public service provision. It stresses disaggregating
bureaucracies; greater competition through contracting-out and quasi-markets;
and consumer choice. But these reforms had unintended consequences. They
fragmented the systems for delivering public services, creating pressures for
organizations to cooperate with one another to deliver services. In other
words, marketization multiplied the networks it aimed to replace. Commonly,
packages of organizations now deliver welfare state services. First-wave
governance narratives thus concentrate on the spread of networks in British
government. They tell us not only that fragmentation created new networks but
it also increased the membership of existing networks, incorporating both the
private and voluntary sectors. They also tell us that the government swapped
direct for indirect controls so central departments are no longer either
necessarily or invariably the fulcrum of a network. The government can set the
limits to network actions: after all, it still funds the services. But it has
also increased its dependence on multifarious networks.
The
Anglo-governance school conceives of
networks as a distinctive coordinating mechanism notably different from markets
and hierarchies and not a hybrid of them. They associate networks with
characteristics such as interdependence and trust. In their view, trust is essential because it is the
basis of network coordination in the same way that commands and price
competition are the key mechanisms for bureaucracies and markets respectively
(see also Frances et al. 1991, 15; Powell 1991). Shared values and norms are
the glue that holds the complex set of relationships in a network together.
Trust and reciprocity are essential for cooperative behaviour and, therefore,
the existence of the network (see, e.g. Kramer and Tyler 1996). With the spread
of networks there has been a recurrent tension betweencontracts on the one
hand, with their stress on competition to get the best price, and networks on
the other, with their stress on cooperative behaviour.
According
to the Anglo-governance school, multiplying
networks means that core executive coordination is modest in practice. It is
largely negative, based on persistent compartmentalization, mutual avoidance,
and friction reduction between powerful bureaux or ministries. Even when
cooperative, anchored at the lower levels of the state machine and organized by
specific established networks, coordination is sustained by a culture of
dialogue in vertical relations and by horizontal integration. In this view,
coordination is rarely strategic, so almost all attempts to create proactive
strategic capacity for long-term planning have failed (Wright and Hayward
2000). The Anglo-governance school explains New Labour’s reforms as an attempt
to promote coordination and strategic oversight and combat both Whitehall’s
departmentalism and the unintended consequences of managerialism.
Therefore, the Anglo-governance school tells us a story of fragmentation
confounding centralization as a segmented executive seeks to improve horizontal
coordination among departments and agencies and vertical coordination between
departments and their networks of organizations. An unintended consequence
of this search for central control has been a hollowing out of the state. The
hollowing out of the state suggests the growth of governance has further
undermined the ability of the core executive to act effectively, making it
increasingly reliant on diplomacy. The state has been hollowed out from above
by for example international interdependence, and from below by for example
marketization and networks, and sideways by agencies. Internally, the British
core executive was already characterized by baronies, policy networks, and
intermittent and selective coordination. It has been further hollowed out
internally by the unintended consequences of marketization, which fragmented
service delivery, multiplied networks, and diversified the membership of those
networks. Externally, the state is also being hollowed out by membership of the
EU and other international commitments.
The second wave: metagovernance
Critics of the first wave
characteristically focus on the argument the state has been hollowed out. For
example, Pierre and Peters (2000, 78, 104–5, and 111) argue that the shift to
network governance could ‘increase public control over society’ because governments
‘rethink the mix of policy instruments’. As a result ‘coercive or regulatory
instruments become less important and ... “softer” instruments gain
importance’, for example, steering through brokerage. In short, the state has
not been hollowed out but reasserted its capacity to govern by regulating the
mix of governing structures such as markets and networks and using indirect
instruments of control.
Metagovernance
refers to this role of the state in securing coordination in governance and its
use of negotiation, diplomacy, and more informal modes of steering. It suggests
the state now steers and regulates sets of organizations, governments, and
networks rather than rowing by directly providing services through state
bureaucracies. These other organizations
undertake much of the work of governing: they implement policies, provide
public services, and at times even regulate themselves. The state governs the
organizations that govern civil society: the governance of governance.
Moreover, the other organizations characteristically have a degree of autonomy
from the state: they are often voluntary or private sector groups or they are
governmental agencies or tiers of government separate from the core executive.
