Local Government Studies

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Public governance paradigms: competing and co-

existing
by Jacob Torfing, Lotte Bøgh Andersen, Carsten Greve and Kurt Klaudi
Klausen, Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020, 240 pp., £80
(Hardcover), ISBN 978 1 78897 121 8; £25 (eBook), ISBN 978 1 78897 122 5

Katarzyna Lakoma

To cite this article: Katarzyna Lakoma (2020) Public governance paradigms: competing and co-
existing, Local Government Studies, 46:6, 1039-1041, DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2020.1847904

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03003930.2020.1847904

Published online: 09 Nov 2020.

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LOCAL GOVERNMENT STUDIES
2020, VOL. 46, NO. 6, 1039–1043

BOOK REVIEWS

Public governance paradigms: competing and co-existing, by Jacob

Torfing, Lotte Bøgh Andersen, Carsten Greve and Kurt Klaudi Klausen,
Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020, 240 pp., £80 (Hardcover),
ISBN 978 1 78897 121 8; £25 (eBook), ISBN 978 1 78897 122 5

Public governance paradigms: competing and co-existing is the latest recent addi­
tion to Edward Elgar’s series on change in action. The book, written by inter­
nationally recognised Danish professors, covers the development of various
public governance paradigms over recent decades and how these different
approaches appear to go in and out of fashion. The authors contrast a ‘layer
cake’ model of separate forms of governance with a ‘marble cake’ that involves
hybrid forms of public governance, and they aim to explain how these different
paradigms relate to one another in a systematic way. The book serves as an
excellent addition to the public governance resources available in the academic
and practitioner community. Students and researchers studying public sector
reforms will be able to use it to conceptualise theoretical and empirical perspec­
tives on public governance, whereas policy-makers and practitioners will perceive
it as a guide on how to govern and how to be governed in today’s public sector
organisations.
The study of governance is a well-established part of social sciences. However,
comparing public governance paradigms is a relatively new area, reflecting the
recent emergence of various post-New Public Management interpretations.
Public governance paradigms, defined by the authors as the ‘policies, strategies,
programmes and institutional templates that govern the particular manner in which
the public sector is structured, functioning and operating’ (16), have a profound
impact on the outputs and outcomes of the public sector. This is why analysis and
evaluation of those policies, strategies, programmes and institutional templates is
crucial.
The authors distinguish seven key public governance paradigms from existing
academic literature. They begin with traditional governance paradigms
(Weberian bureaucracy and professional rule), then move on to the New Public
Management reforms, and finally end up with the recent alternatives to the
previous paradigms: the Neo-Weberian State, Digital Era Governance, Public
Value Management, and New Public Governance. Each governance paradigm
comes with its respective chapter touching on the contextual background, the
theoretical and empirical perspectives, and the dilemmas associated with them.
This structure enables readers to easily compare and contrast the advantages and
pitfalls of the different paradigms. Moreover, when comparing the paradigms, the
authors provide real-life examples from different public sector organisations,
1040 BOOK REVIEWS

