Summary
Contents
Key Concepts in Governance provides a clear introduction to the technical concepts and policies of contemporary governance through short definitional essays. Each entry features a snapshot definition of the concept, a contextualization of the concept, an overview of relevant debates, and a guide to further reading. The book also includes a substantial introductory chapter which gives an overview of governance studies as a whole, orientating and guiding the reader around the issues that the concepts address.
Metagovernance
Metagovernance
Definition
Metagovernance is an umbrella concept that describes the role of the state and its characteristic policy instruments in the new governance. The new governance is such that governing is no longer a state monopoly. Governing is distributed among various private, voluntary, and public actors. Power and authority are more decentralized and fragmented among a plurality of networks. In this context, the role of the state is said to have shifted from the direct governance of society to the ‘metagovernance’ of the actors that now are involved in governing society. Similarly, in this context, the mode of state action – and so the main policy instruments it uses – are said to have shifted from command and control within a bureaucracy to the indirect steering of ...