Governance Networks and the
Question of Transformation
Mark Considine
The Power to Persuade Symposium
Melbourne
September 5 2012
Some Big Questions
• How do we design a better system?
1.Efficient
2.Inclusive – public, private, civic.
3.Flexible – individuals & regions
4.Innovative – capacity to learn
5.Legitimate – accountable, popular.
Institutional development debates
• Different perspectives agree that
transformational change is hard to explain,
difficult to engineer.
• Legacy effects, path dependence and lock-ins
are common in all systems.
• Most accounts emphasize shocks and
upheavals as triggers for significant change.
• Institutions (mostly) restrain change?
Problem Definition
• If transformative change cannot be
directed by our existing institutions and
only by environmental shock, our
capacity to respond to big probelms is
limited.
• EG. Climate change, people movement,
food security.
Path dependence
• Douglass North, 1990. Institutions, Institutional
Change and Economic Performance, (Cambridge, CUP)
– Branching points
– Increasing returns
– Combined effects
• Paul Pierson, 2004. Politics in Time: History,
Institutions and social Analysis, (Princeton University Press).
– Politics produces ambiguous outcomes
– ‘Mental maps’ promote stored solutions
– Politicians favour the short term.
The Governance solution?
• One common response to the grid-lock
problem has been to see governance
and its improvement, as a way forward.
• Governance refers to the relations
between institutions and actors and the
patterns, opportunities and ‘leverage
points’ provided by those relations.
Why Governance?
• World Bank first used the term
governance in 1989 “as a kind of code,
for the bank’s charter prevented it from
talking about the domestic politics of its
members.”
• By 1994 a bland and vague definition
was focused upon the ‘management of
resources’.
• Peter Lamour, 2005, Foreign Flowers: Institutional Transfer and
Good Governance in the Pacific, University of Hawai’i Press,
p.24.
Western Governance Perspectives
• Kooiman, 1993, Modern Governance:
New Society-State Interactions, (Sage, London)
– Steering achieved through horizontal means too
– Complexity requires co-production
– Legitimacy demands engagement
• Putnam, 1993, Making Democracy
Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy,
(Princeton Uni Press).
– Social networks deliver embedded resources
– Networks involve reciprocation thus trust
– Networks cut transaction costs
China and Governance
• Yu Jian-xing & Wang Shi-zong, 2011,
“The applicability of Governance Theory
to China”, (FJHSS, 4:1).
• “Heated debate” about applicability of G-theory due
to Western notions of civil society, democracy etc
• G-theory also linked in positive way to ‘bottom-up’
approach – Kang & Han, 2005.
• Zang, 2003, is skeptical because governance
presumes mature pluralistic institutions, spirit of
democracy & compromise.
• Is mature civil society needed first, or comes from?
China, continued
• Can social institutions function well as ‘interest
groups’ or are they too interconnected with state and
party (White, 1993) ?
• Yu (1999) & Yu & Zhou, (2008) propose that greater
independence may grow through participation in
governance – not either/or.
• Jia & Huang, (2007) also note that the market opens
China to new forms of freedom and thus to lifestyle
choice etc.
Shared Problems
• Governance questions rely upon forms
of effective independence within deep
partnership
• But civil society sectors & networks
prove hard to link to public institutions
• Lagging regions/excluded groups often
lack networks
• Hard to get beyond small
initiatives/policies.
Governance Networks: Institutional Types
Territorial
Development
Cooperative
Coordinative
Collaborative
Data sharing on
markets and
shared conditions
Joint marketing
and promotion
Common training
and investment
Resource
Management
Shared research,
GIS etc
Local Resource
Management
Plans
Service Delivery
Common client
and program
information
Joint Service
Plans
Joint resource
allocation &
accountability
Pooled budgets
and shared KPIs
Some data
• Neighbourhood Renewal – 19 Vic
communities - 87% of indicators showed
improvement or reduced rate of deline
(DHS:08)
• Communities for Children – NGOs in 45
Australian localities – improved outcomes
partly because of increased services and
better co-ordination.
• New Deal, Canada – failure to connect
infrastructure with social goals
Local Partnership Architecture
• Problem identification and information
sharing
• Shared projects – multilevel
• Stakeholder inclusion
• Democratic experimentation
• Main outcome is ‘improved governance’
(OECD)
Transformation Again
• If we designed good governance
networks, could they manage
transformation?
• Requirements: (1) some independence
from other institutions (2) be inclusive of
all key interests (3) have a history of
joint work (4) be insulated from typical
party-political competition.
Layering & ‘Hidden Alternatives’
• The answer to path dependence is
found in layered institutions with ‘stored
alternatives’
• The possible solution to lock-ins is
‘complementary configurations’ within
networks
• The alternative to party-competition and
short-termism is juridical-bureaucratic
mandates for governance networks.