The Rise of ‘New’ Policy Instruments in Comparative Perspective: Has Governance Eclipsed Government?

By A. Jordan, R. Wurzel, A. Zito. 2005

679 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Governance is a term in good currency, but there are still too few detailed empirical analyses of the precise extent to which it has or has not eclipsed government. This article explores the temporal and spatial characteristics of the governance transition by charting the deployment of new policy instruments in eight industrialised states and the European Union. The adoption and implementation of (‘old’ and ‘new’) policy instruments offer a useful analytical touchstone because governance theory argues that regulation is the quintessence of government. Although there are many ‘new’ environmental policy instruments in these nine jurisdictions, this article finds that the change from government to governance is highly differentiated across political jurisdictions, policy sectors and even the main instrument types. Crucially, many of the new policy instruments used require some state involvement (that is, ‘government’), and very few are entirely devoid of state involvement (that is, pure ‘governance’). Far from eclipsing government, governance therefore often complements and, on some occasions, even competes with it, although there are some cases of fusion. Future research should thus explore the many complex and varied ways in which government and governance interact in public policy-making.

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations, Public Administration, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c129ae819d975dc84190843c1b50f648474a0587

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Citations in the corpus

The influence of social capital on environmental policy instruments (2009, background): “The identification of these factors are of major importance in the context of environmental policy regarding issues of collective action, co-management and voluntary instruments (see Ostrom 1999, Dietz et al. 2003, Jordan et al. 2005, Folke et al. 2007, Pfeffer and Wagenet 2007).”
The state and consumer confidence in eco-labeling: organic labeling in Denmark, Sweden, The United Kingdom and The United States (2011, background): “…but not always, licensed by an independent third party that also audits whether producers comply with the standards laid down by the labeling scheme (Jordan et al. 2005, p. 482; Boström and Klintman 2008, p. 28).1 This third party can be a private organization or in some instances a state agency.”
The Governance of Corporate Responses to Climate Change: An International Comparison (2017, background): “…seeing is government innovation, with governments adopting new roles and introducing new policy instruments that mobilize and harness the governing powers of markets and civil society and that distribute the state’s powers amongst different actors (Black, 2008; Jessop, 2004; Jordan et al., 2005).”
From government to governance in forest planning? Lessons from the case of the British Columbia Great Bear Rainforest initiative (2009, background): “undertaken on the BC mid-coast region in the late 1990s, we argue that it is uncertain whether (a) a transition to “new governance” is in fact underway and, (b) whether any newly emerging mode of governance is any more effective, or legitimate, than the ‘old’ government model it has putatively succe”