Governing Modern Societies

The essays collected in Governing Modern Societies arose from a lecture series of the same name held at Green College, University of British Columbia, in 1997 and 1998. Distinguished scholars in political science, philosophy, sociology, and economics from Canada, the United States, England, Germany, and Australia advance not only the most recent theories of how modern societies are governed, but also the ideological and political relevance of these theories. The focus of this collection is on the extent to which the nature and practice of governance has dramatically changed. The realities of cutbacks in social security expenditures, changes in technology, shifts in labour markets, politics of identity and group rights, loss of political autonomy by nation-states, and management by surveillance and audit all underscore the evolution of governing. The fact that such shifts are also connected to new forms of governance beyond the state (at the community level, for example, within corporate institutions and through the influence of social movements and economic markets) makes the task of governing modern societies all the more challenging.

This book is the immediate result of the co-operation of a great number of scholars in the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG). NIG is an interuniversity research school. As such it has a double task. In addition to offering a Ph.D program to students in Public Administration it also is a research institute in which a great number of scholars from seven Dutch universities participate and work on a common research program. The chapters in this book are all products of the research program that started in 1995. This program had the ambition to explore the frontiers of the discipline in two respects. First by studying a number of recent developments in society and their consequences for the functioning of government. These consequences can be summarised as the development of a system of multi level and multi actor governance. Second, by contributing to the knowledge of institutions, both by studying what factors are most important in the formation and change of institutions and by studying the effects of institutions on the behaviour of actors in different political and administrative settings. Most contributions to this volume either have their origin in conferences organized by the NIG or were published as an NIG working paper. We are grateful to Marcia Clifford and Connie Hoekstra who prepared the final version of the manuscript, to Ian Priestnall who took care of the language editing and to an anonymous reviewer whose comments were gratefully used.

This book explores democracy beyond the governmental structures and focuses on participatory governance in particular. It demonstrates that we need to change the way we think about democracy and our notion of democracy has to be re-conceptualised.

Western societies are becoming increasingly complex and challenging to govern, yet the modern state continues to play a central role in governance. This book presents a detailed analysis of the challenges confronting the contemporary state and the processes through which the state addresses those challenges. The notion of 'governing without government' is critiqued; instead, Pierre and Peters argue that what is happening a more a matter of state transformation than state decline.

An extensively revised and updated new edition of Olsen’s Power in Societies, this book contains carefully selected and edited writings on the exercise of social power in contemporary societies. The essays cover four broad topics: power in social organization, theoretical perspectives on power, national power structures, and power and the state. Ea

This wide-ranging text provides an overview of major developments in governance in contemporary society. It illuminates recent theories about the relationship of the public and private sectors, and the interaction of politics and society. The main development in recent years is shown as a shift in the balance between government and society towards the private sector. The book explores the ways in which new balances have been struck between state and market. It examines such new ventures in public-private interaction and endeavours to explain them in terms of coping with the dynamics, complexities and diversities of modern society. In doing so, it develops the outline of a new theory of social-political governance.

This book examines the connections between public school reform in the early twentieth century and American political development from 1890 to 1940.

This book explores democracy beyond the governmental structures and focuses on participatory governance in particular. It demonstrates that we need to change the way we think about democracy and our notion of democracy has to be re-conceptualised.

Governmentality draws on Foucault's work along with wider analytical frameworks to reclaim centre stage for this sociological concept. The author argues for a new understanding of how the individual is related to the state and vice versa.