Governing partnerships

Public private partnerships (PPPs) are instruments of the public interest, yet bodies that actively engage private actors. As a result, questions of governance are particularly important. Here, governance refers to the rules that prescribe who should make, execute and be accountable for the conduct of a PPP, and in what way that conduct should be exercised, for example through consultation with interested parties, transparency in decision-making, and so on. This chapter explores four facets of PPP governance: legal, regulatory, democratic, and corporate governance. Legal governance has implications for the allocation of roles and responsibilities between the parties to the PPP, the PPP entity itself, and the state and citizens more widely. Regulatory governance covers the legal and contractual obligations on parties, the procedures through which they are enforced, and the softer norms that operate around these. Democratic governance concerns the empirical and normative question of what is, and what should be, the level and form of constitutional oversight of PPPs. Corporate governance concerns itself with ensuring that the enterprise is managed in a manner that does not put the future of the business and investors funds at undue risk. The chapter concludes that the key task in developing the governance of PPPs is less to do with their financial probity, and more with aligning their mode of operating to the fundamental democratic values of the wider public service

Rethinking network governance: new forms of analysis and the implications for IGR/MLG

Our position is that network governance can be understood as a communicative arena. Networks, then, are not defined by frequency of interactions between actors but by sharing of and contest between different clusters of ideas, theories and normative orientations (discourses) in relation to the specific context within which actors operate. A discourse comprises an ensemble of ideas, concepts and causal theories that give meaning to and reproduce ways of understanding the world (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999). Consequently, network governance can be understood as the inherently political process through which discourses are produced, reproduced and transformed. Democratic network governance thus becomes the study of the way in which the core challenges of democratic practice are addressed – how is legitimacy awarded, by what mechanisms are decisions reached, and how is accountability enabled. Three approaches to the discursive analysis of democracy in network governance are considered - argumentation analysis, inter-subjectivity, and critical discourse analysis – and their implications for the study of intergovernmental relations and multi-level governance (IGR/MLG) are discussed. Case examples are provided. We conclude that the value for the study of MLG/IGR is to complement existing forms of analysis by opening up the communicative and ideational aspects of interactions between levels of government and other actors

Designing democratic institutions for collaborative economic development: a European perspective

Collaborative approaches to local economic development have developed in a number of European countries. However collaborative working presents a new problem for policy makers and public management researchers. The problem is to design an institutional framework for the governance of economic development that provides for anchorage in the democratic system without loosing the benefits of flexible policy design and delivery. This is particularly important in a European context. The European Union has recognised the need for citizens to be more engaged in the governance of public policy at all scales - from local neighbourhoods to the transnational level. This chapter addresses the problem by examining the basic questions that any form of democratic governance design needs to address, and relating this to the case of economic development. The core democratic design questions are: How can legitimacy be secured? In what ways can relevant publics give consent to decisions? Through what means can the institution be held to account? The chapter discusses these three democratic imperatives and shows that different responses to these produce three archetypical governance designs - club, agency and polity. We then explore the way in which the problems of democratic governance have been solved empirically through longitudinal case studies of the expansion of Mainport Rotterdam and the management of economic, environmental, residential and transportation agendas in the Ghent canal area of the Flanders region of Belgium. The analysis shows that although different national and regional political contexts matter, the typology of archetypes offers a way of understanding the overall democratic orientation of a particular governance design as well as offering a basis from which policy makers can create their own solutions

The expansion of arms-length government is not necessarily at odds with democratic accountability

How democratic is arms-length government? Catherine Durose, Jonathan B. Justice and Chris Skelcher argue that those who consider it to be an undemocratic phenomenon over-simplify, and make the case for assessing the question in a more citizen and community focussed manner

Did they ‘Read before burning’? The Coalition and quangos

Attitudes to quangos are paradoxical. On the one hand they are perceived to be undemocratic, unaccountable organisations, while on the other they are seen to improve effectiveness, limit political interference and increase public confidence in government. This paradox is reflected in the behaviour of political parties, which generally adopt a harsh line towards quangos in opposition, but come to rely on these bodies in office. Ahead of the 2010 general election it was, however, noticeable that the Conservative party rejected this dynamic by promising to pursue ‘a more sophisticated approach’. This article explores the Coalition government's subsequent ‘public bodies reform programme’, assessing its progress against recommendations contained within the Institute for Government's Read before Burning report of July 2010. It concludes that while the Coalition has addressed long-standing concerns about the day-to-day governance of public bodies, it has failed to resolve a set of broader and strategic (metagovernance) issues

Theorizing hybridity : institutional logics, complex organizations, and actor identities : the case of nonprofits

We propose a novel approach to theorizing hybridity in public and nonprofit organizations. The concept of hybridity is widely used to describe organizational responses to changes in governance, but the literature seldom explains how hybrids arise or what forms they take. Transaction cost and organizational design literatures offer some solutions, but lack a theory of agency. We use the institutional logics approach to theorize hybrids as entities that face a plurality of normative frames. Logics provide symbolic and material elements that structure organizational legitimacy and actor identities. Contradictions between institutional logics offer space for them to be elaborated and creatively reconstructed by situated agents. We propose five types of organizational hybridity – segmented, segregated, assimilated, blended, and blocked. Each type is theoretically derived from empirically observed variations in organizational responses to institutional plurality. We develop propositions to show how our approach to hybridity adds value to academic and policy-maker audiences

Governing at arm's length: eroding or enhancing democracy?

This review article debates the democratic consequences of arm’s length governance challenging the prevailing view that its use is necessarily counter-democratic and a poor substitute for direct control by elected politicians. The article explores the roots of the dominant ‘democratic deficit’ perspective on arm’s length bodies in the agency problems generated by political delegation, but also addresses the potential for democratic enhancement posed by the different theoretical lens of polycentrism. The article considers the conditions that are necessary to activate citizens to engage with arm’s length governance. Our conclusion develops the normative implications for the design of public governance.</jats:p

Opening the Black Box of Administrative Reform: A Strategic-Relational Analysis of Agency Responses to Termination Threats

How do public agencies respond when reform proposals threaten downsizing, reduction in functions, or termination? Agency survival during administrative reform is conventionally explained by structural characteristics, informed by the hardwiring thesis derived from the politics of the U.S. federal government. Parliamentary systems provide greater opportunity for agency reform, but there is little evidence of how agencies respond to such proposals or how proposals are altered prior to decision. We consider agencies as active participants in the reform processes, using strategic-relational theory to analyse their strategizing. The article employs detailed empirical evidence on 12 agencies subject to reform by the UK government between 2010 and 2013. We identify three archetypical defence strategies—technical expert, network node, and marginal adaptor—and argue that coding agency strategies alongside structural analysis can help better explain reform outcomes

Abolishing the Audit Commission:framing, discourse coalitions and administrative reform

The abolition of the Audit Commission in England raises questions about how a major reform was achieved with so little controversy, why the agency lacked the institutional stickiness commonly described in the literature on organisational reform and why it did not strategise to survive. In this paper, we apply argumentative discourse analysis to rich empirical data to reveal the pattern and evolution of storylines and discourse coalitions, and the ways in which these interact with and affect the practices of Parliament, the media and the Audit Commission itself. Our analysis shows that the politics of administrative reform are as much about discursive framing and the ability of pro-reformers to gain discursive structuration and institutionalisation as they are about the material resources available to a newly elected government and its ministers. Questions of technical feasibility are unlikely to derail a reform initiative once its promoters gain discursive ascendency