public administration and development

Public Admin. Dev. 35, 7385 (2015)

Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1708

ADDRESSING THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE IN GOVERNMENT AND

GOVERNANCE: THREE APPROACHES TO ORGANISING PUBLIC
ACTION
IAN THYNNE1,2* AND B. GUY PETERS3,4
1

Australian National University, Australia

2
University of Hong Kong, China
3
University of Pittsburg, USA
4
Zeppelin University, Germany

SUMMARY
Because public action matters in all countries and political systems, how it is organised now and in the future must exercise the
minds of policy-makers in and beyond government. In response, we argue that there is considerable merit in having a widely
applicable analytical lens through which to look at and assess present arrangements and future possibilities. The lens has multiple dimensions, which we address here in terms of three broad approaches to organising public action. We label these approaches as statism, statemarket dualism and statemarketcivil society synergism. Their components and distinctive
features are discussed, followed by a consideration of signicant application issues and concerns. A fundamental matter is
how best to balance the demands of public action and organised responses with the requirements of publicness and legitimacy
as systems of government and governance are maintained and reformed. Copyright 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key wordsgovernment; governance; public action; organising; statism; statemarket dualism; statemarketcivil society
synergism

INTRODUCTION
We begin with the proposition that public action denitely mattersand, accordingly, that approaches to
organising it must be a core concern of government and governance. This proposition has universal application
and signicance. Of course, how action is conceived, the nature of its publicness and the organised means of
pursuing it can, and do, differ quite markedly from country to country, political system to political system. This
is inevitable given diverse histories, cultures, traditions, political regimes and socio-economic conditions.
Nevertheless, the fundamentals are certain and clear, with some distinctive, interrelated approaches being
discernible of practical and scholastic signicance alike.
In all countries and polities, action of public scope and interest not only is taken but also needs to be taken by
means that are organised, however formal or informal and however effective or ineffective. Consequently, whatever the circumstance, there is logic in having a comprehensive and widely applicable analytical lens through
which to look at government and governance in at least two situations. One is when describing, assessing and comparing how public action is presently organised in various contexts, with an appreciation also of the past. The other
is when considering, proposing and taking decisions on how public action might more appropriately be organised
in those contexts in the future in the light of the present and past. The two situations are intertwined in practice and
theory, with considerable benets for practitioners in having a well-informed understanding of the present and past
as an essential precondition for deciding meaningfully on future change and continuity.
*Correspondence to: I. Thynne, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T. 2601, Australia.
E-mail: ian.thynne@anu.edu.au

