Discusses the different governance theories practices and dilemmas in the context of the study of political science and public administration

1. PARTICIPATORY
GOVERNANCE
POLSC124: MODULE 1
TOM VILLARIN,
DPA CANDIDATE, UPNCPAG

2. SESSION 4
Governance theories
Globalization, complexity and wicked problems need creative and innovative
solutions that government cannot do alone. It needs the active participation
and collaboration of citizens and networks forming new social arrangements
that go beyond the ‘business as usual.’

3. DEFINITIONS OF GOVERNANCE
STATIST PERSPECTIVE
• Governance - “regimes of laws,
administrative rules, judicial rulings, and
practices that constrain, prescribe, and
enable government activity, where such
activity is broadly defined as the
production and delivery of publicly
supported goods and services” (Lynn,
Heinrich, and Hill, 2000)
NON-STATIST PERSPECTIVE
• Governance “is concerned with concepts
of democracy and the rule of law” where
“democracy is a “universal value” based
on the freely expressed will of the people
to determine their own political,
economic, social and cultural systems and
full participation in all aspects of their
lives” (UNDP 2012: 3-5)

4. SCOPE AND BREADTH OF GOVERNANCETHEORY
• Ansell and Torfing: handbook on
governance, (2016).
“governance theories tend to be
process-oriented and context-sensitive”
and are “linked with practical efforts at
solving complex problems in new and
creative ways”
• Bevir: (2016)
“setting the scope of governance is almost
always the result of ‘practice’ while
‘theory’ tries to make sense of it, justify it,
and incorporate it into existing or new
theoretical frameworks.”

5. COMMONALITIES OFTHEMES IN GOVERNANCE
(DILEMMAS, PRACTICE,THEORY)

6. NEW PUBLIC GOVERNANCE
• A theory that is grounded in the concepts of citizenship and the public interest, expressed as
the shared interests of citizens rather than as the aggregation of individual interests
determined by elected officials or market preferences.
• The centrality of citizens as co-producers of policies and the delivery of services fundamentally
distinguishes the New Public Governance approach from both the statist approach
(“rowing”) associated with the old public administration and market- based New Public
Management approaches (“steering”) to unleash market forces (Denhardt and Denhardt,
2000).

7. CHARACTERISTICS OF NPG
• state is both plural -- public service delivery is undertaken by multiple inter-dependent actors,
and pluralist -- in that multiple processes and inputs shape policy making.
• highlights the fragmentation of policy space with the emergence of multiple actors and
jurisdictions alongside growing interdependence between actors operating at local, national
and global levels
• emphasizes inter-organizational relationships (as opposed to intra-organizational processes
within government) and the governance of processes, in which trust, relational capital and
relational contracts serve as the core governance mechanisms, rather than organizational
form and function (Osborne, 2006)

8. NEW PUBLIC SERVICE
• approaches public management from the vantage point of democratic theory. Its emphasis
is on engaging citizens as the primary focus of public management.The NPS framework is
highly normative and value-driven.
• role of public managers need to acquire skills that go beyond capacity for controlling or
steering society in pursuit of policy solutions to focus more on brokering, negotiating and
resolving complex problems in partnership with citizens (“serving”).
• Integrates post-New Public Management (NPM) approaches like the “whole of
government,”“whole of society”

9. ACTORS IN GOVERNANCE
• almost always conceptualized as bounded groups of individuals and/or organizations that act
either in synchrony to reach shared goals/interests
• e.g. as in network theories, where state-civil-corporate actors are said to cooperate in
non-hierarchical/ partnership/ autonomous relations)
• or as competing and self-interested groups of actors situated at different levels within
organizational and national structures and across the globe
• e.g. development theories that often juxtapose state-civil-corporate actors with local-national-global
players;
• or as in corporate governance theories that often present managers/CEOs as embedded in highly
hierarchical structures, having conflicting interests to and relations with their employees, boards and
governing bodies.

10. GOVERNANCE IN PRACTICE
• Advocated in the 1990s by UN,WB, ADB and multilateral institutions, governance is the
broadening of public management trends that are transforming government through
which state and society engage while at the same time presenting new challenges for
democratic control, representation, and accountability.
• ‘self-organizing, interorganizational networks characterized by interdependence, resource
exchange, rules of the game and significant autonomy from the state’ (Rhodes, 1997).
• ‘less government and more governance,’ i.e. more decentralized, consultative power-
sharing in new public–private configurations.

