Tuomas Ylä-Anttila

Department of Sociology

p.o.box 18

00014 University of Helsinki

Finland

tuomas.yla-anttila@helsinki.fi

http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/blogs/ylaantti/english.htm

Policy Networks - An Organizational Form for Reflexive Policy Discourse on Global Governance?

Policy networks have, during the past two decades, emerged as a way of organizing policy discourse and implementation. These networks group governmental actors together with civil society and business organizations to take on tasks that traditional political institutions have difficulties in dealing with. The consequences of the development of these networks to democracy are ambiguous. On the one hand, they may provide citizens with new possibilities to interact with governing institutions. On the other, the networks may exclude all but the most established actors from the political process.

This paper attempts to cut through this ambiguity with the concept of reflexive policy discourse. In order for policy discourse in networks to be democratic and conducive to the learning capacity of the political system, it must be reflexive: it must take inputs form public discourse, both in form and in substance. That is, it must change its formal configuration to include new actors which emerge in the public sphere, often in the form of social movements, as well as new substantial political issues raised by these actors. Methodologically, the assessment of the reflexivity of policy discourse requires, then, the combining of organizational network analysis with content analysis of policy discourse.

Empirically, the paper looks at the interaction of global social movements, in particular the World Social Forum, with Finnish governance structures through what I call the Development Cooperation Policy Network. It is concluded that this network has proven somewhat reflexive formally, providing some new Finnish actors and their partner organizations from the Global South access to policy discourse. However, the substantial political issues raised by these actors have received little attention.