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I. THYNNE AND B. G. PETERS

Hence, the value of our considering the components of three broad approaches to organising public action. The
approaches assist in addressing the present and the future, with the roles and means of organising public action being articulated as the discussion proceeds. The roles and means are central to a re-phrasing of the opening proposition as a two-part question underpinning the discussion. Thus, because public action matters and must therefore
be a core concern of government and governance, what are its constituent roles and by what organised means are
those roles (appropriately) performed?
THE APPROACHES: OVERVIEW
We refer to the three approaches as statism, statemarket dualism and statemarketcivil society synergism.
The rst is long-standing, and although still pertinent especially for the core policy, command and control activities
of the state, it has been built on and complemented by the other two. The second has similarly been a basis of and
reworked by the third, while also retaining its distinctiveness. The third has become increasingly more prominent,
while not detracting from the continuing importance of the other two. All three are relevant in considering
signicant aspects of the forms and dynamics of government and governance in various political systems involving
the state, market and civil society.
The rst approach is founded in old public administration (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2003: 512, 2829) and
progressive-era public administration (Hood, 1994: ch 7) as classic interventionist governance (Knill and
Tosun, 2012: 210). The second draws on new public management (Hood, 1991, 1994: ch 7) and managerialism
(Pollitt, 1990) with elements of regulated self-governance (Knill and Tosun, 2012: 210211). The third aligns
with new governance (Rhodes, 1996; Salamon, 2002) and new public governance (Osborne, 2010) essentially
as cooperative governance (Knill and Tosun, 2012: 211). Their combined canvass includes the administration of
policies in legislative and non-legislative form; the management of people, programmes and projects; and the
governance of institutionalorganisational structures and interactionsall in the public arena (Thynne, 2014).
Each of the approaches embraces action as the performance of interrelated roles vis--vis various goods and services. The roles are owner, producer, provider, regulator and facilitator, such that goods and services are owned,
produced, provided, regulated and facilitated, with relevant policies being developed, implemented, evaluated
and adjusted, reactively and proactively. The goods and services are public, private, toll and common pool, according to the nature of their accessibility and the consequences of their consumption or use, with important implications for the roles performed in relation to them.
In addressing the approaches with reference to roles, goods and services, we use two interdependent organising couplets. As Simon (1946) argued, most of what we do administratively comes as dichotomies. Each component of the dichotomy has some practical utility, but each also has its costs. This applies to our two dichotomies as couplets. The rst couplet
is integration and autonomy embracing types of organisations as legalstructural entities. The second is verticalism and
horizontalism comprising hierarchies and networks within and across organisations. Both couplets variously involve issues of power, legitimacy, coordination, specialisation, collaboration, competition, control and accountability.
Together, the approaches based on organising couplets and issues of signicance to roles, goods and services
constitute a comprehensive analytical lens through which to address the present and future organising of public
action in various political systems. The components of the approaches are interrelated as depicted in Figure 1.
THE APPROACHES: ELABORATION OF COMPONENTS
Public: state, market and civil society
All three approaches, in differing ways, involve the state, market and civil society as organised political, economic and social communities of public importance, respectively. These aspects of the state, market and civil society as sectors of organised action are captured in Table 1. As shown, the arrangements in each sector include
legal foundations, institutions/organisations, relationships, decision-making, spatial dimensions and people. Most
of the arrangements are sector specic and distinctive, but become mixed and blended in practice, as the
approaches appreciate.
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Figure 1. Interrelated components of the approaches.

As the organising of public action is re-aligned and re-congured from statism through statemarket dualism to
statemarketcivil society synergism, different legal tools, norms and values become intertwined, as do different
institutionalorganisational structures and cultures comprising different types of relationships and decision-making
of signicance to different delineations of people and place. Such intertwining results, in particular, from the
dominance of the state being complemented and conditioned by the involvement of the market and civil society
in the pursuit of the public interest. This sees extensive state activity as interventionist governance being softened,
and often replaced, by forms of regulated self-governance, cooperative governance and private selfgovernance, with varying levels of market and civil society activity as the softening or replacement occurs (Knill
and Tosun, 2012: 209212).
In the process, power as a multi-dimensional core of government and governance is increasingly dispersed,
shared and conditioned by multiple shadows (Peters, 2011). The coercive power of the state is exercised both
alongside and along with the exercise of contractual power of the market and consensual power of civil society.
This inevitably raises issues and challenges concerning the legitimacy of the arrangements and the forms and likely
efcacy of public control and accountability.

Action: roles vis--vis goods and services

The action on which the three approaches focus involves the performance of several roles in relation to numerous
goods and services in the public interest. The roles, while interconnected and often mutually supportive, have varied over time in their centrality and signicance, as recognised in the approaches. This has been a consequence of
changing alignments of the state, market and civil society in different contexts. More specically, it has had to do
with how particular features of goods and services have attracted public notice and necessitated some form of public action in making them available or responding to their natural availability.
In Figure 1, goods and services are recorded as public, toll, common pool and private. This recognised
typology is adopted in Table 2, which distinguishes the four types according to two criteria: rst, whether or
not someones access to them can readily be restricted; and, second, whether or not their consumption or
use by someone actually or effectively renders them unavailable for subsequent consumption or use by someone else (cf. Ostrom and Ostrom, 1977; Weimer and Vining, 1992: 41-42; Hood, 1986: 16). These criteria
raise important issues concerning whether action, and what forms of action, are necessary to foster or limit
the availability and accessibility of a good or service and to maintain or replenish it to ensure its ongoing availability. Where such issues require public policy responses leading to public action, the attention in government
and governance immediately turns to what roles need to be performed, with the possibility of varying involvement of the state, market and civil society.
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Table 1. State, market and civil society arrangements

The STATE
as an

The MARKET
as an

CIVIL SOCIETY
as an

Organised

Organised

Organised

Legal foundations:

Legal foundations:

Legal foundations:

