Governance and Democracy katarsis survey Paper

CAHIERS DU CRISES 

–

 COLLECTION ÉTUDES THÉORIQUES 

–

 NO 

ET0908 

24

 

 

 

 

 

1.2. 

Corporate Governance and Managerial Governance 

Governance also refers to problems posed by organisational studies and business 

administration, especially in the fields of corporate governance and corporate social 

responsibility (CSR), where their growing importance hints at the legal dimensions of the 

blurring boundaries between government and business actors. In recent years, Corporate 

Social Responsibility (CSR) has turned into an important concept for the creation of 

stakeholder value. Companies claim to take care of social and environmental regulations 

(Thompson 2005). This can be seen as a response to the criticism by NGOs, e.g. the Clean 

Clothes Campaign or the Fair Trade movement. Corporate governance aims at the above 

mentioned blurring of the private and the public spheres as some of the legal regulations 

formerly provided by the state are dismantled and provided voluntarily by private companies. 

Results, however, are meagre, which reduces the concept of CSR to a marketing strategy 

(Soederberg 2006). The growing importance of corporate governance also hints at the 

emerging regimes of multilateral governance (cf. tab. 2), where the classic liberal distinctions 

between the state and the market begin to blur (cf. Picciotto 2006; Leubolt 2007: 11f.) 

Governance approaches emphasise the shift from input 

– 

to output-oriented public 

management which means that the main emphasis should be on the efficiency of political 

actions (Peters/Pierre 2006). This development is linked to the increasing use of “new public 

management”, which emphasises the new role of the state to perform less “rowing” in the 

sense of direct government involvement but more “steering” in the sense of output-oriented 

governance (Osborne/Gaebler 1992: 34ff.). This has tended to mean that participation in the 

management of public services is limited to stakeholders who possess the necessary expertise 

to guarantee an efficient output (as e.g. in the conception of “participatory governance” 

featured by Grote/Gbikpi 2002: 120), excluding large groups of the population and, thus, 

leading to democratic deficits. Thus, managerial governance has highly exclusionary 

dynamics. 

1.3. Corporatism, 

Pro-Growth-Regimes and Welfare Governance 

Corporatism is an important concept related to governance. It developed in authoritarian 

variants under fascism and in more inclusive variants in the Keynesian National Welfare State 

(Jessop 1990). It is compatible with more or less democratic configurations. As it entitles 

representatives of social groups to influence politics directly, its democratic potential depends 

on the internal democratic organisation and the transparency and representativeness of 

---

GOVERNANCE AND DEMOCRACY 

–

 KATARIS PROJECT

 

25

 

 

 

 

 

decision making. Advocates of governance now claim to overcome bureaucratic and 

hierarchical forms of government, characteristic of Fordism, by offering participation and the 

integration of civil society and the citizenry in planning and community development. NGOs 

and Public Private Partnerships are new organisational forms seen as innovative responses to 

the crisis of the state and politics (Kooiman 1993; Demirovic 2003; Kamat 2004; Smith et al. 

2006). Therefore, the governance approach copes with the interplay between government and 

private actors and how it can be managed most efficiently. The “cooperative state” (Mayntz 

2004: 68ff.) leads to the re-emergence of corporatist arrangements (Jessop 2003: 35f.), which 

are referred to as “networks” (Rhodes 1997; Börzel 1998; Hillier 2000; Genieys et al. 2004; 

Damgaard 2006; Hadjimichalis/Hudson 2006; Moulaert/Cabaret 2006), “partnerships” 

(Lowndes/Skelcher 1998; Geddes 2000; Wakeford/Valentine 2001; Abrahamsen 2004; 

Geddes 2006), “associative democracy” (Hirst/Bader 2001), etc. 

Currently, corporatist structures are restructured, dismantling national arrangements of 

corporatism and adapting to the schemes of public–private partnerships and “stakeholder”–

participation schemes: The structures where workers’ and employers’ representatives had 

equal representation rights and had to reach consensual agreements have been replaced by 

more selective forms of corporatism where the institutional (input-)dimension is rather 

vaguely defined (Jessop 2003). These new corporatist structures are often designed as 

pro-growth governance structures which rest on shared interests in economic growth between 

governments and business elites. According to Jon Pierre (1999: 385) it is “a distinctly elitist 

governance model. Restrictive participation is necessary to prevent distributive objectives to 

be infused in the governance”, as institutionalized public-private partnerships enjoy 

substantive operative discretion and autonomy. Therefore, pro-growth structures are forms of 

multi-lateral governance which are likely to foster social exclusion.  

Welfare governance is a more inclusive way of corporatist governance, which includes a 

crucial role of the state in social spending and employment programmes, leading to income 

redistribution and the social inclusion of deprived groups of society. As stressed by the case 

study on Montreal (cf. Fontan et al. 2005a; Fontan et al. 2005b; Fontan et al. 2007), welfare 

governance arrangements still exist, especially in connection with other types of governance, 

such as pro-growth alliances or managerial governance. The Montreal experience also shows 

that current welfare governance arrangements have been redesigned to fit into the new 

Post-Fordist society. Case studies show combinations of the two above mentioned ideal types, 

leading to processes of reinforcing the hegemonic bloc and giving rise to opportunities for 

weaker agents, as also emphasized by Isabel André (2007: 2). Concerning the above 

---