complex relationships which exist between governance and governmentality. That is,
the deployment within new forms of ‘regulated self-regulation’, through networks, of
new techniques of governing and the constitution of new kinds of ethico-political
subjects such that the effects of governance is being achieved through the
construction of new kinds of social relations (see below). Furthermore, despite the
validity of Goodwin’s question about the distribution of power and capabilities in
relation to network ‘hegemons’ (p. x), it would be a mistake to assume that all
governance networks are structured in the same way and that all such networks have a
single core or focus, as the reply notes (p. x). While all of this undoubtedly leaves us
with the need to accept a degree of ‘messiness’ in the organisation and conduct of
network relations, I did not intend to suggest in my paper that all networks are
‘formless’ but neither are all networks tightly integrated. Before we settle for
conceptual assertions about how governance networks work we need to identify and
research more actual networks with such issues in mind and compare between them.
An argument can also be made that there are two separate but obviously related
projects of analysis involved in all of this. One is more abstract and involves a
mapping and analysis of the changing form and modalities of the state. The other is
more modest and is the attempt to map and specify relations of power in the workings
of specific policy networks in relation to particularly policy objectives - which may
or may not constitute examples of network governance.
The second point I would make is that the reply actually does not go far enough. I
have found it useful in my ongoing work to think about the structured relationships
within policy networks as heterarchies rather than (or as encompassing the notion of)
networks. Heterarchy is an organizational form somewhere between hierarchy and
network that draws upon diverse horizontal and vertical links that permit different
elements of the policy process to cooperate (and/or compete) whilst individually
optimizing different success criteria. That is, it replaces or combines bureaucracy and
administrative structures and relationships with a system of organization replete with
overlap, multiplicity, mixed ascendancy, and/or divergent-but-coexistent patterns of
relation, which operates at and across ‘levels’ (local, sub-national, national and
international). All of this involves an increased reliance on subsidiarity and ‘regulated
self-regulation’ but typically involves deconcentration rather than devolution. So that
one of the characteristics of heterarchies (and one that is certainly evident in my
current research (see Ball (2009)) is that different kinds of power relations may exist
between the same elements at the same time. Various different kinds of such
relationships and asymmetries are currently in play in policy heterarchies; like
partnerships, contracts, inspection, competition, performance management and
regulation, sponsorship, consortia, matched-funding, consultation etc. Actors and
organisations in a heterarchy may play different roles, use different capabilities and
exercise different forms of power, at the same time. Again this poses both
considerable analytical and representational problems for researchers but at least
begins to ‘fill out’ some of the conceptual thinness inherent in the notion of a
network.
Such a conceptualization of network relations also points up the considerable
challenges of coordination for the state and its agencies that are involved in forms of
network governance and we have to be alert to the fact that these may require
capabilities which are not well developed within all parts of the central state - witness
the National Audit Office concerns over the DCSF’s management of the Academies