Constitution
Statutes and ordinances
Regulations and orders

Contracts
Constitutions as member agreements
(in accordance with a Companies
Act or the like)

Customary law and lore

Constitutions as member agreements
(in accordance with a Societies Act,
Cooperatives Act, Trade Unions Act, etc)

Institutions/organisations:

Institutions/organisations:

Institutions/organisations:

Legislature
Executive (government)
Judiciary
Government organisations
(ministries/departments, executive
agencies, statutory bodies, etc)

For prot non-government organisations

(private and publicly listed companies,
corporations, rms, etc)

Not-for-prot non-government
organisations (associations, cooperatives,
unions, clubs, etc)
Families, clans, tribes

Political

Economic

Social

Relationships:
Inuence and command

Relationships:
Money and exchange

Relationships:
Trust and association

Decision-making:
Debates and votes leading to
majority decisions
Reasoning leading to judgements
Discharge of duty or exercise
of discretion leading to appropriate
decisions and action

Decision-making:
Bidding and negotiations
leading to agreements

Decision-making:
Discussion and debates leading
to consensus

Community

Community

Community

Spatial dimensions:

Spatial dimensions:

Spatial dimensions:

A country as a clearly dened

territory, with regions, districts, etc
delineated within it

Diverse territories within and beyond

a country

Diverse territories within and beyond

a country

People:

People:

People:

The public (citizens, residents,

voters, taxpayers, recipients of
goods and services)
Ofce-holders (politicians, judges
and ofcials)

Investors and shareholders

Directors and employees
Customers and clients

Members
Employees and volunteers
Donors
Beneciaries

In Figure 1, roles are recorded as owner, producer, provider, regulator and facilitator. These roles can all apply
to one good or service at the same time. For example, electricity as a private good of public signicance can include
ownership of the generation plant and transmission lines; production through generation; provision through supply;
regulation of plant, lines, supply and so on; and facilitation by way of grants, subsidies, fee-relief and so on. Here,
the roles, while distinguishable and able to be performed separately from one another, are interrelated by reason of
electricity being their common focus.
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Table 2. Types of goods and services

Accessibility of the
good or service

Availability of the good or service once access is gained and consumption or use occurs
Available for subsequent
consumption or use by
someone else

Unavailable for subsequent

consumption or use by
someone else

Very difcult, if not impossible,

to restrict someones access to it

Public good or service

Common pool good or service

Possible to restrict someones

access to it

Toll good or service

Private good or service

The ve roles can also be combined in terms of their use and purpose, with possible consequences for more than
one good or service. An example is ownership of a railway as a toll service in a public transport system. Such ownership can be used to facilitate provision and to regulate fares, with possible ow-on effects being the facilitation
and/or regulation of other public transport services with which the railway is competing commercially while also
needing to collaborate in the interconnection of transport services for commuters.
These and other alignments of roles, goods and services are all the result of policy decisions, which can sometimes
alter the inherent character of a good or service. For example, institutionalised education as a toll good becomes a
public good when its provision is free and other barriers to its accessibility are removed. Similarly, a public forest
as a common pool good becomes a public good when a ban on logging is imposed and enforced, and a toll good when
a ban on logging is accompanied by a physical barrier to access and the charging of entry fees.
Whatever the situation, roles concern goods and services in terms of the extent and consequences of their
availability, accessibility and consumption or use. In doing so, they raise the issue of what policy instruments
are appropriately adopted. For example, pure public goods and services depend largely on public law and power
for production and provision as they are incapable of being marketed. By contrast, the other three types of goods
and services are open to some possibilities for market instruments such as contracts, but using market instruments
may have negative consequences especially for common pool goods. The negotiated instruments of governance
involving various alliances of the state, market and civil society may be usable for all of the four types, although
they tend to be more effective for common pool and toll goods and services.
Organising: couplets and issues
The three approaches comprise different organisational bases of public action as roles, goods and services, in accordance with the arrangements outlined in Figure 2. Of particular signicance are two organising couplets: integration and autonomy, and verticalism and horizontalism. The rst of these couplets is formally manifest in the
establishment, apexes and power of organisations that constitute their legalstructural foundations. The second
couplet embraces various structural and operational alignments both within and across organisations. The couplets
are interrelated, with mixed arrangements being affected by issues of power, legitimacy, coordination, specialisation and so on, as depicted in Figure 2.
Formal degrees of organisational integration and autonomy in government and governance are inherent in
the legal instruments by which organisations are established, coupled with who heads them and who has legal
power (Thynne, 2003). For example, a ministry or department established by an executive decision and headed
by a government member with legal power is formally integrated into the executive. By contrast, an agency or
authority established by an executive decision or statute and headed by someone other than a government
member or by a board or council with legal power has a degree of formal autonomy from the executive. This
is also so with a company established by an agreement pursuant to a Companies Act and headed by a board of
directors with legal power, including the power to enter into contracts, to buy and sell property, and to sue and
be sued in the companys own corporate name. Such a power is acquired through the companys incorporation
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Figure 2. Organising couplets and issues.

