When Governance Networks Become the Agenda

• Author: Stefan Verweij,Lasse Gerrits
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12693
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

144 Public Administration Review • January | February 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 1, pp. 144–146. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12693.

When Governance Networks Become the Agenda

Stefan Verweij is postdoctoral

researcher in infrastructure planning at the

Department of Planning at the University of

Groningen, The Netherlands. He specializes

in complexity, governance networks,

infrastructure planning and implementation,

project evaluation, project management and

organization, public–private partnerships,

and qualitative comparative analysis.

More information can be found at www.

stefanverweij.eu .

E-mail: s.verweij@rug.nl

Lasse Gerrits is professor in political

science at the Otto-Friedrich University

of Bamberg, Germany. He is Chair for the

Governance of Innovative and Complex

Technological Systems.

E-mail: lasse.gerrits@uni-bamberg.de

L ater this year, Deutsche Bahn, the German

railway infrastructure provider, will finish its

massive “Germany Unity Transport Project 8,”

a multibillion Euro endeavor to connect Berlin and

Munich by means of a high-speed railway link. To the

humble city of Bamberg, positioned between Berlin

and Munich, the railway can provide an enormous

boost for its tourism. Surely, Deutsche Bahn would

consider adding Bamberg to its project, right? Well,

not for nothing. Upgrading the infrastructure around

Bamberg is considered more expensive than building a

new track around the city. If the Bamberg city council

would like its city to be internationally connected,

it would have to pay up. Various interest groups,

however, do not want the city to pay for upgrading

the infrastructure that is owned by Deutsche

Bahn. Also, they are not in favor of tracks around

the city. The city ’ s next trick is then to contact its

representatives in Berlin to pull the right strings in the

national Ministry of Transport in order to favorably

steer the discussion.

This case demonstrates the argument for governance

networks in a nutshell: multiple and different kinds

of actors have to operate in networks because of the

need to exchange resources so as to achieve certain

(shared) goals. The study of governance networks has

taken such a flight that it has become increasingly

hard to think of issues in public administration or

public policy outside of the idiom and concepts

of governance theories. Or, to put it differently,

governance networks have moved from a niche within

our domain to become mainstream or common

knowledge. Erik-Hans Klijn and Joop Koppenjan

have played an important role in popularizing the

central concepts of governance networks, starting

Danny L. Balfour and Stephanie P. Newbold , Editors

Lasse Gerrits

Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg, Germany

Stefan Verweij

University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Erik-Hans Klijn and Joop Koppenjan , Governance

Networks in the Public Sector (London:

Routledge, 2016). 360 pp. $59.95 (paper), ISBN:

9780415707015.

with the edited volume Managing Complex Networks:

Strategies for the Public Sector (Kickert, Klijn, and

Koppenjan 1997 ). In 2004, they followed up with a

monograph in which they considered the implications

of governance networks for the management of such

networks (Koppenjan and Klijn 2004 ). The central

question for that book was: “How can the substantive,

strategic and institutional uncertainties that are so

characteristic of complex societal issues be analyzed

and managed in a way that is appropriate, given the

features of these uncertainties and the sources from

which they stem?” (2004, 15).

The current book can be considered the successor

to the 2004 title, although the scope has somewhat

changed. The central question now reads: “How

can the substantive, strategic, and institutional

complexities that characterize governance networks be

analyzed and managed in an effective, democratically

legitimate, and accountable way, given the features

of these complexities, and the sources from which

they stem?” (2016, 16). Compared to their previous

book, the current one shows a stronger emphasis

on “complexities” instead of “uncertainties” and

“appropriately” is now more precisely defined as

“effective, democratically legitimate, and accountable.”

The book is structured along the three types of

complexities mentioned in the main question. Part

1 of the book delves into the three complexities,

and Part 2 discusses how they can be managed.

The chapters in the third part of the book discuss

effectiveness, democracy, and accountability in

networks. While the previous book was mainly an

academic one that could be used in education, the

current one is explicitly targeted at students.

If anything, the book will hold up as a reference

guide. Klijn and Koppenjan ’ s knowledge and overview

of the field is extensive, and there is a reference for

each concept, idea, theory, or hypothesis. It reminded

us of Parsons’s ( 1995 ) Public Policy , a book that was

extremely useful for students, such as us, who needed