Choosing one’s history wisely: network governance and the question of institutional performance

Abstract

How do governments get from one place to another? This is the question that lies at the centre of all discussions of institutional performance. In this paper I review some recent work on new forms of partnership and collaborative governance which suggest that a number of countries have recently begun to break from their previous structures and to make significant shifts in the way actors are engaged in public institutions. The paper will ask whether this can be understood in terms of standard notions of institutional theory (path dependence, systems theory, cultural theory and so on) and if not, why not.