as a legal person, which is a status a ministry, department, agency or authority can similarly be given by formal
legal prescription. The other legal power of a ministry, department and so on is the power to administer policies in legislative and non-legislative forms as a matter of administrative law and practice.
These arrangements comprising mixes of instruments, apexes and power with integration and autonomy
opportunities embodied in them have considerable strategic importance and value for governments, as the
approaches appreciate. They enable governments by conscious organisational design to subject some forms of
public action to direct political control and accountability as a matter of integration, while giving other forms
varying degrees of autonomy within the bounds of alternative control and accountability mechanisms (Thynne
and Wettenhall, 2004).
Integration and autonomy in government and governance are complemented by verticalism and horizontalism
involving hierarchies and networks. Signicantly, degrees of organisational integration and autonomy are shaped
by formal and informal modes of intra-organisational and inter-organisational interaction, vertically and horizontally.
The modes are pertinent at all levels in a hierarchy and at all stages of development and consolidation in a network.
Organisations, as ministries, departments, agencies, authorities and companies alike, are usually position-task
hierarchies, with coordination, control and accountability vertically up and down the hierarchy and horizontally
at various levels within it, as inuenced by the span of control and division of labour by specialisation. These formal arrangements are supported and often strengthened by informal alliances as networks that can enhance specialist collaboration rather than competition and thereby foster coordinative initiatives, vertically and horizontally.
Accordingly, intra-organisational networks, far from being alternatives to hierarchies, are frequently crucial to their
sustainability, efciency and effectiveness.
Organisations as hierarchies and networks internally are inevitably locked into various inter-organisational networks. Such networks can be effective bases of coordination and collaboration as differing levels of interactive intensity and value in inter-organisational relationships. As they develop and consolidate, their management can
require as much attention and effort as that of the organisations which comprise them. This can sometimes lead
to their becoming sufciently structured and cemented as to result in their emerging as new free-standing organisations at or beyond the hubs of other networks.
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In all integrative, autonomous, vertical and horizontal arrangements within and across organisations, mechanisms of control and accountability are central in conditioning and reviewing the exercise of power. Their impact
in this regard has immediate consequences for the legitimacy of organised public action, as founded in conformity
to rules, the justiability of rules in terms of shared beliefs, and legitimation through expressed consent
(Beetham, 2013: 20).
THE APPROACHES: EXPOSITION OF DISTINCTIVENESS
Statism
This approach to organising public action is characterised by a highly active and all-encompassing state. It
embraces ideas and practices of the welfare state (Wilensky, 1975), administrative state (Waldo, 1948)
and developmental state (Johnson, 1982), with the exercise of the states coercive power being central to
how a society is served and an economy managed. The action taken in the public interest is enabled and shaped
by a large body of law, within the bounds of the rule of law. The widespread use of law and the roles prescribed thereby permeate and affect most aspects of public life and well-being involving all manner of goods
and services.
The state in this approach is a big owner, producer, provider, regulator and facilitator of goods and services, with
direct consequences for their availability, accessibility and consumption or use. There is comprehensive state provision of social services, with ownership of associated goods, in education, health care, housing, income maintenance and so on. This is accompanied by state ownership, production and provision of public utility goods and
services such as water, sanitation, electricity, telecommunications and transport, as well as various other goods
and services. There is also extensive state regulation and facilitation of economic and social activity in the market
and civil society. The combined effect is a state whose presence and impact are widely and rmly felt throughout
an economy and society.
The control basis of the states coercive power concerning such an array of goods and services inevitably
results in the triumph of integration over autonomy and verticalism over horizontalism. This is especially so
in the provision of social services and in the regulation and facilitation of economic and social activity. In
these areas of action, integration and verticalism are catered for through the use of ministries and departments
as core organisational means of aligning politics, policy and administration. The justication is that these
organisations enable the direct coupling of political control and accountability with essential professional
support arrayed hierarchically with an appropriate layering of administrative control, accountability and
specialisation.
Where a loosening of control and the exercise of contractual power are relevant in the ownership, production
and provision of public utility goods and services and other areas of activity, incorporated authorities as statutory
corporations are favoured. Such corporations can be given degrees of operational autonomy especially in stafng
and nancing, while concomitantly being subject to political control through the power of appointment and
direction, in addition to legislative intervention given their statutory foundations. These limits to their autonomy
and any associated horizontality ensure the maintenance of integration and verticalism (Verhoest et al., 2004;
Thynne, 2006).
Another loosening of control occurs in the review of administrative decisions resulting from the exercise of coercive power in provision and regulation, as well as in the conduct of nancial and related audits. Here, administrative tribunals, ombudsmen, audit ofces and other review authorities have signicant regulatory and facilitative
responsibilities, as prescribed in their statutory foundations and supported by appropriate degrees of stafng and
operational autonomy.
The dominance of integration and verticalism in this approach is complemented by inter-organisational coordination and collaboration largely being dictated politically rather than more naturally occurring in response to the
interrelationship of roles, goods and services. Similarly, where there is inter-organisational competition over access
to human and nancial resources, political determination and direction supported by the input of control-oriented
personnel authorities and nance departments are the main responses. There is little, or no, effective use made of
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inter-organisational networks in addressing inter-organisational coordination, collaboration and competition in

