Summary
Contents
Subject index
Although the concept of policy networks is now well-established in the field, most research has to content itself with description and analysis of their contribution to policy failure. This book goes further. It accepts policy networks as a fundamental characteristic of modern societies and presents an overview of the strategies for the management of these networks, as well as illustrating the various strategies for intervention.
Introduction: A Management Perspective on Policy Networks
Introduction: A Management Perspective on Policy Networks
Introduction
After the post-war establishment of the welfare state with its high expectations of governmental policy making and planning, in the late 1970s and 1980s following the oil crisis, disillusionment with government performance resulted in a lowering of ambitions. High expectations were replaced by suspicion of government intervention. Currently, however, we are witnessing a worldwide departure of the dark days of complete lack of trust and confidence in the public sector. Even in the United States, the period of an outright anti-government sentiment is seemingly coming to an end (Wamsley, 1990). New policy problems such as environmental pollution, the growth of organized crime and the need for a competitive infrastructure in order to keep pace with international economic developments, and old problems like the revision of the welfare state, call for government involvement. It is, however, also clear that government cannot reclaim its post-war welfare state position as the central governing authority in society. The experiences of the 1960s and 1970s have shown that the steering potentials of government are limited and that it must deal with many other important actors in the policy fields in which it operates. These observations necessitate reflection upon the relation between government and society. In social science this reflection has contributed to the rise of a new idea which is becoming increasingly popular: the concept of policy networks.
Policy Networks as a Perspective on Governance
The concept ‘policy network’ connects public policies with their strategic and institutionalized context: the network of public, semi-public, and private actors participating in certain policy fields. The concept is new in the sense that it combines insights from policy science, which focuses on the analysis of public policy processes, with ideas from political science and organization theory about the distribution of power and dependencies, organizational features, and interorganizational relations. As an empirical phenomenon policy networks can be found in almost every policy area. Some well-known policy networks are those of agriculture, the military-industrial complex, and networks in such areas as social security, national health, and housing.
Until recently the idea of policy networks was mainly used to explain why policies fail. It has contributed to the exposure of the rational central rule approach which many governmental agencies use in practice, as a major cause of policy failure. This approach neglects the fundamental dependencies of government upon individuals, groups and organizations in its policy environment. In many early network studies, policy networks were considered synonymous with the resistance of vested interests standing in the way of effective and democratically legitimized problem solving and policy innovation. The concept of policy networks seemed to confirm that government policies often fail and offered an explanatory framework for that deception. After the understandable reaction to the disillusionment with government planning in the form of over-emphasized interest in the failures and limitations of governmental steering, more attention has recently been given to the potentials of the concept of policy networks for public problem solving and societal governance. Used in such a way, the network approach provides an alternative to the reaction of many governments to the limits of governance by proclaiming a strategic retreat from the public domain by promoting privatization, deregulation and decentralization. This idea of policy networks as an opportunity for public policy making and governance forms the subject of this study. The central question we will deal with
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