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This article analyses 65 years of European governance as a process that has evolved from a simple model, based on hierarchical means of political steering, to a complex system of governance, using both hierarchical and non-hierarchical governance modes and combining them in innovative ways. The central thesis is that European governance constitutes a system of governance of governance, aimed at shaping and directing the governance of the member states. The article elaborates a conceptual framework by drawing on Kooiman's concept of three orders of governance. It identifies European governance as predominantly second order governance, focussing on the creation of appropriate procedures and institutional settings that structure governance processes. Empirically, the article provides an overview of the emergence and consolidation of a system of governance of governance in four phases. Furthermore, it analyses the creation of appropriate procedures and institutional arrangements in three selected policy areas. It thus highlights how second order governance is incrementally shaped. The article concludes that the evolving system of governance of governance reflects the multilevel structure of the EU and the need to balance permanently the contradictory policy objectives, governance modes and implementation strategies of the European and the national government levels, as well as the divergences among the member states.

"European Union Governance" published on by Oxford University Press.

An important task for policy evaluation is to develop methods that are based on the fact that political power is fragmented and that every policy area is complex. This article demonstrates, using an empirical example, how different strands of the policymaking process are related to different logics of evaluation. Also discussed is how these differences may result in quite opposite conclusions about the possible failure or success of single programmes. However, it is concluded that policy research does not have to abandon the idea of rationality and adopt a more postmodern or hermeneutic line of analysis. Policy evaluation is still, it is argued, a matter of finding relevant units of analysis, and in contemporary society these units are networks rather than political–administrative entities. Thus, in order to be able to scrutinize and understand such processes of policy creation, policy evaluation must adopt a non-hierarchical attitude and this requires a bottom-up methodology.

AbstractNon‐hierarchical modes of governance, such as the 'open method of co‐ordination' (OMC), require particular prerequisites to operate effectively. This article points to three essential components of any regime, then assesses their operation in two 'real' OMCs, pensions and information society. Given the finding of defective regimes, this article argues that the observed patterns are not surprising given the high demands that non‐hierarchical governance places on participants. In addition, the context of the politics of the EU suggests that non‐hierarchical governance is inappropriate as a means of inducing policy reform.

In theory, lower-level governments (provinces, regional governments, or member states) operating in multilevel systems within and beyond the nation-state can choose from a wide repertoire of modes of policy coordination to solve collective problems non-hierarchically. These modes range from unilateral policy emulation over informal intergovernmental agreements to binding interstate law. The modes that governments are willing and capable to use, however, vary considerably across multilevel systems which affects governments' collective problem-solving capacity. This paper argues that the nature of executive–legislative relations in lower-level governments is crucial to account for this variation. The presence (or absence) of power sharing shapes the willingness of lower-level governments to enter agreements that greatly constrain individual government autonomy. Power-concentrating governments, as opposed to power-sharing ones, tend to avoid such agreements. The type of power sharing affects the capacity to enter agreements that require legislative approval. Compulsory power-sharing governments, as opposed to voluntary power-sharing governments, should find it difficult to enter such agreements, since this type of power sharing invites inter-branch divides. To substantiate these arguments, we apply them to Canada, Switzerland, the United States, and the European Union.

We investigate a team setting in which workers have different degrees of commitment to the outcome of their work. We show that if there are complementarities in production and if the team manager has some information about team members, interventions that the manager undertakes in order to assure certain efforts may have destructive effects: they can distort the way workers perceive their fellow workers and they may also lead to a reduction of effort by those workers that care most about output. Moreover, interventions may hinder the development of a cooperative organizational culture in which workers trust each other. Thus, our framework provides some first insights into the costs and benefits of interventions in teams. It identifies that team governance is driven by the importance of tasks that cannot be monitored. The more important these tasks, the more likely it is that teams are empowered. -- Team work ; incentives ; informed principal ; intrinsic motivation

