Experimentalist governance: from architectures to outcomes

"The book examines when, how, and why non-hierarchical institutions affect policy processes and outcomes. It confronts questions at the heart of debates in regulatory governance, itself a field stemming from political science, public administration, and law. What does non-hierarchical governanc...

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1. Verfasser: Rangoni, Bernardo (VerfasserIn)
Format: Buch
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: Oxford, United Kingdom ; New York, NY Oxford University Press 2023
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Zusammenfassung:"The book examines when, how, and why non-hierarchical institutions affect policy processes and outcomes. It confronts questions at the heart of debates in regulatory governance, itself a field stemming from political science, public administration, and law. What does non-hierarchical governance mean? Under what conditions are key actors more likely to engage in non-hierarchical processes? Which trajectories best capture the evolution of non-hierarchical and hierarchical processes in the long run? What mechanisms aid non-hierarchical processes to overcome gridlock and deliver policy outcomes effectively? To respond to these questions, the book develops an analytical framework that draws on contemporary debates on regulatory governance but seeks to overcome their limitations. Notably, it offers a definition of non-hierarchical (experimentalist) governance that goes beyond institutional structures, giving due attention to actors' choices and strategies over which processes to employ.
It shows that, contrary to expectations, distributions of legal power had little impact, whereas functional and political pressures were more influential, and bolstered one another. This is because strong functional demands and political opposition affect actors' de facto capacity of using powers that, de jure, might be concentrated in their own hands. Indeed, actors can derive advantages from non-hierarchical governance, as it can aid learning as well as the creation of powerful reform coalitions. Conversely, actors may override legal constraints on the exercise of hierarchical authority and impose their own views on other recalcitrant actors, if they are equipped with cognitive resources and powerful coalitions beforehand. Further, the book challenges conservative views that non-hierarchical governance is doomed to be unsustainable, showing that, on the contrary, it is often self-reinforcing and thus resilient.
Finally, the book shows that far from being mutually exclusive, a combination of positive (shadow of hierarchy) and negative (penalty default) mechanisms typically helps non-hierarchical processes to deliver policy outcomes effectively. The book's arguments are sustained by an analysis of five crucial domains (electricity, natural gas, communications, financial services, and pharmaceuticals) in the European Union. It combines temporal, cross-sectoral, and within-case comparisons with process-tracing to show the conditions, trajectories, and mechanisms of non-hierarchical governance"--
Beschreibung:x, 239 Seiten 24 cm
ISBN:9780198849919