Measuring the Effectiveness of European Governance Networks: A Process Driven Approach
Governance
Public Administration
Regulation
Analytic
Methods
European Union
Abstract
European Regulatory Networks (ERNs) have emerged as an important constituent of an effective European Administrative Space. In a recent survey more than 50 have been identified with responsibilities ranging from the EU-wide regulation of banking to the environment and telecommunications (Levi-Faur, 2011). Nevertheless, an overall theory about governance network effectiveness and its determinants has not yet emerged (Turrini et al., 2010).
Increasingly, social network analysis is being leveraged to formalise the study of governance networks (Lewis, 2011). However, I make the argument that public network governance is better conceptualised as a dynamic process (Torfing et al., 2012) than a static structure and that this perspective implies a very different approach to the formal study of public governance networks. Taking ERNs as a case study I therefore use process modelling tools developed at the intersection of organisation and information science to identify the determinants of effective public governance networks.
My core hypothesis is that effective public governance networks support processes similar to the systems coordination processes of orchestration and choreography known to be effective by information science. Consequently, in this paper I will deconstruct ERN processes symbolically so that they can be subjected to analysis using process metrics such as coupling, cohesion and complexity. By this means I provide a testable theory of EU-wide governance network effectiveness and its determinants.
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