It has been twenty years since the concept of multi-level network governance came to the fore in public management literature. In the field of service provision, attention has often been paid to either local governance (e.g. Provan & Kenis, 2008) or to relations amongst regulators (e.g. Liesbet & Gary, 2003), but less often to the inter-scalar dynamics of multi-level governance (Jessop, 2003). The originality of this paper is that it considers the complex architecture of networked public service governance, and traces the paths of reciprocal influence between policy networks, regulatory structures and street-level implementation by non-profits.
The empirical case study examines the networked, multi-level governance of employability services to social assistance recipients in the Canadian province of Quebec. The structure of this policy area in Quebec is compared to multi-level governance in five other jurisdictions that feature market more than non-profit actors (U.K., Denmark, and Holland). The study exposes the full complexity of Quebec’s governance system by focusing not only on its formal structure, but also, the informal corridors and “invisible” or “external” influences that flow through the multilevel network (Latour, 2005). It highlights the transmission of information, ideas and values that shaped this public-non-profit governance network (van Oorschot et al, 2008)
The paper fulfills two objectives: First, it demonstrates the complex relation between the architecture and the dynamics of multilevel networked governance, from political stakeholders to the street-level where policy is realised (Blanco et al, 2011; Prior & Barnes, 2011). Second, it explains the conditions that pertained making the development of this innovative public-non-profit governance possible. It thus draws attention to the contingency of public-non-profit governance models, insofar as they depend on the structures and culture of both governments and civil societies. Here, we are in agreement with Piattoni (2015: 321) when she argues that “the precise shape that these governance arrangements will take… depends on the mobilizing capacity of the actors (and on the the capacity of other actors to contain or delimit such mobilization)”.
Blanco, I., Lowndes, V., & Pratchett, L. (2011). Policy networks and governance networks: Towards greater conceptual clarity. Political Studies Review, 9(3), 297-308.
Jessop, B. (2003). Governance and meta-governance: on reflexivity, requisite variety and requisite irony. Governance as social and political communication, 101-16.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social - An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, OUP.
Liesbet, H., & Gary, M. (2003). Unraveling the central state, but how? Types of multi-level governance. American Political Science Review, 97,2:233-243.
Piattoni, S. (2015). Multi-Level Governance: Underplayed Features, Overblown Expectation and Missing Linkages. in Multi-Level Governance: The Missing Linkages, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Prior, D. & Barnes. M. (2011) Subverting Social Policy on the Front Line: Agencies of Resistance in the Delivery of Services, Social Policy and Administration, 45,3:264-279.
Provan, K. & Kenis, P. (2008). Modes of network governance: Structure, management, and effectiveness. Journal of public administration research and theory, 18,2:229-252.
van Oorschot, W., Opielka, M. & Pfau-Effinger, B. eds. (2008) Culture and welfare state: Values and social policy in comparative perspective. Edward Elgar
