Introduction to Governance Analysis: Critical Enquiry at the Intersection of Politics, Policy and Society

Abstract

This book offers a theoretical and analytical account of governance that enables us to investigate how societies are governed, and with what consequences for power and inequality. This approach enables us to treat governance as at once fully political and fully social, and to rescue its relevance for the analysis of politics, policy and society. How we are governed is vital in the reproduction and transformation of societies. The ideas, decisions and actions that govern our collective life have material and discursive effects that structure social relations. And because such effects can be contested or erased over time, we need a theoretical account of governing that enables us to make visible the politics of these structuring effects in different settings. Our account of governance is therefore concerned both with the material and discursive manifestations of power and their contestation (the political), and also with how social formations are structured, (self-) organised and managed over time (the social). In this book, we conceptualise governance as regime(s) of governing practices that produce socio-political orders, of varying durability and contingency. We treat governance as produced by the material actions, interpretive understandings and structured social positions of socially constituted political actors. We move beyond poststructuralist accounts of government and discourse, and beyond accounts of state-centred policymaking. As such, our account is self-consciously 'post'-poststructuralist. We use this term as a shorthand to acknowledge the influence of original writings on governmentality, semiosis and state theories that we combine with a resolutely historicist and actor-centred approach. The actor-centredness of our conceptualisation gives due emphasis to meaning, action and structure in shaping governance in different settings. Any theoretical account is of course always developed in dialogue

Beyond Welfare Chauvinism and Deservingness. Rationales of Belonging as a Conceptual Framework for the Politics and Governance of Migrants’ Rights

“…The national state is existentially territorial, that is, it has a distinctively spatial dimension, even if the boundaries of that territory are frequently contested, challenged, or rendered indeterminate through colonial projects (Hansen and Jonson 2014;Carmel 2019). Seen as homeland (Yuval-Davis, 1997), rights to be present in a physical space are subject to temporal-territorial politics of belonging, a 'racialisation of exclusion and inferiorization that are the outcome of the relative new presence of particular people and collectives in particular places […]' (Yuval Davis 2011 p.99; Anthias and Yuval-Davis 2005).…”

“…How migration is governed, and how migrants' welfare is governed, are closely, but contingently, related (Ataç and Rosenberger 2019;Mayblin 2019). At the same time, particular governing practices depend on, and are reproduced by, political discourse and meaning-making, that establish what can and should be governed, how and with what effects (Carmel, 2019).…”

The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map

“…In order to grasp the duality of migration and its governance and politics from a critical scholarly perspective, we conceptualise 'governance and politics' as concerned with (1) 'regimes of governing practices' (Carmel, 2019), and (2) political contestation. This approach enables our contributors across the whole Handbook to explore a range of practices as well as challenges to them, and to examine how they exert specific material effects on political, economic and social relations; including, and beyond, migration.…”

“…In doing so, we take a multi-scalar perspective on the interaction of global structural conditions; specific policymaking processes; and the everyday decision-making of actors involved in migration governance (ibid.). Our starting point is that migration governance both resides in highly structured and unequal relationships of power and is also made and remade in everyday action (Carmel 2019;Lenner 2020;Però 2011;Pott et al 2018;Shore et al 2011). The iteration of governing practices over time produces and reproduces certain forms of rule and institutions that acquire a taken-for-granted character.…”

Kansen van de Noordzee voor de Provincie Zuid-Holland

“…De beleidsinstrumenten die de provincie hierbij tot haar beschikking heeft staan vallen uiteen in juridische, economische of communicatieve prikkels. De governance-/beleidsanalyse(Carmel, 2019) bouwt op deskresearch, gesprekken met provinciale ambtenaren, overleg met de provincie en interactie met de stakeholders.Centraal in dit toekomstonderzoek staan de trends & ontwikkelingen op en rond de Noordzee, en welke kansen en/of bedreigingen deze trends & ontwikkeling bieden voor het realiseren van de ambities van de provincie en belanghebbenden. Dit binnen de kaders van exogene globale trends (zoals klimaatverandering) en overkoepelende ambities (zoals bepaald op nationaal of Europees betrekking tot Energie worden, onder andere, de volgende trends & ontwikkelingen relevant geacht (zie Tabel B2.4).…”