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While the verb "to govern" and the noun "government" are well established terms, "governance" is relatively new to social science vocabulary. What does "it" mean? Mark Bevir's Handbook of Governance is a welcomed contribution to a clearer understanding of this emerging seminal concept. Drawing on some of the best 21st century minds in this field, his Handbook is probative and exploratory, one that wrestles with the basic theory, modern practice, and central dilemmas of "governance". Readers are thus treated to profound and urgently needed insights into its meaning and significance today."--. R.

Our lives increasingly take place in ever more complex and interconnected networks that blur the boundaries we have traditionally used to define our social and political spaces. Accordingly, the policy problems that governments are called upon to deal with have become less clear-cut and far messier. This is particularly the case with climate change, environmental policy, transport, health and ageing - all areas in which the tried-and-tested linear policy solutions are increasingly inadequate or failing. What makes messy policy problems particularly uncomfortable for policy makers is that scien.

This book identifies key topics within the policy arena and subjects them to sustained theoretical and practical appraisal. It shows the gains to be made from applying a cross-disciplinary lens to the study of 'policy', with contributors presenting critical and reflective engagements with the theory and practice of policy at all levels of political organisation and within a range of contexts.

What defines a Swedish university college? This is the overarching question in this archival study of the development of the Swedish university colleges during the past 35 years. The objective of the study is to explore the binary elements in the overall unitary Swedish university system. Departing from existing macro level research on the university colleges (UCs), this study focuses on one single UC. Development of the UC was conceptualized as a question of decision-making in the UC in interplay with political decisions. The UC was explored by taking an extensive inductive approach starting from the original Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice, a perspective on organizations that focuses on the temporal order emerging from decisions, rather than enduring orders. Nine decisions situations in the UC were identified as well as four political reforms. The study shows that the concept "streams" from the model are the phenomena occupying organization members mind over time, thus constituting a recurring element although not an enduring order, tying together the temporal orders. The streams are shared between the UC and political decision-making; the two decision-making entities both take part in forming the streams over time. The streams are: (1) the academic discipline; (2) the vocational education; (3) research as a means to enhance the quality of education; and (4) regional relevance. The study proposes the emergence of a fifth stream, the research profile, which is taken to be a unique stream for the UCs in general, that differentiates them from the universities. The analysis shows that the UC continuously adjusts the law to the organizational conditions rather than implements legislation when new, hence offering a perspective on organizational change as a persistent condition inherent in the organizational body rather than definable events. By using the concept stream the study suggests a conceptualization of the political influence on the UC organizational body as well as a conceptualization of how the UC influence political decisions. This conceptualization provides a novel perspective on the relationship between state and the universities. A perspective that can be explored in future research, focusing on mutual adjustments of the streams.

"This book proposes a normative theory of collective decision making, inspired by Jeremy Bentham but not including his utilitarian philosophy. The central proposal is that in designing democratic institutions one should reduce as much as possible the impact of self-interest, passion, prejudice, and bias on the decision makers, and then let the chips fall where they may. There is no independently defined good outcome that institutions can track, nor is there any way of reliably selecting good decision makers. In addition to a long initial chapter that surveys theories of collective decision making, notably social-choice theory, and a chapter expounding and discussing Bentham, Ŵs views, historical chapters on the jury, constituent assemblies, and electoral systems develop and illustrate the main ideas. This work draws on a welter of case studies and historical episodes, from Thucydides and Plutarch to the present. It is also grounded in psychology, behavioral economics, and law"--

