Network governance of active employment policy

1
Network governance of active employment policy

• Jacob Torfing
• Center for Democratic Network Governance
• June 22, 2006

2
Everybody talks about governance, but what does
it mean?

• Governance is a highly fashionable umbrella
  concept encompassing a wide range of phenomena
• Governance is a notoriously slippery term that is
  sometimes defined in terms of
• 1. An interaction process that translates
  diverging preferences into effective policy
  choices (politics)
• 2. A system of rules that shape the interactions
  of social actors (polity)
• 3. A mode of political steering defining how a
  particular goal should be reached (policy)
• Sometimes all these aspects are put together
• Totality of interactions in which public and
  private actor aim to solve public problems or
  create opportunities while attending to a set of
  institutional rules and establishing a normative
  foundation for joint action (Kooiman, 2003 4)

3
Governance beyond the state

• It is increasingly clear that public governance
  is not congruent with the formal institutions of
  government
• In the 1980s, the many reports on government
  failure gave way to an increasing marketization
  of public governance
• More recently, the failure of the market to
  deliver a proactive governance based on joint
  objectives and mutual trust has stimulated the
  surge of more interactive forms of network
  governance

4
Defining governance networks

• Drawing on the burgeoning literature we can
  define governance networks as
• A relatively stable horizontal articulation of
  interdependent, but operationally autonomous
  actors
• Who interact through negotiations that might
  involve either bargaining or deliberation
• Which take place within a relatively
  institutionalized framework of rules, norms,
  common knowledge and social imaginaries
• Facilitate self-regulated policy making in the
  shadow of hierarchy (bounded autonomy)
• And contributes to the production of public value
  in terms of visions, ideas, plans and concrete
  decisions

5
A plurality of governance networks

• Governance networks take different forms
• Governance networks are also labeled in different
  ways
• Finally, there might be different rationales
  behind the formation of governance networks
• 1. Overcome fragmentation
• 2. Mobilize resources, capacities and energies
  of private actors
• 3. Enhance legitimacy and program
  responsibility
• The spread of governance networks and their
  forms, labels and rationales depend on different
  political institutions, cultures and discourses

6
Network-governed employment policy

• Active employment policy plays a central role in
  the attempt to enhance social cohesion and
  structural competitiveness
• In Denmark the shift from welfare to workfare has
  taken the form of a silent revolution
• The transformation of the content has been
  accompanied by a shift in the mode of governance
• - Europeanization
• - decentralization
• - one-track systems
• - management by objectives
• - systematic auditing
• - increased reliance on networks and partnerships

7
Project objectives

• Our new project builds on experiences from our
  over-sized pilot study on local, national and
  transnational network governance in Denmark,
  France and England
• The main objectives of the project are
• To analyse the scope, character and functioning
  of governance networks in relation to particular
  policy output
• To assess their contribution to an effective and
  democratic governance
• To analyse how effective and democratic network
  governance can be enhanced through different
  forms of metagovernance