Reflexive Governance: Redefining the Public Interest in a Pluralistic World

Modern Studies in European Law

by Olivier De Schutter (Editor), Jacques Lenoble (Editor)

Reflexive governance offers a theoretical framework for understanding modern patterns of governance in the European Union (EU) institutions and elsewhere. It offers a learning-based approach to governance, but one which can better respond to concerns about the democratic deficit and to the fulfillment of the public interest than the currently dominant neo-institutionalist approaches. The book is composed of one general introduction and eight chapters. Chapter one introduces the concept of reflexive governance and describes the overall framework. The following chapters of the book then summarise the implications of reflexive governance in major areas of domestic, EU and global policy-making. They address in Services of General Interest, Corporate Governance, Institutional Frames for Markets, Regulatory Governance, Fundamental Social Rights, Healthcare Services, Global Public Services and Common Goods. While the themes are diverse, the chapters are unified by their attempt to get to the heart of which concepts of governance are dominant in each field, and what their successes and failures have reflexive governance then emerges as one possible response to the failures of other governance models currently being relied upon by policy-makers.

266 pages, Hardcover

First published May 10, 2010

Reviews

[Sarah Clement · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a bit variable, which isn't unusual for an edited volume. There are some brilliant ideas in here, just wanting to get out, but unfortunately they are often obscured by unnecessarily complicated writing. I have a tendency to overcomplicate my writing too, so perhaps the best thing to come out of reading this book was that it reinforced just how much complicated writing can obscure useful concepts. Buried in here somewhere is the next stage of adaptive governance, and one that it much improved, so let's hope these ideas are clarified and developed further over time.