From Government to Governance

1. Ensuring Social Equity in
Public Administration

2. 2
Definition of 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, 3).

3. 3
Governance Core Concepts
▪ Governance identifies the blurring of boundaries and
responsibilities for tackling social and economic issues.
▪ Governance identifies the power dependence involved in
the relationships between institutions involved in collective
action.

4. 4
Governance Core Concepts
▪ Governance is about autonomous self-governing networks
of actors. (The emergence of self-governing networks
raises difficulties over accountability).
▪ Governance recognizes the capacity to get things done
which does not rest on the power of government to
command or use its authority.

5. 5
Governance and Network Theory
 governance operates on at least three distinct levels: the
institutional, the organizational, and the technical.
 At the institutional level, there are stable formal and
informal rules, hierarchies, boundaries, procedures,
regime values, and authority.
 At the organizational, or managerial, level of governance
are the hierarchical bureaus, departments,
commissions, all the other executive agencies, and
various nongovernmental organizations linked to public
authority by contract or by other incentives or mandates.

6. 6
Governance and Network Theory
 The technical level of governance represents the task
environment, where public policy is carried out at the
street level.
 Issues of professionalism, technical competence,
motivation, accountability, and performance are the
main interests at the technical level.

7. 7
Governance as the New Public Management?
 Productivity: The reform effort is a serious attempt to
assess how governments can do “more with less” by
sustaining, or even expanding, public services with
lower resource investments
 Marketization: The reform movement is predicated on
government leveraging market mechanisms to
overcome the pathologies of traditional bureaucracy.
 Service orientation: One of the common objects of
reforms is to better connect government with citizens
and to improve customer satisfaction with public
services.

8. 8
Governance as the New Public Management?
 Decentralization: a conscious effort to put those who
make policy decisions as close as possible to the people
who are going to be affected by those decisions.
 Policy: The reform movement seeks to improve
government’s capacities to create, to implement, and to
administer public policy.
 Accountability: The reform movement is an effort to
make government deliver on what it promises.

9. 9
Governance vs New Public Management
 The dominance of networks: Instead of formal
policymaking institutions, governance is dominated by
an amorphous collection of actors having influence over
what and how public goods and services are to be
produced.
 The state’s declining capacity for direct control:
Although governments no longer exercise centralized
control over public policy, they still have the power to
influence it. The power of the state is now tied to its
ability to negotiate and bargain with actors in policy
networks. The members of these networks are
increasingly accepted as equal partners in the policy
process.

10. 10
Governance vs New Public Management
 The blending of public and private resources: Public and
private actors use each other to obtain resources they
cannot access independently.
 Use of multiple instruments: This means an increasing
willingness to develop and employ nontraditional
methods of making and implementing public policy.

11. Understanding Governance

12. Understanding Governance
Management
90ies
Governance
00ies
catch phrases • New Public
Management
• administration as
business
• anti-bureaucracy
• lean state
• civil society
• social capital
• enabling state
• activating state
principal
problems
• state bureaucracy
• management
• "organized
irresponsibility"
• society
• fragmentation
• dependence
• exclusion

13. Understanding Governance
Management
90ies
Governance
00ies
crucial values • efficiency, value for
money
• service
• customer orientation
• quality
• social, political and
administrative cohesion
• participation
• civil engagement
local level • service • participation

14. Understanding Governance
Management Governance
discipline • institutional economics
• managerialism
• communitarianism
• radical institutionalism
focus • single organisation
• internal control
• performance orientation
• privatisation, outsorcing
• coordination of public and
private actors
• combination of different
modes of steering and
control
• network management
typical
problem
• incentives • interdependence
• coherence

15. Understanding Governance
Management Governance
prefered
solution
• decentralization
• more independence
• contractual management
• "let the managers manage"
• personal development
• new division of labor
between state, market and
civil society
• self-organization
• hierarchies, markets and
networks
central
question
• "getting prices right"
• "getting incentives right"
• "appropriate behavior"
• "getting institutions right"