The national parks in the Carpathian Mountains along the Polish and Slovak border represent encompassing policy agendas that strive to balance biodiversity conservation and social welfare tasks. These countries have, during the last 25 years, undergone rapid transformation from socialist regimes to liberal democracies, and this transformation has affected the political, social and economic spheres. The accession to the European Union (EU) introduced demands for further changes, such as closer integration of conservation and socioeconomic development and inclusive, transparent and accountable decision-making that are based on participatory mechanisms. This thesis explores key challenges and opportunities for nature conservation policy and practice at the local level in a context of post-socialist legacies and Europeanization. Multi-level governance, Europeanization, and post-socialist studies are used as theoretical vehicles for the analysis of four transboundary national parks: Pieninsky national parks (NP) in both Poland and Slovakia and Bieszczady NP [Poland] and Poloniny NP [Slovakia]. The results of this study show that the early designation of the studied parks as protected areas prevented their exploitation and enabled preservation of important landscapes, which currently are highly valued at the European level. These nature conservation regimes have created tangible restrictions on the possible economic uses of these areas. However, rural development alternatives depend on a broader set of local, national and global factors such as the structure of the local economy and employment, the prioritization of nature conservation in national policies, investors' interest, and increasing urbanization. Europeanization provided opportunities for local actors to benefit from additional funding made available for nature conservation and rural development. At the same time, demands for participatory decision-making posed significant procedural and conceptual challenges to achieving transparent, inclusive and accountable governance. The prevalence of informal practices in local policy-making and the lack of trust in state authorities pose further challenges to formal participatory processes. The opportunities of local actors to reach out across levels to express their interests remain scarce and are not institutionalized, whereas the multi-level characteristics of modern governance indirectly shape local processes by defining common legal and policy frameworks. ; Förvaltningen av nationalparkerna in vid gränsen mellan Polen och Slovakien i Karpaterna är framför allt inriktad mot att uppnå balans mellan bevarande av biologisk mångfald och social välfärd. Polen och Slovakien har under de senaste 25 åren genomgått en snabb förändring från socialistiska regimer till liberala demokratier, vilket har inneburit genomgripande politiska, sociala och ekonomiska förändringar. Medlemskapet i EU innebar ytterligare förändringar, som till exempel integrering av naturvårdsarbete och socioekonomisk utveckling, liksom främjande av inkluderande, transparent och deltagarinriktat beslutsfattande. Därmed bygger den moderna beslutsprocessen inte längre på den tidigare hierarkiska strukturen, utan har nu fått en aningen diffus karaktär, innefattande mängd olika aktörer som interagerar i såväl horisontella som vertikala beslutsprocesser. I denna avhandling utforskas nyckelutmaningar och möjligheter för beslutsfattande och implementering av naturvårdsarbete på lokal nivå, relaterade till de post-socialistiska arven och medlemskapet i EU. Multi-level governance (politiskt beslutsfattande på flera nivåer), Europeanization (europeisering) och post-socialistiska studier används som teoretiska verktyg för analysen av fyra gränsöverskridande nationalparker: Pieninsky, som innefattar såväl polska som slovakiska områden, Bieszczady (Polen) och Poloniny (Slovakien). Studien visar att det tidiga inrättandet av naturskydd i nationalparkerna hindrade exploatering och möjliggjorde bevarandet av värdefulla naturområden, vilka idag är högt värderade utifrån ett europeiskt perspektiv. Reglerna för detta naturskydd har dock skapat begränsningar för hur områdena kan användas för, till exempel, agrara verksamheter och turism. De mer övergripande landsbygdsutvecklingsmöjligheterna beror av lokala, nationella och globala faktorer som exempelvis den lokala ekonomins struktur, tillgång på arbetstillfällen, hur naturskydd prioriteras i nationellt beslutsfattande, intresse för investeringar i området och urbaniseringsprocesser. Medlemskapet i EU har medfört utökade möjligheter för finansiering av naturskydd och landsbygdsutveckling. Samtidigt har medlemskapet för dessa länder lett till ökade förväntningar på politiskt deltagande och nya utmaningar vad gäller transparens i beslutsfattande och inkluderande beslutsprocesser. Vidare har informella beslutsvägar i lokalt beslutsfattande och lågt förtroende för statliga myndigheter lett till ytterligare utmaningar i deltagandeprocesser. Möjligheter för lokala aktörer att kunna kommunicera och påverka beslut på högre nivåer har förblivit begränsade och är ännu inte tydligt institutionaliserade, samtidigt som det moderna, interaktiva beslutsfattandet på flera nivåer indirekt formar lokala processer genom att definiera legala och politiska ramverk inom vilka förvaltningsbeslut fattas.

Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy--but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged. Affluence and Influence definitively explores how political inequality in the United States has evolved over the last several decades and how this growing disparity has been shaped by interest groups, parties, and elections. With sharp analysis and an impressive range of.

