2005 Volume 5 Pages 68-84
Now, in the nation state, the state is being hollowed out by quangocratization and devolution and so on. We see the shift “from government to governance” with our own eyes. This does not means only the public sector (central government and local government) has its governability, the private profit sector (market and firms) and the civic non-profit sector (non profit organizations) do have their own governability. These two private sectors share governing with the public sector (co-governance). Over this point, the revisionist type of new institutional theory thinks the state and government as a governing core can restructure the hierarchy of political administration system from inside, and can solve the problem of governance in cooperation with social actors. Whereas the new governance theory of policy network pays attention to multiple social stakeholding actors constituting civil society, and thinks social actors are going to improve and brush up their governance capability by forming of the network among them as a governing core. We can sum up a way of thinking of these opposite two poles as “governance by government” or “governance involving government.” However, we cannot deny a possibility of “failure of governance” that multiple actors to try to make their agreement end in failure. When such a failure occurs, the problem solution by metagovernance (governance of governance) must be tried again. But there is still a possibility of “failure of metagovernance.” To escape this failure, we expect that stakeholder associations will empower their capability of monitoring, accountability and responsibility, monitor whether the system of government and governmental bureaucracy is rational nor not, and play a part to realize the social integration, try to bring a synergy of the system rationality with the social integration.
