ABSTRACT
Against a background of widely discussed complexity and contingency in modern society, this ability to steer and control has to be conceptualized in such a way that the picture of an all-powerful guiding and controlling entity is not the outcome. Instead, emphasis should be placed on context-related choices faced by groups of actors so that they can consciously and collectively influence their current and future situations. From this perspective – which has already been demonstrated in contributions to the early debate on policy networks focused on governance aspects (mainly in those of continental European and, in particular, German scholars; see Marsh 1998) – an actor-related capability comes into play. Whilst, on the one hand, actors are not in a position to control their social environment completely due to exogenous constraints, they are, on the other hand, able to influence their social environment through obtainable policy instruments and on the basis of existing (but changeable) institutional settings (Scharpf 1986: 12). From this perspective, governability can be linked to politically (and in this sense endogenously) determined constraints and opportunities to realize what is desired and known by actors and perceived as collectively achievable by them (Scharpf 1988b: 63-4; see also Mayntz 1997: 192).3 Thus, governing a modern (functionally differentiated) society is not in principle impossible (as was argued in the 1980s; see the Luhmann-Scharpf controversy; Luhmann 1989; Scharpf 1989). Instead, first, the ability to govern (or to influence deliberately societal interactions) has to be clarified depending on the specific issue under consideration. Second, specific actor-related and politically determined opportunities to
develop and to pursue certain strategies have to be identified. Such opportunities are clearly related to institutional and organizational conditions which may or may not allow for or support collective political action. In certain circumstances political actors may not be able to govern their societal environment completely but may be able to change policy instruments or organizational rules with the aim of deliberately influencing their societal environment. In other words, actors can develop a capacity to reform their social environment in line with their agreed policy objectives. Whether or not actors are actually able to achieve what is intended by a particular reform is another question (see Mayntz 1997: 192), but from an actor-centred understanding of governability they need to demonstrate a capacity to react politically to failures and bring about reform by altering the definition of the problem, by questioning the reasons for the failure and by changing the policy instruments. However, this view on endogenously defined governability is dependent on how the ability to govern a certain issue is perceived within the relevant policy arena. This raises the issue that societal settings, which are to be altered by particular policy instruments according to the desires of actors involved, cannot be reduced intellectually to something which is objectively achievable. What is achievable can be determined only through what is known within the policy arena or what can be conceptualized as politically hegemonic knowledge or a particular knowledge order. Because this knowledge does not develop independently from discourses in society (and in academia), it is obvious that what is perceived as governable (and how) is dependent on processes taking place within the political system. In the case of EU cohesion policy, this becomes clear in taking into account the ‘paradigm shift’ introduced by the Single European Act in the 1980s, the intrusion of New Public Management (NPM) ideas in the late 1990s (see Heinelt and Malek 2002) and the current debate on competitiveness and the strengthening of (urban) growth poles (referred to in the so-called Lisbon process). The same applies to the shift away from the ‘command and control’ approach and the emphasis placed on sustainability in the environment policy of the EU in the 1990s (see Heinelt et al. 2001b; Heinelt and Töller 2003). It is therefore possible that the distinction between what is determined politically as possible (and necessary) and what is an exogenously fixed ‘mission impossible’ may be blurred. Nevertheless, the question has to be asked: what are the endogenous political but not irresolvable constraints on policy-making in order to achieve what is desired, known and perceived as possible by the actors involved? To answer this question is not easy in any circumstances, but is even harder in the context of fragmented and multi-level policy-making, such as in the EU. There is a great variation in both (i) exogenously given feasible conditions (in the individual member states and their regions) and (ii) what is desired, known and perceived as achievable by the multitude of actors involved at different levels and stages of policy-making. Taking into account the debate on the development and the current specificities of the EU polity stimulated by the multi-level governance approach, it is
important to emphasize that this approach was developed by going beyond the ‘traditional’ international relations theories of (neo-)functionalism and intergovernmentalism (Marks et al. 1996; see for a short overview Bache and Flinders 2004: 2-3). For the current purpose, it is more important to emphasize that the multi-level governance approach highlights the implications of a polity characterized by penetrating into the centre of the (nation) state and distributing tasks and competences between different nested territorial levels. What does this mean for the question of how to achieve governability (in the sense defined above) in multi-level policy-making? It may be the case that penetration into the centre of the (nation) state and the distribution of tasks and competences over nested territorial levels can fit in with a constellation of differing feasible conditions in the individual member states (and their regions) and varying desires, knowledge and perceptions of the multitude of actors involved. Therefore, it is worth looking at what characterizes multi-level policy-making in order to identify features and mechanisms in such constellations which might provide the conditions for achieving governability in the sense outlined above. This is done with reference to two cases – namely the EU structural funds and EU environment policy. To look for characteristics of multi-level policy-making and to identify features and mechanisms which could be helpful in answering the question posed above these two policies are interesting because they differ in some possibly relevant respects. The EU structural funds or cohesion policy has a redistributive character and relatively few regulations as well as similar objectives and rules. Conversely, the EU environment policy is characterized by a regulatory content and comprises different regulations and a number of objectives.
