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Metagovernance, Governance, and Learning

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Democratizing Public Management

Abstract

In this chapter it is argued that changes in patterns of governing in public administration (governance turn) require that public agencies develop their ability to learn and to critically reflect upon goals and the means by which to achieve them. The author proposes to regard the phenomenon of the governance turn through the lens of metagovernance and organizational learning concepts as, taken together, they allow us to capture the multilevel structure of both governance and learning. These theoretical frames coherently order the phenomenon of governance learning and link it to reflection. They establish a prescriptive model of governance indicating the forms of learning and the forms of governance that should be enhanced, depending on the specific requirements of a given situation. It is argued that good governance is reflexive governance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See for example Oxford Handbook of Governance (2012) or Sage Handbook of Governance (2011), where most of the entries conceptualize governance as a specific approach to public policy and public management (‘and’ is lacking).

  2. 2.

    In the literature, the former is sometimes called second-order governance, or the first order of metagovernance, and the latter is referred to as the third-order governance, second-order metagovernance, or collaboration (Kooiman 1993; Jessop 2011, see Table 2.2).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland

    Marta Strumińska-Kutra

  2. VID Specialized University, Oslo, Norway

    Marta Strumińska-Kutra

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  1. Marta Strumińska-Kutra
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Strumińska-Kutra, M. (2018). Metagovernance, Governance, and Learning. In: Democratizing Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74591-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74591-6_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74590-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74591-6

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