Public policies affect all of us, regardless of who we are or where we live. The study of public policymaking necessarily entails the study of the entire political system and to this end, researchers employ a multitude of frameworks, theories, and models, which tend to be complementary rather than mutually exclusive. The focus of this dissertation is on political entrepreneurship as an actor-based framework to examine and understand policy change. The dissertation's main aim is to conceptually enhance entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur in the polis by leveraging them in the Swedish political context. In this research, political entrepreneurship and the political entrepreneur are examined in the background of the Swedish corporatist policymaking system with its consensual sensibilities. The five (two theoretical and three empirical) papers as well as the cover essay comprising this dissertation attempt to answer the following questions: first, how do contextual factors inform the realization of entrepreneurial agency? Second, how do contextual factors inform the strategies entrepreneurial actors use to affect change? Third, what is the role of political entrepreneurship and the political entrepreneur in macro-level theories such as critical junctures and policy transfer? Contextual factors here are understood to be the general political system; the level of governance; the substantive policy sector, and the stage of the policy process. Predominantly qualitative methods and a variety of analytical tools, ranging from formal social network analysis (SNA) to process tracing are used to investigate the research questions in the national, regional, and local levels of governance and in the fields of crisis management, risk governance, and economic development respectively. Findings suggest that overwhelmingly, political entrepreneurs come from the ranks of public officials and thus political entrepreneurship is a feature of the policy implementation stage rather than the agenda setting stage of policymaking. There is not a place for the outsider, single issue entrepreneur in the Swedish consensual system, which provides for extensive inclusion, but of actors organized in interest groups. Political entrepreneurs are action-oriented, problem solving doers, characterized by perseverance and resourcefulness and are key in consolidating policy change in the aftermath of a crisis. Though in broad terms the strategies political entrepreneurs use in the Swedish context are concomitant with the ones used in pluralistic contexts, specificities diverge. In the Swedish corporatist consensual system, political entrepreneurship becomes a conduit facilitating interconnections among a multitude of actors; opens up additional channels of communication, while the political entrepreneur is a network maker. Finally, political entrepreneurship is focused on forging a consensus rather than winning the competition: the art of quiet cooperation and collaboration. ; Den offentliga politiken berör alla medborgare, oavsett vem man är och var man bor. Forskning om policyskapande och politiskt beslutsfattande omfattar det hela politiska systemet. Därför använder sig forskare av ett stort antal komplementära ramverk, teorier och modeller. Denna avhandling använder politiskt entreprenörskap som ett aktörsbaserat ramverkför att undersöka och förstå policyförändring. Avhandlingens huvudsyfte är att utveckla de teoretiska begreppen "politiskt entreprenörskap"och "politiska entreprenörer" genom att undersöka dem inom det svenska politiska systemet. Avhandlingen består av en kappa och fem artiklar, varav två är uteslutande teoretiska och tre omfattar analys av empiriskt material. Alla fem söker att besvara följande forskningsfrågor: Först, hur påverkar kontextuella faktorer möjliggörandet av entreprenöriell agens? För det andra, hur präglar kontextuella faktorer de strategier som entreprenöriella aktörer använder sig av för att åstadkomma förändring? För det tredje, vilken roll har politiskt entreprenörskap och politiska entreprenörer i makroteorier, särskilt critical junctures och policy transfer? Med kontextuella faktorer avses här det politiska systemets karaktär; governance-nivå; policyområde, och stadie i policyprocessen. Forskningsfrågorna undersöks huvudsakligen genom kvalitativa metoder; data analyseras med formell social nätverksanalys, innehållsanalys och process-spårning. Studierna behandlar olika politiska områden på olika politiska nivåer: krishantering på den nationella nivån, risk-governance på den regionala nivån och tillväxt på den lokala nivån. Resultaten visar att politiska entreprenörer huvudsakligen återfinns bland byråkrater, vilket innebär att politiskt entreprenörskap sker i implementeringen av policyer snarare än i det politiska agendasättandet. Svensk korporatism kännetecknas av en omfattande inkludering av aktörer som organiserar sig inom intressegrupper. Däremot finns litet utrymme för enskilda politiska entreprenörer. Politiska entreprenörer beskrivs ofta som handlingsinriktade problemlösare, uthålliga och rådiga. Efter samhällskriser är de viktiga i förändringen av policyer. Även om de strategier som svenska politiska entreprenörer tillämpar i stort sett liknar de som används inom pluralistiska system, finns det också flera skillnader. Inom den svenska korporatismen, blir politiskt entreprenörskap en kanal som underlättar kopplingar mellan flera olika aktörer–entreprenören blir en nätverkskapare. Politiskt entreprenörskap i Sverige tycks handla om att skapa konsensus snarare än att vinna i konkurrens: det är det tysta samarbetets och samverkans konst. ; Vid tidpunkten för disputationen var följande delarbeten opublicerade: delarbete 3 inskickat, delarbete 4 accepterat, delarbete 5 inskickat. At the time of the doctoral defence the following papers were unpublished: paper 3 submitted, paper 4 accepted, paper 5 submitted.