Overview

Recent decades have witnessed a transformation of the public sector in many developed countries. The transformation is often described as one from government to governance, from bureaucracy to markets and networks. Governance is now a part of the lending criteria of international bodies such as the World Bank. But what is governance? How should we explain its emergence? And how does it operate? The colloquium on "Interpreting Governance" provides an opportunity to engage with these and other issues through recent work by Professor Mark Bevir (Dept. of Political Science, UC Berkeley) and Professor Rod Rhodes (Dept. of Politics, University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne & President of the Political Studies Association, UK).

Bevir and Rhodes have just completed a book manuscript on "Interpreting British Governance". They are also involved in an international collaborative project that uses their interpretative approach to look at changing patterns of governance in the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway. Bevir and Rhodes propose an interpretative approach to political science as a fruitful contrast to both rational choice theory and historical institutionalism. This interpretative approach leads them to offer a novel, decentered narrative of governance. Governance arises from beliefs, traditions, dilemmas, and political contests as opposed to the innate rationality of markets or embedded institutional patterns.

In the morning session of the colloquium, Bevir will present a paper - " Decentered Theory of Governance: Rational Choice, Institutionalism, and Interpretative Theory" that deals with aspects of their approach. In the afternoon session, Rhodes will present a paper - Entering British Governance: From Bureaucracy to Networks" - that uses this approach to examine the changing shape of British government under Thatcher and New Labour. There will also be a final session to discuss the broader issues their work raises.