Nodal Governance, Democracy, and the New ‘Denizens’
| Author | Clifford Shearing,Jennifer Wood |
| Published date | 01 September 2003 |
| Date | 01 September 2003 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00263 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2003
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 400±19
Nodal Governance, Democracy, and the New `Denizens'
Clifford Shearing* and Jennifer Wood*
We begin this paper by reviewing some recent transformations in
governance. We then propose three new concepts that we believe assist
us in coming to terms with these transformations and the political
statuses that have emerged as part of them. These concepts are `nodal
governance', `denizens', and `communal space'. Following this we
will explore the normative implications of nodal governance as it has
taken shape to date, with an emphasis on the `governance disparity'
that is paralleling the `wealth disparity' across the globe. In response
to this disparity, we will end with an outline of a normative vision and
practical programme aimed at deepening democracy in poor areas of
South Africa, Argentina, and elsewhere. We will argue that the main
virtue of nodal governance, namely, the emphasis on local capacity
and knowledge can be retrieved, reaffirmed, and reinstitutionalized in
ways that enhance the self-direction of poor communities while
strengthening their `collective capital'.
INTRODUCTION
Our established notions of citizens and citizenship are based on an ideal of
autonomous, territorially bounded nation-states. As collective life is defined
and explained by reference to `national' cultures, politics and economic
systems, to be a `citizen' means to have rights and responsibilities consistent
400
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350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*Security 21: International Centre for Security and Justice, Regulatory
Institutions Network, Law Program, The Australian National University,
Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
This article was written in collaboration with John Cartwright and Madeleine Jenneker.
We would like to thank our colleague Michael Kempa for his assistance with this paper.
We are also grateful to Nicola Piper, Paddy Stamp, and two anonymous reviewers for
their valuable comments and suggestions
with `substantive incorporation into society'.
1
In this `modern' world,
governance, and hence citizenship, is understood by reference to the classic
liberal distinction between the `public' and the `private'.
The Westphalian model,
2
upon which the ideal of state sovereignty is
based, is no longer as self-evident as a prescription for good governance as it
once was. The features of the world that this ideal signifies (namely,
sovereign nation states with responsibility for governance exercised through
state agencies) have always been layered with forms of governance that do
not fit the ideal.
3
Because states continue to exist as important sites of governance and
political authority, citizenship remains relevant and most people today
continue to be defined as citizens of one or more nation states. However, as
new principles of governance are emerging and reconfiguring collective life,
people are finding that they have a host of non-state affiliations and
associated expectations. If we are to understand these new statuses and their
implications, we need to extend our conceptual framework in ways that
enable us to hone in on them as central objects of analysis. As we have
argued elsewhere,
4
our conceptions of governance and citizenship, and the
world view such conceptions support, are lagging considerably behind our
practices. This conceptu al lag is clearly evident in an alyses of the
governance of security, which will be our empirical focus in this discussion.
FROM STATE-CENTRED TO NODAL GOVERNANCE
For much of the twentieth century, security was seen as essentially a
function of the state. This was true both empirically and normatively.
States owned security. While the governance of security had historically
been carried out by a number of agencies,
5
a narrower view, coupling
401
1 J. Young, `From Inclusive to Exclusive Society: Nightmares in the European Dream'
in The New European Criminology: Crime and Social Order in Europe, eds. V.
Ruggiero, N. South, and I. Taylor (1998) 64, at 65.
2 Stephen Krasner comments that the `Peace of Westphalia which ended the Thirty
Year War in 1648, is taken to mark the beginning of the modern international system
as a universe composed of sovereign states, each with exclusive authority within its
own geographic boundaries. The Westphalian model, based on the principles of
autonomy and territory, offers an arresting, and elegant image. It orders the minds of
policymakers' (S.D. Krasner (ed.), Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and
Political Possibilities (2001) 124; see D. Held, Prospects for Democracy: North,
South, East, West (1993) 27±32). While the Westphalian model constitutes an ideal
from which states regularly depart, it still is an aspirational benchmark.
3 Krasner, id.
4 See J. Hermer, M. Kempa, C. Shearing, P. Stenning, and J. Wood, Policing in Canada
in the 21st Century: Directions for Law Reform: A Socio-Legal Analysis (2002); J.
Wood and C. Shearing, `Reinvented Intellectuals' (1999) 14 Cndn. J. of Crim. 311±20.
5 L. Johnston, The Re-Birth of Private Policing (1992).
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