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

Skelcher, Chris; Durose, Catherine; Justice, Jonathan B.

doi:10.1332/030557314x14029325020059

Cited by 23 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 106 publications

(88 reference statements)

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“…It gives birth to a literature in which the crisis of democracy is not so much an empirical-institutional problem but rather a theoretical problem (Sørensen 2002;Dryzek 2007;Durose, Justice, and Skelcher 2015). Weale, for example, argues that if we conceptually deconstruct the nature of democratic accountability into its different 'principles' and 'rationales' and use these as a the proper 'standard of evaluation' instead of historically given democratic institutions, legitimacy problems might be shown to be exaggerated (Weale 2011).…”

Section: A Normativized Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing back Max Weber into Network Governance Research

Netelenbos

2018

Critical Policy Studies

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The current debate on the consequences of governance networks (GNs) for the future of democracy is excessively normativized at the expense of its empirical accuracy and critical force. This paper therefore aims to bring back Weber's approach to legitimacy as an empirical problem. This approach allows studying GNs as improbable achievements that require constant legitimacy work as part of the art of networking. Weber offers a theory of ethical power, a power which nature and rationality can be grasped by studying rituals that establish and validate authority with extrarational means. Studying these microphysics of power opens up analysis to institutional complexity and promises a more accurate taxation of the possibility of democracy in contemporary governance. This paper additionally shows why this Weberian approach constitutes a distinctive voice within critical governance and elaborates the methodological tools it has to offer empirical researchers.

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Section: A Normativized Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing back Max Weber into Network Governance Research

Netelenbos

2018

Critical Policy Studies

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“…New Public Management played a strong role in the trend toward agencification through its emphasis on functional specialization and performance‐related budgetary delegation, as well as bureaucratic de‐regulation (Hood ). Through this process, agencies came to be viewed as an essential and valuable part of the administrative landscape (Durose, Justice, and Skelcher ), not least because devolved task specialization was perceived to be more efficient.…”

Section: The Agency Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reforming the Westminster Model of Agency Governance: Britain and Ireland After the Crisis

2016

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Conventional understandings of what the Westminster model implies anticipate reliance on a top-down, hierarchical approach to budgetary accountability, reinforced by a postNew Public Management emphasis on recentralizing administrative capacity. This article, based on a comparative analysis of the experiences of Britain and Ireland, argues that the Westminster model of bureaucratic control and oversight itself has been evolving, hastened in large part due to the global financial crisis. Governments have gained stronger controls over the structures and practices of agencies, but agencies are also key players in securing better governance outcomes. The implication is that the crisis has not seen a return to the archetypal command-and-control model, nor a wholly new implementation of negotiated European-type practices, but rather a new accountability balance between elements of the Westminster system itself that have not previously been well understood.

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“…Representative democracy is dependent on these relatively stable geographic and political boundaries, together with the political division between citizens and their elected representatives. States, of course, are not monolithic and socio-spatial relationships of the electorate and their representatives are complicated by neoliberal shifts from government to governance, with new scales and new forms of non-representative or participatory democracy on offer (Rose and Miller 2010;Durose, Justice, and Skelcher 2015). Fraser notes that in an era of globalization 'social ordering now occurs simultaneously at several levels' (Fraser 2003, 165).…”

Section: Socio-spatial Relationships Of Government and Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Governing spaces: a multi-sited ethnography of governing welfare reform at close range and at a distance

Carter

2016

Critical Policy Studies

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Governing at a distance has been much discussed in relation to welfare reforms but debates tend toward abstract theorization, neglecting Foucault's instruction to study mundane practices in specific sites. Although sociological concepts of place, positioning and boundaries carry particular resonance for public policy, ethnographic studies are scarce. A multi-sited ethnography of welfare reform reveals how seemingly discrete governance sites turned out to be linked in a complex policy assemblage. Findings suggest that governing at a distance may be ineffective and may necessitate governing at close range, although scales may fold over. Local spaces of network governance may not be autonomous but imbricated with national and local government and broader scales of governance. Apparently inclusive spaces exhibited exclusionary features, with spaces doing representational work that was simultaneously political, material and symbolic. Complex, shifting sociospatial relationships thus influence the uneven development of welfare reform.

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

Cited by 23 publications

References 106 publications

Bringing back Max Weber into Network Governance Research

Bringing back Max Weber into Network Governance Research

Reforming the Westminster Model of Agency Governance: Britain and Ireland After the Crisis

Governing spaces: a multi-sited ethnography of governing welfare reform at close range and at a distance

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