Communications
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00065 |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| Subject Matter | Communications |
Communications
R. A. W. Rhodes, `The new governance: governing without government',
Political Studies (1996), XLIV, 652± 67
Rod Rhodes has done a great service by sorting out the dierent de®nitions
which have been given to the term `governance' and suggesting what might be
some of the major rami®cations of applying his own preferred (stipulated)
de®nition. However, there are some problems with his approach. He ultimately
explains neither why what is identi®ed as governance is expanding nor why it
takes the form it does in dierent circumstances. Part of the problem is with
Rhodes's preferred de®nition itself; his approach is too undimensional, missing
signi®cant analytical variations within the phenomena he sets out to examine.
But most importantly, he misses out the most signi®cant level of analysis.
It is dicult to criticize an explicitly `stipulated' de®nition, especially where it
is so clearly proclaimed. However, why should governance be limited to net-
works? Rhodes embraces the view that networks represent one of three main
ordering principles of organizations, the others being the more familiar (for
some) categories of market and hierarchy. But even if we accept that networks
are analytically distinct from the other two (which is debatable; Oliver
Williamson uses `governance' to mean particular institutionalized mixes of
market and hierarchical forms1), networks do not evolve in a vacuum. Do not
types of governance, even in Rhodes's example, consist of dierent mixes of all
three forms?
Second, why and how do dierent types of mix develop? The modern nation-
state from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries consisted of a complex bundle
of tasks, roles and activities, combined in a quasi-hierarchical structure formed
out of the con¯uence of the Second Industrial Revolution and the Weberian
bureaucratic state and forged through mercantilistic competition, Clausewit-
zean warfare and the emergence of mass society. Today that structure is being
unevenly eroded and those dierent tasks, roles and activities are beginning to
be `unbundled'. Why? Rhodes does not say. And how does one explain the
unevenness of that unbundling in dierent sectors and issue-areas? Again, he
does not oer an explanation.
The main problem is that Rhodes ignores (with the exception of two
decontextualized citations of Rosenau and a ¯eeting reference to the European
Union) a range of complex processes of globalization, transnationalization
and internationalization. Both economic competition between national
empires and interstate military con¯ict have dramatically decreased since even
before the end of the Cold War (but most obviously since then); international
trade and transnational production have expanded and global ®nance
exploded; and technology, communications, ideology and culture have eroded
embedded national boundaries in one way or another at all levels (however
unevenly). A variety of processes ± demonstration eects, regulatory arbitrage,
#Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
1Oliver E. Williamson, Markets and Hierarchies (New York, Free, 1975), and The Economic
Institutions of Capitalism (New York, Free, 1985).
Political Studies (1997), XLV, 1± 4
To continue reading
Request your trial