Listening, learning, steering: new governance, communication and interactive policy formation

Abstract

Western political systems have undergone significant shifts in recent decades. In the era of post-war mass democracy governments governed and political communication informed. Now, however, governance includes non-government as well as government actors, and a communications dynamic pervades the entire political system. This article examines the integration of governance and communication, conceptualising the interactive strategies associated with new governance patterns in communications terms. The core argument is that the emergence of recursive forms of communication and knowledge production are indicative of systemic imperatives at work that are producing novel patterns of social coordination and policy formation.

Making policy information relevant to citizens: a model of deliberative mini-publics, applied to the Citizens’ Initiative Review

“…This article contributes to scholarship on 'the communicative dynamics' of participatory governance (Crozier, 2008, 7) by examining mini-public communication (Cheyne and Comrie, 2002;Fuji Johnson et al, 2016). This article presents evidence that, in mini-publics, policy-information flows (Crozier, 2008) are partly structured to accord with characteristics of large numbers of citizens (Fishkin, 2009;Gastil, 2000;Mathews, 1999). Of these information structures tailored to citizens' characteristics, among those contributing most to deliberation and desirable deliberative outcomes are combined descriptions of proposed policy's objectives and real-world consequences.…”

“…Research presented in this article suggests that, in deliberative mini-publics, policyinformation flows (Crozier, 2008) are partly structured by a criterion of intersubjective relevance. This article describes a model proposing that citizens' exposure to policyrelated IRI is associated with desirable outcomes of deliberation, and that cognitive processes of reflection, framing and sense-making spurred by that exposure may contribute to those outcomes.…”

The Effects of Media and their Logic on Legitimacy Sources within Local Governance Networks: A Three-Case Comparative Study

“…Bang 2003, Dryzek 2010. Traditional policy-making is characterised by a domination of expert-based knowledge and rather unilateral modes of communication between experts and decision-makers (Wagenaar 2007, Crozier 2008. Information flows in governance networks are rather multilateral, and communicative capacity is more egalitarian.…”

‘We nicked stuff from all over the place’: policy transfer or muddling through?

“…Despite Lindblom's (1959Lindblom's ( , 1979 classic insights about the 'muddled' nature of policymaking, policy transfer analysts too often underplay the complexity of the issues at stake. Too much weight is placed on the capacity for rational decision making about what policies to transfer, when and how, at a time when welfare systems are becoming more porous and governance more 'recursive' (Bang, 2003;Crozier, 2008). These ideas will be considered in the concluding sections of the paper.…”