So the state cannot govern them solely by the instruments that work in
bureaucracies.
Nonetheless, there are several ways in
which the state can steer the other actors involved in governance (see, e.g.
Jessop 2000, 23–4; 2007b). First, the
state can set the rules of the game for other actors and then leave them to do
what they will within those rules; they work ‘in the shadow of hierarchy’.
So, it can redesign markets, re-regulate policy sectors, or introduce consti-
tutional change. Second, the
state can try to steer other actors using storytelling. It can organize
dialogues; foster meanings, beliefs, and identities among the relevant
actors; and influence what actors think and do. Third, the state can steer by the way in which it distributes
resources such as money and authority. It can play a boundary-spanning role;
alter the balance between actors in a network; act as a court of appeal when
conflict arises; rebalance the mix of governing structures; and step in when
network governance fails. Of course, the state need not adopt a single
uniform approach to metagovernance. It can use different approaches, in
different settings, at different times.
This summary implies much agreement
about metagovernance. In fact, Sørensen and Torfing (2007, 170–80) identify
four approaches to meta- governance: interdependence, governability,
integration, and governmen- tality. Interdependence theory focuses on the state
managing networks using a more sophisticated, indirect tool kit (Rhodes 1997b).
Governability theory stresses that metagovernance and network management occur
in the shadow of hierarchy (Scharpf 1997). Integration theory stresses the
formation and management of identities (March and Olsen 1989). Govern-
mentality theory focuses on the regulation of self-regulation: on the norms,
standards, and targets that set the limits to networks (Barry, Osborne, and
Rose 1996a). This categorization is odd. Proponents of integration theory and
governmentality never talk of metagovernance, although some of their ideas are
relevant, while integration theory lumps together strange bedfellows.
Nonetheless, distinguishing these approaches helps to identify the differences
over the extent and form of state intervention and control. Proponents of
interdependence theory would argue that manipulating the rules of the game
allows the state to keep much control over governing without having to bear the
costs of direct interference. Proponents of governability theory stress the
resources the state has at its disposal for metagovernance. They argue that the
state can easily deploy these resources to manage other policy actors.
Proponents of integration theory argue the viewpoints and interests of
different actors are so diverse that managing identities is the core task; for
example – storytelling about best practice and successful cooperation and
coordination. Storytelling can create coherent social and political meanings
and identities that soften the tensions among competing viewpoints and
interests. Proponents of governmentality theory identify the complex of rules,
norms, standards, and regulatory practices that extend state rule more deeply
into civil society by regulating the ways in which civil society
self-regulates. Accountancy, performance management, and other management
techniques are not just ways of achieving the ‘3Es’ of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. They are also ways
of measuring, approving, appraising, and regulating the beliefs and practices
of network actors (and for examples see McKinlay and Starkey 1998). Of
course, the approaches are not mutually exclusive; state actors use a different
mix of approaches in different contexts.
Common ground
For all their different emphases and the
debate between the several proponents, the first two waves of governance
share much common ground. First,
proponents of metagovernance take for granted the characteristics of network
governance. They accept that states are becoming increasingly fragmented into
networks based on several different stakeholders; and the dividing line between
the state and civil society is becoming more blurred because the relevant
stakeholders are private or voluntary sector organizations. So, Jessop (2000,
24) concedes ‘the state is no longer the sovereign authority ... [it is] less
hierarchical, less centralised, less dirigiste’. There is a shared modernist-empiricist
description of the characteristics of network governance.
Second,
the analysis of metagovernance not only recognizes non-state actors by
granting them the power to self-regulate but also distinguishes them from the
state so creating the space for the state to exert macro- control over their
self-regulation. The state governs the other actors involved in governance.
In other words, metagovernance heralds the re- turn of the state by reinventing
its governing role. This return to the state opens opportunities for policy
advice on the practice of metagovernance. The two waves share a common concern
with providing advice on network governance. Both assume the role of the state
is to manage, directly and indirectly, the networks of service delivery. For
example, Part III of Sørensen and Torfing (2007, chapters 10–12) on
‘metagovernance’ is devoted to such topics as governing the performance of
networks, institutional design, and network management, and the possibilities
for public authorities to shape network outputs. They are not alone.
