Jacob Torfing

Governance has become one of the most commonly used concepts in contemporary political science. It is, however, often used to mean a variety of different things. This book helps to clarify this conceptual muddle by concentrating on one variety of governance-interactive governance. The authors argue that although the state may remain important for many aspects of governing, interactions between state and society represent an important, and perhaps increasingly important, dimension of governance. These interactions may be with social actors such as networks, with market actors or with other governments, but all these forms represent means of governing involving mixtures of state action with the actions of other entities. This book explores thoroughly this meaning of governance, and links it to broader questions of governance. In the process of explicating this dimension of governance the authors also explore some of the more fundamental questions about governance theory. For example, although governance is talked about a great deal political science has done relatively little about how to measure this concept. Likewise, the term multi-level governance has become widely used but its important to understand that idea more fully and see how it functions in the context of interactive forms of governance. The authors also link governance to some very fundamental questions in political science and the social sciences more broadly. How is power exercised in interactive governance? How democratic is interactive governance, and is democratic governance always advanced through transparency?

This book provides a comprehensive and accessible account of the new theories of discourse developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, while in particular drawing on central insights provided by Slavoj Zizek. The book accounts for intellectual development of the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe from a Gramsci-inspired critique of structural Marxism over a neo-Gramscian theory of discourse to a new type of postmodern theorizing of great relevance for social, cultural and political theory. The central concepts of discourse, hegemony and social antagonism are carefully explained and discussed and the theoretical framework is applied both on a variety of theoretical problems and in a sample of empirical studies. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications of discourse theory for our political understanding of democracy, citizenship and ethics. New Theories of Discourse is written out of the basic conviction that postmodernity provides a great challenge to social, cultural and political theory and makes thinkable a whole range of new political projects of which the development of a radical plural democracy is one of the most promising and exciting.