Governance In Modern Society: Effects, Change and Formation of Government Institutions (Library of Public Policy and Public Administration): 4 - Tapa blanda

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.

Tremendous changes are affecting the institutions of government in many Western European countries. Globalisation, European integration, economic, technological, and societal developments have a major influence on public policies and governmental performance. These developments have furthered a framework in which governmental and non-governmental actors are linked by both reciprocal connections and more complex network relationships. This volume attempts to identify and analyse the effects, the change, and the formation of government institutions in relation to the above-mentioned developments. More specifically the following topics are discussed: the European Union as a system of multi-level governance, national government institutions and policies, change of government institutions and changing state-society relations, new public management reforms, ICT and changing organizational boundaries, political institutions and policy-oriented learning, management of public-private partnerships, interactive policy making, and structural legal institutions. This volume will be of particular interest to administrators, researchers, policy makers, and students in the field of public administration and public policy.