11. GOVERNANCE PRACTICES
• Leadership
• Network management
• Decentralization
• Social Inclusion
• Regulation
• Governing the commons
• Sustainable development

12. LEADERSHIP
• The main objective of leadership theories is to make provision of knowledge in terms of
qualities of leaders.The first theory is the trait theory (“great man”).The second theory
is the behavior theory (leadership is learned).The third theory is the contingency model
(combo of personality and context) .The fourth theory is transactional theory (rewards
and punishment).The fifth theory is transformational theory (change in individuals and
systems).
• The transformational leader is reform-oriented, whereas the transformative leader
interrogates and seeks to disrupt that which is taken for granted.

13. NETWORK MANAGEMENT
• Governance networks can be described as a pluri-centric system as opposed to the
unicentric system. Governance networks involve a large number of interdependent actors
who interact with each other in order to produce an outcome.These networks are a way to
mobilize and engage citizens and organizations in the development, implementation, and
monitoring of public policy.
• In terms of decision making, governance networks are based on negotiation rationality as
opposed to the substantial rationality that governs state rule and the procedural rationality that
governs market competition.
• Compliance is ensured through trust and political obligation which, over time, becomes
sustained by self-constituted rules and norms.

14. DECENTRALIZATION
• Decentralization, or decentralizing governance, refers to the restructuring or reorganization
of authority so that there is a system of co-responsibility between institutions of governance at the
central, regional and local levels according to the principle of subsidiarity, thus increasing the
overall quality and effectiveness of the system of governance while increasing the authority
and capacities of sub-national levels.
• Government decentralization has both political and administrative aspects. Its decentralization
may be territorial, moving power from a central city to other localities, and it may be functional,
moving decision-making from the top administrator of any branch of government to lower
level officials, or divesting of the function entirely through privatization.

15. SOCIAL INCLUSION
• Identity is a marker of how resources and opportunities are distributed in our society.
People who belong to groups that have been historically discriminated against, and that
continue to face systemic inequality, know that identity determines advantages and
disadvantages, with both economic and social consequences.
• Social inclusion is the process of improving the terms on which individuals and groups
take part in society—improving the ability, opportunity, and dignity of those
disadvantaged on the basis of their identity (World Bank).
• How can social policies (social protection) be used to enhance social capacities for
economic development without, in the process, eroding the intrinsic values of the social
ends that policy makers purport to address? (Thadika Mkandawire 2009);

16. REGULATION
• State interference in “market failures” caused by a lack of information (information
asymmetries), market control (monopoly), non-delivery of public goods (non-excludable,
non-rivalrous), and externalities (cost or benefit of an economic activity experienced by
an unrelated third party, e.g. Climate change).
• In political economy, it refers to the attempt of the state to steer the economy, either
narrowly defined as the imposition of economic controls on the behavior of private
business using governmental instruments, such as taxation or disclosure requirements.

17. GOVERNINGTHE COMMONS
• Common-Pool Resource is a natural or human-made resource system, made available to
all by consumption and to which access can be limited only at a high cost.(e.g. fishing
grounds, forests, irrigation, etc.) Common-pool resources are susceptible to overuse and
are thus prone to “tragedies of the commons.”
• “The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain looseWho steals the common from the goose.” (17th
century poem)

18. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
• Sustainable development is defined as “a constraint upon present consumption in order
to ensure that future generations will inherit a resource base that is no less than the
inheritance of the previous generation.”
• 1887 Brundtland Commission – “development that meets the needs of the present
generation without comprising the capacity of future generations to meet their own
needs.”
• Sustainable development goals (SDGs)

19. COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE
(STATIST PERSPECTIVE)
• Collaborative governance is “generally
initiated with an instrumental purpose in
mind” to propel actions that “could not
have been attained by any of the
organizations acting alone.” (Huxham et al.
2006); central effort is to solve problems
rather than to win victories, to discover
the broadest commonality of interests
(Fung andWright 2003)

20. EMPOWERED PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE
(NON-STATIST PERSPECTIVE)
• Empowered Deliberative Democracy (EDD) – practices that have the potential to be
radically democratic in their reliance on the participation and capacities of ordinary
people, deliberative because they institute reason-based decision making, and empowered
since they attempt to tie action to discussion (Fung & Wright 2001).
• 3 Principles: a) practical orientation; b) bottom-up participation; c) deliberative solution
generation versus familiar methods of social choice: command and control by experts,
aggregative voting, and strategic negotiation.
• 3 design properties: 1) Devolution; 2) Centralized supervision and coordination; 3) State
Centered, NotVoluntaristic

21. VALUES IN GOVERNANCETHEORY
(ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS)
• Where does power, authority, and legitimacy lie in the new forms/modes of governance?
How is it achieved and shared?
• How do different forms, models, templates, and practices impact on everyday work, life,
social forms, and organizing?
• In turn, how can protest, negotiation, compliance, and resistance be conceptualized and
acknowledged in such models?
• What role do norms, ethical-moral issues, and trust play in governance?
• Whose interests are being protected by governance and whose values promoted?