Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and tables
- Preface
- 1 A state-centric relational approach
- 2 The resilient state
- 3 Metagovernance and state capacity
- 4 Hierarchy and top-down governance
- 5 Governance through persuasion
- 6 Governance through markets and contracts
- 7 Governance through community engagement
- 8 Governance through associations
- 9 Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Governance through persuasion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and tables
- Preface
- 1 A state-centric relational approach
- 2 The resilient state
- 3 Metagovernance and state capacity
- 4 Hierarchy and top-down governance
- 5 Governance through persuasion
- 6 Governance through markets and contracts
- 7 Governance through community engagement
- 8 Governance through associations
- 9 Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Much of the literature on governance focuses on the means of hierarchy, markets and associational networks (Thompson et al., 1991; Borzel & Panke, 2008). We have argued for a broader conception of governance that allows for the possibility of community engagement, which we discuss in the following chapter, as well as governance through persuasion, the focus of this chapter. This can be contrasted with governance through markets or hierarchies in terms of the motives of those governed. Markets and hierarchies rest upon the application of rewards and sanctions, whether in the form of profits and losses or prohibitions and subsidies. When governing through hierarchy and markets, governments achieve their goals by making it in the interests of other actors to behave in particular ways. Governance through persuasion takes a different form, in which governments or other actors seek to convince people that they ought to behave in a particular way. Governance through persuasion leads not simply to a change in behaviour but to a change in people's ideas about how they ought to behave.
The capacity to exercise power by changing someone's beliefs and values constitutes an important source of power analysed in Michel Foucault's work on ‘governmentality’: a term coined to refer to the styles of reasoning characteristic of governing practices (1991). One of Foucault's most important books, Discipline and Punish (1979), opens with a lengthy and horrifying account of the torture and public execution of a murderer in Paris in 1757.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Rethinking GovernanceThe Centrality of the State in Modern Society, pp. 97 - 114Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009