Networks, Network Governance, and Networked Networks

Theories of democratic governance have undergone significant changes over the last two decades with the spread of ideas and popular practices associated with New Public Management (NPM) and New Governance. In particular, inter-ministerial and inter-societal networking is becoming important because of the capacity to regulate complex transactional interdependency in modern administrative states. This paper examined various forms of networks and identified factors that influence the form of governance including asset-specificity, task complexity, transaction continuity, uncertainty, the degree of differentiation, and the Intensity of inter-organizational interdependence. In addition, the role of public institutions in different network governance varies considerably as they tend to play more active roles in vertical networks while a more symmetric relationship arise in horizontal networks among private and public actors. Managing and coordinating complex networks requires a skillful manager of the networked networks. New ICT and public institutions will play an important role as a vertical and horizontal integrator for managing interdependence within and between networks. It is hoped that the framework developed here can be used as a basis for developing and analyzing testable comparative models of inter-organizational coordination or governance mechanisms in the public policy and administration scenes.