Revisiting the ‘Governance Narrative’

This article offers an empirical counter-example to the tenets of the increasingly popular conceptualisation of British Politics and policy as having shifted from ‘big’ Government to governance by networks and partnerships. We point to the paradox in many policy sectors: an outward appearance of ‘new’ multi-agency governance that would appear to confirm the ‘governance narrative’. However, the underlying hierarchical power structures at work in sectors such as sport policy (discussed here) and education suggest such cases are deviant and do not fit the ‘governance narrative’ ideal-type. Further, we put forward the notion of ‘asymmetrical network governance’ to highlight the modified forms of governance which still rest on asymmetrical power relations and largely unchanged patterns of resource dependency operating in the sports policy sector at both elite and mass participation levels. We argue for a more differentiated analysis of policy sectors, as the implications of applying broad-brush understandings of structural change to all areas of policy can be misleading and can fail to take into account the continuing high degree of central control over policy design and outcomes.