these circumstances.
Overall, the emphasis is on the complementarity of policy and administration as fostered and conditioned by
politics and law. Any necessary degrees of organisational autonomy and horizontalism in specic aspects of role
performance are kept in check and in keeping with the overarching requirements and signicance of integration
and verticalism as the core of this statism approach.
Statemarket dualism
This approach to organising public action is based on strategic alignments of state and market contributions and
mechanisms. It recognises the value of mixed arrangements involving the coercive power of the state and contractual power of the market, with varying combinations of command and exchange in role performance. This sees
administration being recast as management (Hood, 1991; Pollitt, 1990), along with ideas and practices of the
regulatory state (Majone, 1999; Oliver et al., 2010) and the state under contract (Boston, 1995) embracing
the twofold involvement of the state and market.
The state in this approach is a signicant provider or facilitator of social services, but with organisational integration and verticalism often giving way to degrees of organisational autonomy and horizontalism as fostered
through the use of executive agencies rather than ministries and departments as implementation entities. These
agencies can benet from a more specialised concentration on role performance in a less hierarchical or even at
structure. If managed appropriately, focused role specialisation within an organisation need not be at the expense of
inter-role and inter-organisational coordination.
At the same time, the market can be embraced through contract-based purchasing of an array of inputs, including the tendering of advice on service needs and options, the actual provision of services, and the review of service
quality. Such purchasing can be subject to competition, followed by periods of statemarket collaboration as a basis of relational contracting involving networks of state agencies and market contributors.
With regard to public utility goods and services and other commercial ventures, active state involvement is
likely to be through the use of wholly owned government companies with considerable degrees of organisational
autonomy within the bounds of political direction and/or negotiated agreements with a government. There are
several reasons for this favouring of companies, including their having structures and networks in common with
possible market collaborators or competitors, being quite readily responsive to changing market forces and
demands, having a divisible share capital as an essential basis for possible divestment, and being relatively free
from what a government might deem to be rather intrusive means of public control and accountability (Thynne,
2011: 187).
Alternatives to full state ownership concerning public utilities and other commercial activities of public importance are mixed statemarket ownership or full market ownership subject to regulation by state regulatory
authorities with statutory foundations. In the former, state ownership enables the immediate regulation and
facilitation of production and provision, along with market input through ownership. In the latter, the absence
of state ownership is countered by the use of regulatory authorities as means of protecting and promoting the
public interest.
Other market-based ownership, provision and production can also be subject to state regulation by regulatory
authorities in this approach. Where this is so, responsive regulation (Braithwaite, 2011) has considerable value,
as it does even more so in the statemarketcivil society synergism approach, as recognised below.
Overall, statemarket dualism in the organisation of public action seeks to maximise the known or assumed
capacities of the state and market in the management of an economy and society in the public interest. It does this
by appreciating the value of organisational integration and verticalism being tempered quite considerably, and
sometimes even replaced, by signicant degrees of organisational autonomy and horizontalism. This requires that
power be dispersed and shared and that a balance be struck between collaboration and competition. An ever-present
challenge is that of addressing appropriately the diffusion of control and accountability in role performance so as to
maintain the legitimacy of public action.
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Statemarketcivil society synergism

