where is power in governance? why geography matters in the theory of governance

Where is Power in Governance? Why GeographyMatters in the Theory of Governancepsr_260 208..220

Liza GriffinUniversity of Westminster

The concept of governance has provided many ways to theorise the shifting power relations between the state,interest groups and civil society over the last 30 years. Theorisations have culminated in ‘spatial imaginaries’ forvisualising new governing practices and their associated power relations. By paying attention to these imaginaries,it is possible to see how each theory of governance brings particular spatialities of power to the fore, whilenecessarily foreclosing others.This foreclosure stems from a failure to visualise diverse and multiple modes of powerin governance models and to take in power as a relative and spatially contingent property. This is not onlytheoretically significant, however; it also has important practical consequences for how we govern effectively inpractice. I argue that rather than starting our analyses of governance arrangements with theoretical models whichappear to predetermine our understanding of the spatial workings of power, we should instead remain open andattuned to the complex geographies of power that might actually operate in practices of governance on the ground.I suggest that by deploying John Allen’s topological approach to power we can achieve a more relational and spatiallycontingent account of power in practice under the turn to governance.This will give us greater insight into actualgovernance arrangements and their limitations, exclusions and unevenness.

Keywords: governance; geography; power; topology; space

While mechanisms of governing have been widely and critically examined by theorists inrecent decades, in my view the forms that governance arrangements take have beensomewhat taken for granted. A review of the literature on governance reveals that the‘spatial imaginaries’ deployed to envisage governance processes tend to offer one-dimensional analyses of power. Here, the term ‘spatial imaginaries’ is deployed to capturethe ways in which power relations and their associated modalities are visualised, andperceived to operate within different theories of governance. To elaborate, the informaland formal processes and institutions associated with the so-called ‘turn to governance’have been described and theorised for the most part from the standpoint of politicalscience. However, if we apply a geographical perspective it becomes apparent that thepower dynamics encapsulated by governance theories are articulated via spatially loadedvocabularies. For instance, there is talk of ‘horizontal’ or ‘vertical’ power relations, or the‘blurring of boundaries’ between ‘spheres’, ‘levels’ and ‘scales’.These spatial imaginaries ingovernance theory are crucial in comprehending the ways in which power is understoodto operate in governing arrangements. This is because the imaginaries, as I will explain,function as ‘visual shorthand’ for articulating the kinds of power modalities that are at playin governing practice. For example, much governance theory implicitly suggests a geo-graphically ‘centred’ view of power where power is assumed to be stockpiled at institu-tional sites, such as economic corporations or state organisations.

However, while these spatial imaginaries provide helpful metaphors for visualisingpower in governance, each one implicitly emphasises particular modes of power, while

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simultaneously foreclosing the consideration of others. And yet it is crucial to appreciatethe full range of power dynamics in operation in actual governing arrangements. This isbecause the presence and form of power relations in them can be a determining factor inwhether good governance aims are achieved or impeded. For example, the prevailingpower-laden discourses of governing regimes may prescribe what policies are consideredacceptable, thereby undermining their legitimacy or effectiveness. Similarly, the behaviourof dominant or powerfully charismatic actors within regimes will undoubtedly haveimplications for the accountability or transparency of policy making. Examining power isnot just a theoretical diversion intended to enhance conceptual thinking; understandinghow power operates in actual governing arrangements clearly has important implicationsfor appreciating the limits to democratic and successful policy making today (Griffin,2007).

In this review article I want to argue that, instead of starting an analysis of governancearrangements with theoretical models that have prior, inherent assumptions about domi-nant modalities of power, we might instead begin an analysis with a more pragmaticperspective on how power operates on the ground. Here, I consider the importance oftaking account of changing power relations under the ‘turn to governance’, and then Ireview how power has been addressed by the main governance theories to date, discussingthe ‘spatial imaginaries’ of power incorporated into each one. Finally, I propose that amore contingent, spatially relational account of how power works in practice mightprovide greater insight into the limitations of actual governance arrangements. I arguehere that the effects of power in governing arrangements are not determined by pre-defined spatial relations set by the imaginaries of governance theory; rather they are givenby the associations between diverse actors, institutions and material circumstances ingovernance practice. In other words, power relations are not preset in models, territories ornetworks: they are made and remade in relationships, exchanges and interactions. Thiskind of ‘topological’ spatial imaginary, as I will explain below, is an altogether differentmodel of power from ones where the coordinates of authority are already fixed. Thetopological approach forces us to think about power as ‘inherently spatial and subject tothe contingences of events and relationships that may lie outside the immediate here andnow’ (Allen, 2011, p. 17).

While this article will concentrate on governance in its most widely used sense, it willpay particular attention to how power is imagined spatially in the theories of multi-levelgovernance (MLG), network governance and in governance work on governmentality.This categorisation is designed to aid analysis but it is clear that these theories overlap inpractice. This will be reflected in the discussion below where I examine these differentapproaches to governance theory and outline some of their critiques vis-à-vis power.