Third,
both narratives rely on a reified notion of structure. The proponents of
first-wave governance are self-confessed modernist-empiricists with a reified
notion of structure rooted in an explicit social science theory of functional
differentiation. The proponents of metagovernance also claim the state is a
material object, a structure, or a social form. They draw on critical realist
epistemology and such notions as ‘emergence’ and ‘mechanisms’ ostensibly to
guard against the charge of reification (see, e.g. Jessop 2005, 2007a). Their
position is flawed and has a closer affinity to modernist-empiricism than they
realize or care to admit.
Modernist-empiricists
rely on reified concepts such as institution, structure, state formation,
and system to offer explanations that transcend time and space. They appeal
to ideal types, institutions, and structures as if they are natural kinds.
Rational choice theory challenges the reifications and raises the issue of
micro-theory. Modernist-empiricists can
respond in three ways. First,
they could adopt the third-wave decentred approach. They could view social life
solely as activity, reject reifications, and avoid rational choice theory by
emphasizing contingency. They don’t like this route because they have to give
up their ideas about expertise, science, and some varieties of socialism (and
often all three). Second, they can
recast their reifications as if they were consequences of rational actors
behaving more or less as rational choice theory suggests. This response is
common in the United States but not with critical realists in the United
Kingdom. They prefer to appeal to structure, emergence, and mechanism. They
claim these concepts do not involve reification but they avoid the micro-level
questions that would show how they avoid reification. Thus, they often shift
back and forth between using the old reifications of modernist-empiricism and
paying lip service to the micro-theories associated with rational choice or
decentred analysis. For example, McAnulla (2006) argues that structures are
emergent or temporal mechanisms rather than reifications, but never explains
how these structures differ from practices, or how they determine individual
actions without passing through intentional consciousness. He provides no clear
account of why agents can’t change emergent structures. The structure emerges
from actions, so presumably, if all the relevant people change their actions,
they will stop producing that structure, so changing it. The emergent
structures are better understood as practices. They consist simply of what a
bundle of people do and the unintended consequences of these actions. Of
course, structure can be used as a meta- phor for the way activity coalesces
into patterns and practices. But the metaphors have a bewitching effect. People
treat them as real, reified entities; the fate of Marsh (2008a) in his analysis
of the British political tradition. In short, critical realism and the analysis
of metagovernance all too often rely on the reifications of
modernist-empiricism and of first- wave governance.
The
idea of the state as a structure is useful only if
we unpack it into the specific notions of tradition, dilemma, practice, and
unintended consequence. First, the
state might refer to traditions; that is, inherited webs of belief that
influence what people do. Second, the
state might refer to a subset of dilemmas; that is, to intersubjective
views about the way the nature of the world precludes or impels certain
actions. Third, the state might
refer to cultural practices, where although these practices arise from people’s
actions, they then confront other people as if objective social facts. Finally, the state might refer to the
intended and unintended consequences of meaningful actions, although, of
course, to explain such consequences, we would have to refer to the actions and
the meanings (or intentionality) they embodied.
Finally,
both waves seek to provide comprehensive accounts of network and metagovernance.
Social scientists typically aim to provide a general account of what governance
looks like, and why it does so. For example, network governance is often
characterized by the shift from bureaucratic hierarchies to multiplying
networks. This defining feature is then said to explain other characteristics
of network governance such as the need for indirect ‘diplomatic’ styles of
management, and the search for better coor- dination through joint ventures,
partnerships, and holistic governance.
Defining network and metagovernance by
one or more essential properties, such as multiplying networks, implies these
properties are general and characterize all cases of governance. So, we will
find governance in its new guise if and only if we find a spread of networks.
Moreover, these essential properties explain the most significant features of
network and metagovernance.
A comprehensive account of governance makes sense, even as a mere aspiration,
only if it has some essence.
We should seek a comprehensive account only if the way to define and explain
network and metagovernance is to find a social logic or essential property that
is at least common to all its manifestations and ideally even explains them.
But why would we assume that network and metagovernance has one or more
essential feature?