Of the three approaches to organising public action, this one most rmly embraces the structural and operational
dynamics of organisational integration, autonomy and horizontalism concerning roles, goods and services in the
public arena. Ideas and practices of governance come directly to the fore, as reected, for example, in collaborative governance (Emerson et al., 2011), interactive governance (Sorensen et al., 2012) and constellational
governance (Thynne and Massey, 2013). Involved is an eclectic array of organisations, with the widespread dispersing and sharing of power comprising limited coercive power of the state, along with contractual power of the
market and consensual power of civil society in varying congurations.
The synergistic basis of this approach makes it especially interested in the means and styles of service provision and of social and economic regulation and facilitation, involving multiple alignments of organisational
integration, autonomy and horizontalism cross-cutting the state, market and civil society. An essential requirement is that, whatever their type, state organisations work exibly and strategically with organisations of the
market and civil society with one or more of three interrelated capacities as distinctive features of their existence and modes of operation. All three entail their forging and maintaining interlocking inter-organisational
networks of coordination and collaboration comprising relevant mixes of specialisation freed from the
constraining effects of hierarchy (Milward, 2014; Popp et al., 2014; Alford and OFlynn, 2012; Evans, 1997;
World Bank, 2004).
One capacity for state organisations is to be a service collaborator. This capacity recognises their need, actively
and proactively, to be integral and effective contributors to all networks of particular relevance to their service provision responsibilities. The expectation is that they will willingly succumb to considerable integration within the
networks, while retaining the necessary autonomy both within and beyond them to safeguard their own identities
and continuity. This kind of balancing sees collaboration as having both integrative objectives and autonomy imperatives in the way service provision is structured and achieved.
Another capacity for state organisations is to be a network synthesiser. This time, the capacity involves an organisation not just being an active contributor to relevant networks, but more importantly being very well equipped
and able to manage those networks. The focus moves from organisations in networks to networks of organisations,
with the networks involved needing to be managed as much as, if not more than, the organisations comprising
them. This poses signicant integrative challenges for synthesisers, which can be particularly pertinent, for example, in the management of networks essential to education-inducement-support-based means of responsive regulation (Braithwaite, 2011).
A third capacity for state organisations is to be an instinctive adaptor. This capacity underpins the other two in
that effective network collaboration and synthesising require an astute organisational ability to adjust quite readily
and with considerable agility to changing needs and demands in service provision and in social and economic
regulation and facilitation. There is a need to predict and respond quickly to emerging forces and tensions within,
between and beyond relevant networks, with integration, autonomy and horizontalism in a constant state of ux
and thus having continually to be assessed and re-negotiated, leading to a recasting of organisational contributions
and commitments.
Overall, the organising of public action as an exercise in maximising statemarketcivil society synergy through
inter-organisational networks is fundamentally dependent on the collaborative will and capacity of all contributing
organisations. The networks involved are particularly pertinent in service provision and in regulation and facilitation. Of special interest is their expected value in the responsible addressing of complex, wicked-type policy problems in public life. Again, a key challenge is how to cope appropriately with the diffusion of control and
accountability in maintaining the legitimacy of public action.
THE APPROACHES: APPLICATION ISSUES AND CONCERNS
The cataloguing of approaches to organising public action so far identies a number of important patterns of
governance and the organisations, roles, goods and services associated with them. The cataloguing is important
in understanding government and governance, but is only a beginning of that understanding. A crucial question
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becomes how to make the approaches work in assessing systems and in appreciating the dynamics of choice
among the alternatives available to policy-makers. There is a need to know how policy-makers decide when
faced with the alternatives.
The distinctive organisations in the approaches are set out in Table 3, accompanied by reference to their main
roles. Given the alignments, where statism or statemarket dualism are appropriate because of the types of roles
and power involved, the organisational choices are reasonably straightforward. By contrast, where the adoption
of statemarketcivil society synergism is favoured and justied, the choices become more complex and potentially quite uncertain. The main reason for this is that, while organisations in the rst two approaches are
characterised largely by their legalstructural foundations which immediately convey something about their role
suitability, the dening features of those in the third approach are their essential capacities. Such capacities are
not a given; they are not objective and are not susceptible to simple assumption and allocation. Instead, they are
context dependent and have consciously to be developed, maintained and appliedby an array of organisations
with differing foundations, responsibilities and obligations. These factors compound the situation and the
choice-making necessarily entailed.
The issue of capacity, which policy-makers must address when determining appropriate means of organising
public action, is not conned to the capacities addressed above. It applies as well to the capacities of market
and civil society organisations to contribute to public action in ways essential in statemarket dualism and state
marketcivil society synergism. Here, the capacities involved need to complement, and sometimes even replace,
those of state organisations. This means that state organisations not only need to be fully cognisant of their own
capacities and the limitations thereof, but also need to be aware of what capacities exist and could be tapped in
the market and civil society, along with an appreciation of what the incentives might or might not be for market
and civil society organisations actually to become involved.
With regard to capacities, Grindles (1996: ch 1) analysis of four essential state capacitiesinstitutional, technical, administrative and politicalhas value in identifying specic sorts of capacities and in highlighting the
need for them to be interrelated and mutually reinforcing. When one or more of these state capacities is weak and
could be complemented by proven capacities in the market or civil society, there might be considerable merit in
statism giving way to one of the other approaches (Helmke and Levitsky, 2004). But the question will remain as
to how the change could be accomplished politically without undermining the legitimacy of the state.
Capacity considerations in the adoption of one or more of the approaches need to be accompanied by a clear
appreciation of underlying values and the assurance of some form of public value. For example, natural justice,
as fairness and due process, is essential in administrative decision-making and review in the statism approach and
must continue to be adhered to in the exercise of the states coercive power, whatever use is made of the other
Table 3. Approaches, organisations and roles
Approaches

