ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book describes the emerging governance imagery, which the book denotes the politics of self-governance. The most significant contribution of the book is that it helps us to better understand the complex role of the state in advanced liberal democracies. Students of the politics of self-governance have over the last 10-15 years discussed the extent to which the emerging forms of self-governance have weakened state power in general and sovereign rule in particular. The meso level theories make a particular effort to escape structuralism by illuminating how social action is conditioned, not structured, by institutions. Thus, the meso level theories share the view that institutional features such as norms, rules incentives and routinized practices stabilize social action and in some cases produce path-dependencies that block change.
