Metagovernance

Concept by Bob Jessop: If the market, hierarchies, and peer governance are three modes of managing human affairs, then each has a meta-level where they are balanced and calibrated to deal with failures. The calibration of the three in an overall framework, is the subject matter of meta-governance.

The problem of metagovernance, by Bob Jessop

“The most cursory review of attempts at governance, whether through the market, imperative co-ordination, or self-organisation, reveals an important role for learning, reflexivity, and metagovernance. Indeed, if markets, states, and governance are each prone to failure, how is economic and political co-ordination for economic and social development ever possible and why is it often judged to have succeeded? This highlights the role of the ‘meta-structures’ of interorganisational co-ordination (Alexander 1995: 52) or, more generally, of ‘metagovernance’, i.e., the governance of governance. This involves the organisation of the conditions for governance in its broadest sense. Thus, corresponding to the three basic modes of governance (or co-ordination) distinguished above, we can distinguish three basic modes of metagovernance and one umbrella mode.

First, there is ‘meta-exchange’. This involves the reflexive redesign of individual markets (e.g., for land, labour, money, commodities, knowledge – or appropriate parts or subdivisions thereof) and/or the reflexive reordering of relations among two or more markets by modifying their operation and articulation.

Second, there is ‘meta-organisation’. This involves the reflexive redesign of organisations, the creation of intermediating organisations, the reordering of inter-organisational relations, and the management of organisational ecologies (i.e., the organisation of the conditions of organisational evolution in conditions where many organisations co-exist, compete, co-operate, and co-evolve).

Third, there is ‘meta-heterarchy’. This involves the organisation of the conditions of self-organisation by redefining the framework for heterarchy or reflexive self-organisation.

Fourth, and finally, there is ‘metagovernance’. This involves re-articulating and ‘collibrating’ the different modes of governance. The key issues for those involved in metagovernance are ‘(a) how to cope with other actors’ self-referentiality; and (2) how to cope with their own self-referentiality' (Dunsire 1996: 320). Metagovernance involves managing the complexity, plurality, and tangled hierarchies found in prevailing modes of co-ordination. It is the organisation of the conditions for governance and involves the judicious mixing of market, hierarchy, and networks to achieve the best possible outcomes from the viewpoint of those engaged in metagovernance.

Thus metagovernance does not eliminate other modes of co-ordination. Markets, hierarchies, and heterarchies still exist; but they operate in a context of ‘negotiated decision-making’.�? (http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/lnc/papers/JessopGovernance.htm)