Distinctive organisations

Main roles

Statism

Ministries and departments

Statutory corporations
Review and audit bodies

Policy advice provision

Social service provision
Social and economic regulation/facilitation
Public utility ownership/production/provision
Administrative and nancial regulation/facilitation

Statemarket dualism

Executive agencies
Government companies
Regulatory authorities

Social service provision

Public utility ownership/production/provision
Public utility, social and economic regulation/facilitation

Statemarketcivil society
synergism

Service collaborators
Network synthesisers

Social
Social
Social
Social
Social

Instinctive adaptors

Copyright 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

service provision
service provision
and economic regulation/facilitation
service provision
and economic regulation/facilitation
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83

approaches in other areas of public action. By contrast, a form of negotiated agreement-based justice is relevant
when contracts are favoured instruments of public action involving the exercise of contractual power in exchange
relationships; or where consensual power and associational relationships are appropriate, involving the use of compacts or accords in service provision, regulation or facilitation, a form of associative social justice assumes
importance.
Other values such as efciency, economy and cost-effectiveness are similarly pertinent in the adoption and justication of the approaches as various forms of organisational intervention. These values tend, in particular, to be
associated with statemarket dualism and general neo-liberal thinking in conceptualising and organising public action. They are complemented by such values as openness, transparency and responsiveness in the fostering of
statemarketcivil society synergism, as well as by the more political values associated, for example, with
clientelismthus demonstrating the numerous ways of pursing and justifying public governance and the roles
of the organisations involved.
Capacity and value considerations in the organising of public action are embodied in traditional common law
doctrines of prime necessity, common calling and business affected with a public interest (Taggart, 1997:
67; Klappstein, 2014). A prime necessity is a good or service of immediate signicance to the public weal and,
therefore, should be readily accessible, with relevant action inspired by a public calling or commitment similar
to a public service motivation (Perry, 2014). Such a calling or commitment is pertinent to and can nd expression
in all three approaches, just as a business affected with a public interest can be state, market, civil society or some
combination thereof.
More broadly, there are issues and concerns of failure and alternatives to degrees of state involvement in public
action. At the extreme, state failure may generate the need to move policy-making and governance largely or
completely away from the state towards the market or civil society. If the state, because of fragmentation, corruption, inadequate resources or poorly trained staff, is not able to provide needed goods and services to the public,
there can be sense in using market or civil society organisations and not just in bringing them into governance
in alliance with the state. In some instances, such use can be voluntary, as when a government decides no longer
to perform an activity in recognition of the knowledge, skills and operational ability of signicance to it existing
beyond the state. In other instances, market or civil society organisations may simply assume control of a policy
area or may create some competition to state action. For example, if public education or health care is inadequate,
religious or other civil society organisations may supplement, or compete with, the state systemas they do in
many contexts. Market organisations may also provide these services, again as they frequently do. Less obvious
contemporary examples are those of mining companies in some African countries, while historical precedents
are the British and Dutch East India companies.
Alternatives to statism may be especially important options for some less developed political and administrative
systems. Migdal (1992) recognises that these are often cases of strong societies and weak states in which the alternatives to the state are readily apparent and appear to provide mechanisms for avoiding many of the governance
