Designing inclusion and exclusion in labour market governance networks

This paper explores the issue of inclusion in governance networks. It shows that mainstream understandings of inclusion in societal steering – perspectives on governance networks, neocorporatism and neopluralism – mainly focus on structural characteristics of potential members of governance networks and do not adequately explain who actually gets access to these networks. Instead I argue that we need to analyse actions taken consciously and deliberately to design inclusion – as well as exclusion – in governance networks, i.e. we need to bring agency into the analysis and analyse metagovernance. Recognizing the influence of metagovernors allows us to unveil power structures behind the scene of governance networks.