Interactive Governance: Advancing the paradigm

Governance has become one of the most commonly used concepts in contemporary political science. It is, however, often used to mean a variety of different things. This book helps to clarify this conceptual muddle by concentrating on one variety of governance – interactive governance. We argue that although the State may remain important for many aspects of governing, interactions between State and society represent an important, and perhaps increasingly important, dimension of governance. These interactions may be with social actors such as networks, with market actors, or with other governments, but all these forms represent means of governing involving mixtures of State action with the actions of other entities. This book explores thoroughly this meaning of governance, and links it to broader questions of governance. In the process of explicating this dimension of governance, we also explore some of the more fundamental question about governance theory. For example, although we talk about governance a great deal political science has done relatively little about how to measure this concept. Likewise, the term multilevel governance has become widely used but we also need to understand that idea more fully and how it functions in the context of interactive forms of governance. We also link governance to some very fundamental questions in political science and the social sciences more broadly. How is power exercised in interactive governance? How democratic is interactive governance, and is democratic governance always advanced through transparency?