challenges being faced. Yet, that said, the rather facile use of non-state means at times may lock states into
long-term cycles of incapacity and low performance (Grindle, 2007). Further, civil society may also be weak in
many developing contexts, so that the only available option for supplementing the roles of the state may be the
market engaging in public action primarily for its own purposes rather than for the public good.
The possibility of such consequences of moving away from state involvement in public action conrms the need
to be careful not to assume too readily that the use of alternative approaches represents benign options for governance. Even in more developed political and economic systems, the reliance on the market may allow the extraction of monopoly rents by presumably regulated industries. In less developed systems, sections of the marketfor
example, the drug cartels in Mexicomay well be capable of providing a governance of a sort, including education, health care and public safety, albeit at a very high cost.
Much the same may be true for providing governance largely through civil society organisations. Most of the
literature on network-based governance assumes an almost angelic character in this form of governance, but it need
not be. Many organisations presumably participate in networks in order to advance their own interests, so we
should expect them to pursue those interests. Also, networks can segment governance at least as much as freeCopyright 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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I. THYNNE AND B. G. PETERS

standing organisations acting reasonably autonomously, thus exacerbating the already vexing problems of horizontal integration of policies and service provision. This segmentation may enhance capacity in one policy area but
weaken the overall capacity of the state.
Some social networks beyond the state are perhaps the most benign of the alternatives to state involvement in
organising public action. For example, clientelism in Latin America (and elsewhere) can be conceptualised as a form
of social governance, but it is far from benecial to most of the participants, and certainly not to those excluded from
participation (Piatoni, 2003). Other social forms of governance, such as the Maa in Southern Italy or street gangs in
many cities, are far from benign, although they supply a form of public governing that is sometimes quite effective.
But even the benign networks may create a downward spiral of state capacity and a loss of legitimacy.
These are just some of the more pertinent application issues and concerns. There are numerous others, both specic and broad. All need to be factored into how roles, power and organisations are aligned in the approaches and
how decisions are made about the appropriateness of the alignments given the importance of capacity, values and
legitimacy in the organising and achievement of public action.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
This discussion provides a preliminary analysis of the complex patterns of interaction between the state, market and
civil society in contemporary governance. In particular, it considers how three fundamental sets of variables
public, organising and actionare currently being addressed in the practical world of government and governance, as well as in academic studies of these matters. Each of the sets of variables itself has a great deal of internal
variation.
A crucial matter appreciated in the discussion is that dependence on the state as the key contributor to public
action in most policy sectors is not viable, if it ever was. Understanding what governments do for their citizens
has for some years required extending the analysis to include private contributorsboth market and civil society.
Hence, the relevance of the analytical lens advanced here, which provides a way of understanding the array of organisations and roles available in providing public governance at present and in the future.
Concomitantly, the discussion also demonstrates that any announcements of the death of the state in favour of
the market and/or civil society in public governance are very premature. Despite imperfections and failures of the
state, its involvement in governing and public action remains essential, especially when governing is intended to
ensure fair and equitable treatment for all citizens.
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