focusing primarily on the authors’ native Scandinavia, but also on Anglo-Saxon

and Central European countries.
The book augments existing public administration scholarship on these topics
in three ways. First, the authors provide readers with the ‘public governance
diamond’ – a visual tool with five axes: centralised control, horizontal coordina­
tion, use of value articulation, use of incentives, and societal involvement. Each
axis represents a key analytical dimension of governance and is measured on
a scale from low to high, and the score from each axis is then connected in the
shape of a diamond. Subsequently, each paradigm is separately analysed within
its respective chapter according to the diamond’s dimensions. Furthermore, in
the penultimate chapter, the dimensions of all seven paradigms are collectively
analysed on a single diamond. This enables readers to understand different
patterns and modifications between the paradigms, and ultimately determine
competing and co-existing paradigms. The authors, however, emphasise that it is
also necessary to recognise the background to each of the paradigms to under­
stand how they emerge and develop over time. Various political, functional, and
institutional factors that underpin their development are, therefore, essential to
fully comprehend the diamond’s dimensions. The diamond, along with the con­
textual factors, serves as a tool that can be used to interpret already existing but
also forthcoming public governance paradigms.
Second, the authors pay particular attention to human behaviour in explain­
ing the differences between the conceptualisation of different paradigms and
how they operate in practice. Each governance paradigm is underpinned by
a set of behavioural assumptions about actors that tend to be associated with
the historical, geographical and institutional context. The authors emphasise
how the theoretically suggested behaviour of politicians, managers and
employees under each paradigm may conflict with reality, and how this may
detract from paradigm outcomes being achieved. Not every human being fits
comfortably within the agreed paradigm code, and it is vital to acknowledge
the role that politicians, public managers, and employees play in the delivery
of public services. In particular, the authors stress the importance of the
relationship between public managers and employees in all governance para­
digms, because this affects the way in which public organisations achieve their
objectives. Hence, analysis of human behaviour under each paradigm and
understanding its potential divergence from theoretical expectations should
not only be of academic interest, but it should also attract the attention of
practitioners.
Third, the book transcends the borders between various governance disci­
plines, including public administration, public management, public policy and
political science, to arrive at a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of the seven
key public governance paradigms. Thus, it provides an innovative and collective
perspective on public governance from various perspectives. Despite the fact that
some public governance concepts originate in political science and others come
from business studies, the authors demonstrate that they all share similar theo­
retical underpinnings. This multi-disciplinary perspective on public governance
will assist researchers and practitioners in clarifying any misinterpretations among
 LOCAL GOVERNMENT STUDIES 1041

the paradigms and the disciplines, and it will ultimately contribute to a more
detailed understanding of each paradigm.
A key argument that the authors share with readers is the fact that governance
paradigms co-exist and compete like ‘layers in a cake’. The bottom layers of this
cake act as fundamental governance paradigms, but they might merge with other
separate layers, resulting in hybrid forms of governance. Therefore, we might
present public governance paradigms as a rigid ‘layer cake’ of separate forms or
alternatively as a ‘marble cake’ of hybrid forms of public governance. The over­
riding conclusions suggest that public governance paradigms are not replacing
the old governance paradigms; instead, they are adding new layers on top of the
‘cakes’, which potentially bring more complexity and uncertainty to the public
sector. For public organisations, this means that they might even face more
challenges when operating in new hybrid practices than ever before.

Katarzyna Lakoma
Nottingham Trent University, UK
Katarzyna.Lakoma@ntu.ac.uk
© 2020 Katarzyna Lakoma
https://doi.org/10.1080/03003930.2020.1847904

Why isn’t government policy more preventive? by Paul Cairney and

Emily St Denny, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, 304 pp., £60
(Hardcover), ISBN 978 0198793298; £50 (eBook), ISBN 0198793294

In tackling the ‘prevention puzzle’ – why, despite commitments to make govern­

ment policy preventive, it is not – Cairney and St Denny focus on the UK political
system but demonstrate the usefulness of theory-driven policy analysis for policy
scholars and policymakers far more broadly. The authors reflect and respond to
the complexity which characterises all policy scholarship by drawing from a wide
analytical toolkit. A particular strength of their analysis, drawing from complexity
theory, evidence-based policymaking (EBPM), and social construction and policy
design (SCPD), is that it is grounded in substantive empirics – documentary
analysis and interviews with civil servants, politicians and third sector represen­
tatives, conducted as part of a longstanding, ongoing research agenda. In testing
governments’ espousal of preventive policymaking in terms of actual practices
and outcomes, the authors thus make an important addition to the practice turn
in critical policy scholarship.
The authors’ definition of prevention – as ‘a vague policy solution . . . an
idiom, prevention is better than cure; a set of simple aims, such as to intervene
as early as possible in people’s lives; and governance principles, such as to
encourage EBPM, localism, and the inclusion of service users in public service
design’ (139, authors’ emphasis) – provides a sense of the richness and rele­
vance of their analysis.