POLITICAL META-GOVERNANCE AND DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY IN INTERACTIVE CLIMATE-GOVERNANCE PROCESSES

Governance is en vogue. Interactive modes of governance, however, pose severe implications for existing democratic institutions. This study explores the theoretical and empirical relationship between political meta-governance and democratic legitimacy in governance networks concerned with interactive climate-governance. Being a single-case study, the study draws on theoretical insights derived from theories on network governance and meta-governance, and empirical insights derived from the case of the Dutch National Agreement on Climate (‘Klimaatakkoord’). Accordingly, the aim of this study is to address the influence of poltical meta-governance strategies on the democratic legitimacy of the governance network concerned with the Dutch National Agreement on Climate. This study underlines the theoretical assumption that governments seek to use network governance to address complex societal problems such as climate change. The state-centred character of network governance illustrates the usage of network governance as a rather instrumental, orchestrated approach, stressing a clear presence of a ‘shadow of hierarchy’, in which government retains significant authority over the studied governance network. Seeking to address the application of political meta-governance, this study finds that it is hard to bring about a full-fledged, deliberative and integrative meta-governance approach. Yet, disparate meta-governance strategies are reported. Although democratic legitimacy concerning the Dutch Agreement on Climate in terms of accountability is considerably high, values concerning voice (inclusiveness) and due deliberation (transparency) perform relatively poor. Both can be understood as both theoretical and empirical dilemmas (inclusiveness vs. effectiveness and secrecy vs. transparency) that continue to confront network governance as such. Nonetheless, this study further justifies the close attention governance scholars and practitioners pay to the democratic values at stake when governing through networks, and calls for continuing to do so.