Public Management and the Metagovernance of Hierarchies, Networks and Markets: The Feasibility of Designing and Managing Governance Style Combinations (Contributions to Management Science)

What is modern governance? Is it the battle against ‘old-fashioned’ hierarchy, or is it the restoration of key hierarchical values? Is it optimizing network management, or maximizing the benefits of market thinking in the public-sector? This book argues that it is the combination of all this. The next question is: In practice, how do successful public managers design and manage combinations of hierarchical, network and market governance? In other words: what is their rationale to apply metagovernance? Five case-studies show that metagovernance is a public management requisite: it amplifies the variation of actions public managers can take, and it prevents the three ideal-typical governance styles from undermining each other. Similar cases of strategic environmental policy-making in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and the European Commission and one case of community policing in the Netherlands illustrate that successful public-sector managers are dealing with similar metagovernance challenges in different socio-politico-administrative cultures. "The future will not lie with markets, or hierarchies or networks but with all three and the trick will not be to manage contracts or steer networks but to mix the three systems effectively when they conflict with and undermine one another." Davis and Rhodes (2000: 25): From hierarchy to contracts and back again: Reforming the Australian public sector. Public managers can, to a certain extent, choose between various mana- ment paradigms which are provided by public and business administration scholars and by politicians as well. How do they find their way in this c- fusing supermarket of competing ideas? This book explores how public managers in Western bureaucracies deal with the mutually undermining ideas of hierarchical, network and market governance. Do they possess a specific logic of action, a rationale, when they combine and switch - tween these governance styles? This chapter sets the scene for the book as a whole and presents the - search topic and the research question. 1.1 Problem setting Since the Second World War, Western public administration systems have changed drastically. The hierarchical style of governing of the 1950s to the 1970s was partly replaced by market mechanisms, from the 1980s - wards. In the 1990s, a third style of governing, based on networks, further enriched the range of possible steering, coordination and organisation - terventions. In the new millennium, public sector organisations seem to apply complex and varying mixtures of all three styles of what we will - fine as governance in a broad sense. This development has brought about two problems. What is modern governance? Is it the battle against a old-fashioneda (TM) hierarchy, or is it the restoration of key hierarchical values? Is it optimizing network management, or maximizing the benefits of market thinking in the public sector? This book argues that it is the combination of all this. The next question is: In practice, how do successful public managers design and manage combinations of hierarchical, network and market governance? In other words: what is their rationale to apply metagovernance? Five case-studies show that metagovernance is a public management requisite: it amplifies the variation of actions public managers can take, and it prevents the three ideal-typical governance styles from undermining each other. Similar cases of strategic environmental policy-making in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and the European Commission illustrate that successful public-sector managers are dealing with similar metagovernance challenges in socio-politico-administrative cultures Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction....Pages 1-8 Theoretical framework....Pages 9-86 Research approach....Pages 87-124 Strategic policy making: Four soil protection cases....Pages 125-203 Street level policy-making: Community policing....Pages 205-228 Possibilities and limitations of metagovernance as public management....Pages 229-269 Practical implications: Increasing the metagovernance capacity....Pages 271-299 Conclusions....Pages 301-303 Further research questions....Pages 305-308 Summary....Pages 309-324 Epilogue....Pages 325-327 Back Matter....Pages 329-401