The growing acceptance of "governance" as an organizing concept for public management reform reflects a widespread, though not universal, belief that the focus of administrative practice is shifting from hierarchical government toward greater reliance on horizontal, hybridized, & associational forms of governance. Recent arguments to this effect, however, make limited recourse to the body of empirical evidence that might shed light on the actual extent of this transformation. In this article we report on our review of over eight hundred individual research studies in order to assess what we know about governance based on available empirical evidence across a range of disciplines & substantive fields. We find that hierarchical investigations of the nature & consequences of governmental action predominate in the literature. We supplement this primary finding with additional analyses of research on performance & on public management. We then discuss possible reasons for the observed hierarchical orientation of research. While we cannot rule out the possibility that our findings reflect researchers' biases rather than actual governance, we infer that the shifts away from hierarchical government toward horizontal governing reflect instead a gradual addition of new administrative forms that facilitate governance within a system of constitutional authority that is necessarily hierarchical. In conclusion, we propose additional research that might confirm or refute this inference & that could fill the gaps of our understanding of public governance. 6 Tables, 2 Appendixes, 53 References. Adapted from the source document.

This paper discusses selected dispositions and characteristics of the modern liberal/Cartesian subject observed in students' responses to a survey on internationalization of higher education in Canada. The data on which this paper draws is part of a larger database of surveys, interviews, policy analyses and case studies that were developed within the framework of the Ethical Internationalization in Higher Education (EIHE) research project. The EIHE project was funded by the Finnish Academy of Science and was conducted between 2012-2016. This paper draws on three key findings from the responses of students (1451) of seven participating Canadian universities to present a broader (theoretical) context that could be inferred from what was observed in the data. For this purpose the paper first discusses some of the theories related to the existence and prevalence of the modern global imaginary that could be considered as a meta-framework under which such relations between the (modern) subject and his/her Other are normalized. In the next step it draws on psychoanalytical strands of decolonial and postcolonial critiques of the modern subject in an attempt to sketch some of problematic (and often unacknowledged) characteristics of the modern liberal/Cartesian subject that lead to constant re-production of binary hierarchical relations grounded on epistemic violence and privilege. ; peer-reviewed

In this and subsequent issues, The Qualitative Report will publish eight articles about a journal written by Edward B. Emerson (1805-1834), a younger brother of American philosopher and writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. This introduction will describe the origins of the project, the sources, the process and the outcomes of the collaboration. The authors hope to document and illustrate the richness and value of interdisciplinary qualitative inquiry, while providing specifics of how the Emerson Journal Project evolved. We provide examples to illustrate the characteristics of effective teamwork, but also present the challenges along the way and how they were surmounted. The breadth of the topics in the journal and the range of expertise within the team have resulted in the use of different approaches to examine Emerson's text. It is the authors' goal that these essays will enhance the reading of Emerson´s journal, while contributing to the social and historical understanding of the Caribbean.

AbstractPerceptions of the pervasive and persistent failures of governments in many issue areas over the past several decades have led many commentators and policy makers to turn to non-governmental forms of governance in their efforts to address public problems. During the 1980s and 1990s, market-based governance techniques were the preferred alternate form to government hierarchy but this preference has tilted towards network governance in recent years. Support for these shifts from hierarchical to non-hierarchical governance modes centre on the argument that traditional government-based arrangements are unsuited for addressing contemporary problems, many of which have a cross-sectoral or multi-actor dimension which is difficult for hierarchies to handle. Many proponents claim that recent 'network governance' or 'collaborative governance' arrangements combine the best of both governmental and market-based alternatives by bringing together key public and private actors in a policy sector in a constructive and inexpensive way. This claim is no more than an article of faith, however, as there is little empirical evidence supporting it. Indeed both logic and evidence suggests that networks too suffer from failures, though the sources of these failure may be different from other modes. The challenge for policymakers is to understand the origin and nature of the ways in which different modes of governance fail so that appropriate policy responses may be devised. This article proposes a model of such failures and a two-order framework for understanding them which helps explain which mode is best, and worst, suited to which circumstance.