“Governance, Globalization, and Public Policy” Edited By: “Patricia Kennett” Reviewed By: Mughiza Imtiaz

 

BOOK REVIEW

Book Title: “Governance, Globalization, and Public Policy” 

 Edited By: “Patricia Kennett”

Reviewed By: Mughiza Imtiaz 

Governance, Globalization and Public Policy

Introduction of Book

The Book “Governance, Globalization and Public Policy” edited by “Patricia Kennett” published by “Edward Elgar” in 2008. The book is a compilation of various articles on governance, globalization, and public policy. The book consists of 268 pages and the author divided the book into two parts. In the first part, the author develops the relationship between Governance, globalization, and public policy at several levels international, regional and national. This part is also united in its treatment of globalization as primarily an economic process.

Governance, globalization, and public policy aim to examine the nature of the political domain in the milieu of globalization and state restructuring. The authors of the book try to expand, magnify and integrate theoretically conceptual and concrete political discussions. The book originates with an examination of the concepts and perceptions of globalization and governance, the relationships between them, and the ramifications between public policy and the state.

In addition, the developments at the global and regional level, as well as the effects of the emergence of new regulatory governments in the context of liberalization and privatization, are examined.

The focus is then on a variety of thematic areas of public order such as human rights, health, and health care, housing markets, poverty, security, and the fight against poverty and  Terrorism.

This book highlighting the nature of the policy domain in the milieu of globalization and uplift the state. The authors of this book try to expand and integrate theoretical, conceptual, and applicable policy discussions. Initially, the book examines the ideas and perspectives connected with globalization and governance, the link between them, and the implications for public policy and the state. In addition, the developments at the global and regional level as well as, the effects of the emergence of new regulatory systems in the context of liberalization and privatization are examined.

The thematic areas of public policy such as human rights, health care, housing markets, poverty, security, poverty reduction, and Counter-Terrorism a variety of subjects focused is this book. The chapters provide a detailed and integrated overview of the association among global processes, governance, and public policy across a series of policy zones. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of governance models and processes in explicit domains of public policy and is of great interest to students pursuing programs in social policy, social administration, politics, and political science as well as for researchers and scientists involved in the political decision-making process.

Chapter 4 

“Transnational governance and national employment regulation: the primacy of competitiveness”

Writer: Otto Holman 

Discussion 

The  fourth chapter “Transnational governance and national employment regulation: the primacy of competitiveness” written by “Otto Holman” of the book “Governance, Globalization and Public Policy” edited by “Patricia Kennett” published by “Edward Elgar” in 2008. Otto Holman is Reader in International Relations in the Department of Political Science at The University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the role of transnational social forces in emerging patterns of European governance, peripheral capitalism, and EU enlargement, and the regional impact of core-periphery relations in Europe. He is the author of Integrating Southern Europe (1996), as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles in international political economy and European integration studies. He is currently preparing a book on transformation processes in Central Europe and the European Union, and new patterns of core-periphery relations in an enlarged Union.

In this article, the author describes the concept of governance in various manners. The present literature focusing on good governance and corporate governance. According to the European commission white paper governance discuss as ‘Rule process and behaviors that affect the way in which powers are exercised at European level”. European governance is not a very new phenomenon. In the aforementioned article on the new governance, Roderick Rhodes distinguishes six deferent ways in which the concept of governance is used and gained new relevance after the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Governance (particularly in the meanings of MLG and good governance) has become the key term to defend ‘the minimal state’ at the European level, as opposed to a would-be ‘federal super-state we will see how this new public management has entered the European decision-making structures too. Governance as a ‘socio-cybernetic system. This refers to the fact that non-state actors (usually called ‘lobby groups’) move their lobbying activities to the European level in response to an increase in the policy-planning and law-making powers of, notably, the European Commission. In theory, this seems a quite reasonable conclusion. But in practice, we see an unequal distribution of ‘capabilities to act’ at the European level. The author's main focus in the next section on one particularly important and in fluential public-private partnership: that is, between transnational business and the European Commission. I see this partnership as an informal practice of European governance, intentionally regulating social relationships and the underlying conflicts by reliable and durable means and institutions. According to the ERT analysis, the causes of structural unemployment in Europe and the weak response of employment to economic growth were mainly due to institutional rigidities and high levels of social protection. The first attempts to create a European employment policy date from the early 1990s. The EU was confronted with economic recession and a rapid succession of monetary crises right after the European 92 project had been formally completed on 1 January 1993. The Treaty of Amsterdam did not depart however from the course the EU had taken since the early 1990s.In this chapter. I have tried to show the remarkable synchronization of ideas developed in the cupola of the ERT (and put down in a number of reports).

On Another hand, a number of policy initiatives of the European Commission in the field of the EES, method of benchmarking best practices on managing change will be devised by the European Commission networking with deferent providers and users, namely the social partners, companies, and NGOs. This chapter is a slightly revised version of an earlier paper, published in Perspectives on European Politics and Society 2006. These are the recurrent themes in four different reports on European labor markets which the ERT published in the 1990s. More recently, these themes are part of publications on the progress of the so-called Lisbon process.