Interactive Governance

Jacob Torfing teaches political science, political theory and public administration. He is the director of Center for Democratic Network Governance and vice-direction of the large-scale research project on Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector. He is Professor in Politics and Institutions at Roskilde University in Denmark.B. Guy Peters is an honorary professor at the City University of Hong Kong. He is author or editor of over 60 books and is currently founding co-editor of the European Political Science Review. He is Maurice Falk Professor of American Government at the University of Pittsburgh and also Distinguished Professor of Comparative Governance at the Zeppelin University in Germany.Jon Pierre holds adjunct professorships at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Nordland in Norway. He has published extensively on theories of governance, public administration and urban politics. He is co-author (with Guy Peters) of Governance, Politics and the State (Palgrave, 2000) and Governing Complex Societies (Palgrave, 2005) and editor of Debating Governance (Oxford University Press). He is Professor of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg.Eva Sørensen is a long time student of public sector reform in Western liberal democracies. Her main focus has been on how interactive forms of governance that bring public and private actors in to close collaboration has affected the capacity of the public sector to provide effective and democratic governance. In recent years her interest has turned towards the question of to what extent and how interactive forms of governance can contribute to enhancing public innovation. She is currently direction of huge research project called 'collaborative innovation in the public sector' which is financed by the Danish strategic research council.

• Introduction1: The Governance Debate and the Rise of Interactive Governance2: Governance in other Disciplines: One Approach or Many?3: Power and Politics In Interactive Governance4: Measuring Governance5: Horizontal, Vertical, and Diagonal Governance6: Institutionalizing Interactive Governance7: Metagovernance: The Art of Governing Interactive Governance8: New Roles and Role Dilemmas in Interactive Governance9: Assessing and Improving Effective Interactive Governance10: Assessing And Improving The Democratic Quality of Interactive Governance11: Transparency and Governance12: ConclusionsReferences

Every so often a book comes along that catches and consolidates fundamental shifts in the practice or breakthroughs in the study of public administration. ... My hunch is that Interactive Governance could be such a book; it is at least my belief that it should be. ... Their work allows even-handed judgments and retains a key awareness of the complexities, trade-offs, and potential negative side-effects of what seems to be the new frontier in the way in which modern societies govern themselves.