The search for comprehensive accounts
arises from a preoccupation with the natural sciences. However, even if
appropriate in the natural sciences, it is counterproductive in the human
sciences. Human practices are not governed by social logics or law-like
regularities associated with their allegedly essential properties. They arise
instead out of the contingent activity of individuals. Therefore, when we seek
to explain particular cases of governance, we should do so by reference to the
contingent activity of the relevant individuals, not to a social logic or
law-like regularity. We should explain practices, including cases of
governance, using narratives that unpack the contingent actions that embody
beliefs informed by contested traditions and dilemmas. The contingent nature of
the links between traditions and their development undermines the possibility
of a comprehensive account that could relate any one practice to a specific set
of social conditions as opposed to a historical process. If we explore these
possibilities, we will adopt a decentred approach that refutes the narratives
of previous waves.
The third wave: decentring the
changing state
Decentred theory
Decentred theory explores the
institutions of the state as the contingent meanings that inform the actions of
the individuals involved in all kinds of practices of rule.
It is a humanist and historicist theory of the state. It refuses to treat the state as uniform. The
state contains diverse practices. In rejecting uniform concepts of the state,
we echo those pluralists and behaviouralists who developed the twentieth-century
critique of the state. The state has no defined or metaphysical nature fixed by
the common good of its people or any other essence. It needs, instead, to be
differentiated into its constituents.
First-wave
narratives of the changing state focus on issues such
as the objective characteristics of policy networks and the oligopoly of the
political market place. They stress power dependency, the relationship of the
size of networks to policy outcomes, and the strategies by which the centre
might steer networks.
The
second wave of narratives about the changing state
focus on the mix of governing structures such as markets and net- works and
using various instruments of control such as changing the rules of the game,
storytelling, and changing the distribution of resources.
In contrast to
these comprehensive, reified views of governance, a third- wave decentred narrative focuses on the social construction
of patterns of rule through the ability of individuals to create meanings in
action. It encourages us to examine the ways in which patterns of rule,
including institutions and policies, are created, sustained, and varied by
individuals. It encourages us to recognize that the actions of these
individuals are not fixed by institutional norms or a social logic of
modernization. To the contrary, actions arise from the beliefs individuals
adopt against the back- ground of traditions and in response to dilemmas.
Any existing pattern of rule will
have some failings. Different people will have different views about these
failings since they are not simply given by experience but rather constructed
from interpretations of experience infused with traditions. When people’s
perceptions of the failings of governance conflict with their existing beliefs,
the resulting dilemmas lead them to reconsider beliefs and traditions. Because
people confront these dilemmas against the background of diverse traditions,
there arises a political contest over what constitutes the nature of the
failings and what should be done about them. This contest leads to a reform of
governance. The reformed pattern of rule poses new dilemmas, leading to a
further contest over meanings and policy agendas. All these contests are
governed by laws and norms that prescribe how they should be conducted. Some-
times the relevant laws and norms have changed because of simultaneous contests
over their content and relevance. Yet while we can distinguish analytically
between a pattern of rule and a contest over its reform, we rarely can do so
temporally. Rather, the activity of governing continues during most contests,
and most contests occur partially in local practices of governing. What we
have, therefore, is a complex and continuous process of interpretation,
conflict, and activity that produces ever-changing patterns of rule.
A decentred account of the changing
state represents, therefore, a shift from institutions to meanings in action,
and from social logics to narratives. The first-wave narrative of network
governance reduces the diversity of governance to a social logic of
modernization, institutional norms, or a set of classifications or correlations
across networks. Its proponents tame an otherwise chaotic picture of multiple
actors creating a contingent pat- tern of rule through their diverse
understandings and conflicting actions. The
second-wave of governance compounds this mistake by reinventing the state’s
capacity to control. The third-wave narrative decentres the changing state into
governance practices. Thus, governance arises from the bottom-up because it
arises from diverse practices, conflicting mean- ings and beliefs, competing
traditions, and varied dilemmas. The
third-wave narrative replaces aggregate concepts that refer to objectified
social laws with ones that explain actions by relating them to the beliefs and
desires that produce them.
