Theories of Democratic Network Governance

Theories of Democratic Network Governance aims to renew and refocus the theoretical debate on governance networks by posing a series of pressing questions: Why and how are governance networks formed, developed, reshaped and terminated? What are the conditions for governance networks to produce public policy and governance on the basis of stable, negotiated interaction between interdependent, but relative autonomous actors? How is it possible for political authorities of various kinds to regulate self-regulation governance networks in order to minimize the risk of governance failure and maximize the prospect of success? How can we assess the problems and merits of governance networks in relation to normative standards of democracy, and what is the result of such an assessment? The overall ambition of the book is to create a platform for the development of a second generation of research into the problems and potentials of new forms of interactive governance that tend to spread faster and wider than most academics have hitherto recognized.