What
does this decentred approach tell us about governance? We have two answers.
First, we offer a definition of
governance as a series of family resemblances that does not crave generality
and aspire to comprehensiveness because none of the resemblances need be always
present. Second, we point to some of
the distinctive research topics that spring from a decentred approach. Our
concern with diverse and contingent meanings encourages a focus on such new
empirical topics as rule, rationalities,
and resistance.
Defining governance
A decentred approach to the changing
state contrasts sharply with comprehensive accounts that seek to unpack the
essential properties and social logic of network governance and metagovernance.
Neither the intrinsic rationality of markets nor the path dependency of
institutions decide patterns of governance. Rather, patterns of governance are
explained as the contingent constructions of several actors inspired by
competing webs of belief and associated traditions. A decentred approach
explains shifting patterns of governance by focusing on the actors’ own
interpretations of their actions and practices. It explores the diverse ways in
which situated agents are changing the boundaries of state and civil society by
constantly remaking practices as their beliefs change. Because we cannot
explain cases of network and metagovernance by reference to a comprehensive
theory, we cannot define governance by its key features. Rather, we can define
it only for particular cases. However, the absence of a comprehensive theory of
governance also implies that there need be no feature common to all the cases
to which we would apply the term. It is futile to search for the essential
features of an abstract category that denotes a cluster of human practices.
Worse still, the search for allegedly common features can lead political
scientists to dismiss the particular cases which are essential to understanding
the abstract category. When we provide a definition or general account of
governance, it should be couched as a set of family resemblances.
Wittgenstein (1972a) famously suggested
that general concepts such as ‘game’ should be defined by various traits that
overlapped and criss-crossed in much the same way as do the resemblances
between members of a family – their builds, eye colour, gait, or personalities.
He considered various examples of games to challenge the idea that they all
possessed a given property or set of properties – skill, enjoyment, victory,
and defeat – by which we could define the concept. Instead, he suggested the
examples exhibited a network of similarities, at various levels of detail, so
they coalesced even though no one feature was common to them all.
We do not master such family resemblance
concepts by discovering a theory or rule that tells us precisely when we should
and should not apply them. Our grasp of the concept consists in our ability to
explain why it should be applied in one case but not another, our ability to
draw analogies with other cases, and our ability to point to the criss-crossing
similarities. Our knowledge of ‘governance’ is analogous to our knowledge of
‘game’ as described by Wittgenstein. It is ‘completely expressed’ by our
describing various cases of governance, showing how other cases can be
considered as analogous to these, and suggesting that we would be unlikely to
describe yet other cases as ones of governance.
Some of the family resemblances that
characterize governance derive from a focus on meaning in action and so apply
to all patterns of rule. A decentred approach highlights, first, a more diverse
view of state authority and its exercise. All patterns of rule arise as the
contingent products of diverse actions and political struggles informed by the
varied beliefs of situated agents. First-wave narratives of network governance
suggest the New Right’s reinvention of the minimal state and the more recent
rediscovery of networks are attempts to find a substitute for the voluntaristic
bonds weakened by state intervention (Harris 1990).
A decentred approach suggests that the
notion of a monolithic state in control of itself and civil society was always
a myth. The myth obscured the reality of
diverse state practices that escaped the control of the centre because they
arose from the contin- gent beliefs and actions of diverse actors at the boundary
of state and civil society. The state is never monolithic and it always
negotiates with others.
Policy always arises from interactions
within networks of organizations and individuals. Patterns of rule always
traverse the public, private, and voluntary sectors. The boundaries between
state and civil society are always blurred. Transnational and international
links and flows always disrupt national borders. In short, state authority
is constantly remade, negotiated, and contested in widely different ways within
widely varying everyday practices.
A decentred approach suggests, second,
these everyday practices arise from situated agents whose beliefs and actions
are informed by traditions and expressed in stories.
In every government department, we can identify departmental traditions, often
embodied in rituals and routines. They might range from specific notions of
accountability to the ritual of the tea lady. Actors pass on these traditions
in large part by telling one another stories about ‘how we do things around
here’, and about what does and does not work. For example, British civil
servants are socialized into the broad notions of the Westminster tradition, such
as ministerial responsibility, as well as the specific ways of doing things
around here. They are ‘socialized into the idea of a profession’, and learn
‘the framework of the acceptable’ (Bevir and Rhodes 2006). Governance is not
any given set of characteristics. It is the stories people use to construct,
convey, and explain traditions, dilemmas, beliefs, and practices.
A decentred approach also might help to
highlight a third family resemblance that
characterizes British governance, but might not be found in patterns of rule in
other times or places. In Britain, the reforms of the New Right and New Labour
have brought about a shift from hierarchy to markets to networks. While this
shift is widely recognized, a decentred approach suggests, crucially, that it
takes many diverse forms. For the police, the shift from hierarchy to markets
to networks poses specific dilemmas. They know how to rewrite the rulebook,
manage a contract, or work with neighbourhood watch, but they struggle to
reconcile these ways of working, believing they conflict and undermine one
another (Bevir and Rhodes 2006). For doctors, the equivalent shift poses
different dilemmas: the key issue is how to preserve the medical model of
health and medical autonomy from managerial reforms that stress hierarchy and
financial control (Bevir and Rhodes 2006).
A fourth family resemblance is that the
central state has adopted a less hands-on role. Its actors are less
commonly found within various local and sectoral bodies, and more commonly
found in quangos concerned to steer, coordinate, and regulate such bodies. Once
again, a decentred approach suggests, crucially, that such steering,
coordination, and regulation take many diverse forms. In Britain, the
pre-eminent recent example is ‘joined-up’ government as the Blair government
sought to devise policy instruments that integrated both horizontally across
central government departments and vertically between central and local
government and the voluntary sector (Bevir 2005, 83–105).
A decentred approach highlights the
resemblances that contribute to a general characterization of governance and a
more specific characterization of governance at least in Britain. Nonetheless,
it disavows any logic to the specific forms that governance takes in particular
circumstances. So, a decentred approach resolves the theoretical difficulties
that beset earlier waves or narratives of the changing state. It avoids the
unacceptable suggestion that institutions fix the actions of individuals in
them rather than being products of those actions. It replaces unhelpful phrases
such as path dependency with an analysis of change rooted in the beliefs and
practices of situated agents. Yet it allows political scientists to offer
aggregate studies by using the concept of tradition to explain how people come
to hold certain beliefs and perform certain actions.
New research topics
A decentred approach to the state
rejects both comprehensive theory and the related idea that the state is a
material object or emergent structure or social form. We reject the claim that
the ‘preexistence [of social forms] implies their autonomy as possible objects
of scientific investigation; and their causal efficacy confirms their reality’
(Jessop 2005, 42). We offer a stateless theory in the sense that we reject the
idea of the state as a pre- existing causal structure that can be understood independently
of people’s beliefs and practices. Studying the changing state is not about
building formal theories; it is about telling stories about other people’s
meanings; it is about narratives of their narratives. As Finlayson and Martin
(2006, 167) stress, the object of analysis is not the state but ‘a diverse
range of agencies, apparatuses and practices producing varied mechanisms of
control and varied forms of knowledge that make areas or aspects of social life
available for governmental action’. A decentred approach leads us to new
narratives of such practices and knowledge, which we explore as rule, rationalities, and resistance.
RULE – ELITE NARRATIVES
Decentred theory suggests
that political scientists should pay more attention to the traditions
against the background of which elites construct their worldviews, including
their views of their own interests. Moreover, the central elite need not be a
uniform group, all the members of which see their interests in the same way,
share a common culture, or speak a shared discourse. Our decentred approach
suggests that political scientists should ask whether different sections of the
elite draw on different traditions to construct different narratives about the
world, their place within it, and their interests and values. In Britain, for
example, the different members of the central elite are inspired by Tory, Whig,
liberal, and socialist narratives. The dominant narratives in the central civil
service used to be the Whig story of the generalist civil servant, spotting
snags and muddling through. It has been challenged by a liberal managerial
narrative that sees civil servants as hands-on, can-do managers, trained at
business schools and not on the job. But the traditions coexist sometimes
separately but sometimes bumping into one another to create dilemmas. Thus,
civil servants continue to believe in the Westminster notions of ministerial
accountability to parliament, a centralizing idea, even as they decentralize
decision making in line with managerial notions.
RATIONALITIES
Central elites may construct their world
using diverse narratives but they also turn to forms of expertise for specific
discourses. Nowadays different traditions of social science influence public
policy. Our decentred approach draws attention to the varied rationalities that
inform policies across different sectors and different geographical spaces. Rationalities refer here to
the scientific beliefs and associated technologies that govern conduct; it
captures the ways in which governments and other social actors draw on knowledge
to construct policies and practices, especially those that regulate and create
subjectivities. Britain, like much of the developed world, has witnessed
the rise of neoliberal managerial rationalities using a technology of
performance measurement and targets that spread far beyond the central civil
service to encompass the control of localities. Kelly (2006, 615 and 617)
describes how the UK’s Audit Commission acts as a meta-governor of local
authorities for the New Labour government. It ensures that ‘the regulatory
regime is embedded in the everyday operations and actions of local government
practitioners’. It espouses the notion of the well-run authority and it works
‘with other inspectorates and professional auditing bodies to maintain
professional standards and also to share best practice’. It sets auditors’ fees
and standards, and monitors the work of the auditors. It is one of those varied
agencies employing indirect mechanisms of control and knowledge.
RESISTANCE
When political scientists neglect
agency, they can give the impression that politics and policies arise
exclusively from the strategies and interactions of central and local elites.
Yet other actors can resist, transform, and thwart the agendas of elites. Our
decentred approach draws attention to the diverse traditions and narratives
that inspire street-level bureaucrats and citizens. Policies are sites of
struggles not just between strategic elites, but between all kinds of actors
with different views and ideals reached against the background of different
traditions. Subordinate actors can resist the intentions and policies of
elites by consuming them in ways that draw on their local traditions and their
local reasoning. For example, street- level police officers are often
influenced by organizational traditions that encourage them to set priorities
different from those of both their superior officers and elite policy makers.
Combating crime is seen as the core of police work, not the ‘touchy-feely’
areas of community policing. The new police commissioner may want to set an
example, cause a stir, or otherwise ginger up the troops. But the troops know
he or she will be gone in a few years. There will be a new commissioner with
new interests and priorities (see, e.g. on community policing, Fleming and Wood
2006; and on other street-level bureaucrats see Lipsky 1979 and Vinzant and
Crothers 1998).
Conclusions
In sum, network governance was the
modernist-empiricist story of the changing state that described the shift from
hierarchy to markets to networks. A decentred approach brings about the death
of this first-wave narrative because, we argue, there is no single account or
theory of governance, only the differing constructions of several traditions.
We also announce the death of the second wave of metagovernance not only
because it accepts the modernist-empiricist narrative but also because it
argues for a top-down account of state regulation and control over a bottom-up
one. There is no necessary logical or structural process determining the
form of network governance or the role of the ‘central state’ in the governance
of governance. Patterns of governance, and changes in such patterns, cannot be
explained by any of the intrinsic rationality of markets, the path dependency
of institutions, or the state’s new tool kit for managing the mix of governing
structures.
The third-wave analysis of governance
announces the arrival of the stateless
state. It argues that the state arises out of the diverse actions and
practices inspired by varied beliefs and traditions. The state, or pattern of
rule, is the contingent product of diverse actions and political struggles
informed by the beliefs of agents rooted in traditions.
Our
approach seeks to explain the state by reference to historical meanings
infusing the beliefs and practices of individual actors.
It encourages political scientists to decentre the state and governance and
focus on the social construction of practices. We unpack the state into the
disparate and contingent beliefs and actions of individuals. We reveal the
contingent and conflicting beliefs that inform the diverse actions that
constitute the state. We challenge the idea that inexorable or impersonal
forces, norms, or laws define changing patterns of governance. Instead, we
argue that the state is constructed differently by many actors inspired by
different ideas and values.
(NB! abbr, highlights – R.R.)
* * *
Retrieved
from:
·
Mark
Bevir, Rod Rhodes (2010). The State as Cultural Practice. Oxford, New York:
Oxford University Press