Theorising Governance and Power RelationsWhile scholars have argued about its precise meaning, ‘governance’ is a capacious termused to describe and theorise the ways that decision-making powers are exercised and thatsociety is steered, and the forms that governing takes (Treib et al., 2007). Contemporarygoverning arrangements are said to involve a wider range of actors than in the past, whoseinteractions are increasingly complex. The actors are likely to include private and public

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bodies from local, regional and national governments, civic organisations, scientificexperts, labour unions and private interest groups (Paterson, 1999). The arrangementsfor governing might now involve new processes taking place between state and non-state actors, interacting in ways that are apparently less hierarchical and more networked,and thereby more pluralist, than hitherto. They may embrace a range of innovativepractices, including citizens’ juries, consensus conferences, or governing partnershipsbetween the public and private sector. Such bodies and practices frequently reside outside,or parallel to, state institutions. And it is often argued that their sum total amounts to a‘new regime of governing’, where ‘traditional’ government structures have become sub-ordinate (Swyngedouw et al., 2002, p. 556).

A chief concern for governance theorists has been to make sense of changing powerdynamics under what is sometimes referred to as the ‘turn to governance’ (Jessop,2000). Many analysts agree that this ‘turn’ marks a departure from traditional forms ofgovernment. While government is associated with notions of centralised, sovereign stateauthority, possessing constitutional powers, ‘governance’ tends to be associated withmore informal, decentralised and pluralistic decision-making structures. Thus the powerrelations in traditional state-based political arrangements are thought to be principallyhierarchical and top down, exercised from a ‘central’ place over ‘unified territorial reach’and where the dominant method of coordination is ‘command and control’ (Atkinsonand Coleman, 1990). In contrast, in the governance paradigm, power is not consideredto operate through the nexus of a central state but rather through partnerships,nebulous networks and markets. Indeed, the term ‘governance’ conveys power throughsteering as against commanding. In line with this etymology, governance reform inpractice often involves instituting innovative arrangements for navigating politicalprocesses and making decisions. In these arrangements political actors are said to worktogether ‘horizontally’ in networks or partnerships, and authority is thought tobe distributed ‘vertically’ along multiple levels of decision making (Kooiman, 2003;Paterson, 1999; Rhodes, 1996).

Multi-level GovernanceAttention to this multi-level aspect of governing is normally given through the theory of‘multi-level governance’.According to MLG thinkers, the changing relationships betweendifferent levels of policy making in governance constitute a new politics (Hooghe andMarks, 2001). Gary Marks (1993, p. 392), one of MLG’s principal theorists, defines it as‘a system of continuous negotiation among nested governments at several territorial tiers’.The theory sees all these ‘tiers’ (local, national, global, etc.) as important players incontemporary politics, and views political power as being distributed across or residingwithin different levels of governance. Thus power here is conceived as being shared byvarious actors and institutions across the whole scale spectrum rather than principallybeing located within states ‘at the centre’ (Marks, 1993).

This power-sharing process, commentators argue, is driven by the simultaneous devel-opment of global, regional and sub-national forms of governance (Bache and Flinders,2004). For instance, Mark Bevir and R. A.W. Rhodes (2003) argue that globalisation hashad a role in shifting power from the nation state ‘upwards’ to transnational corporations.

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Here the ability of states to practise their claim to a sovereign monopoly over boundedspace is challenged and undermined (Milward and Provan, 2000) and results in a ‘hol-lowing out’ of the state where its functions are lost to other spatial scales and non-stateinstitutions (Brenner, 1998; Rhodes, 1997). In the process, regulation-making authority isthought to be both ‘upscaled’ to supranational institutions and simultaneously ‘down-scaled’ to ‘local’ domains, leaving a ‘power vacuum’ at the centre.

Other MLG theorists have rejected the conception of governance as spatially nestedand matryoshka-like. For instance, instead of theorising power in governance as hierarchicaland nested, John Bennington and Janet Harvey (1994) propose a model of overlapping‘spheres of authority’. James N. Rosenau (2004, pp. 39–40) supports this, but goesfurther, arguing that since the turn to governance still involves the exercise of authorityand the necessity of people looking ‘up’ to, and complying with, the authorities to whichthey are responsive, ‘it is understandable that the multi-level governance concept connoteshierarchy. [But] the mushrooming demands for governance are also being met in a hostof horizontal ways’. Rosenau suggests that thinking in these terms would help to broadenthe analytic capacity of governance theory so that it may encompass the networkingprocesses and new horizontal power relations that are now in evidence. For instance,public–private partnerships and policy networks have proliferated over recent decades.This ‘spheres of authority’ spatial imaginary does indeed help us to see authority as a morefluid and less hierarchical relation than in traditional MLG models, but power in thisinstance still remains a locatable property residing within political scales, albeit morenebulous and overlapping ones.

Network GovernanceSuch analysis resonates with that of the network governance thinkers. Partly as a critiqueof the more rigid principles of MLG and partly as a growing sub-discipline in its ownright, work on network governance has developed in recent years. Networks, which areundoubtedly a growing feature of contemporary politics, feature collaboration and coop-eration across diverse geographies and issues. For David Marsh and R. A. W. Rhodes(1992), networks are relationships between interdependent actors that exist aroundresource dependencies.The network ‘flows’ because each actor has an interest in workingwith others in a given sector to develop their capacity to influence policy success orfailure. Network governance theorists emphasise horizontal relations – between and acrossinstitutions and actors – believing them to be more significant than hierarchical powerrelationships in the turn to governance. ‘Territorially overarching’ networks that transcendspace are regarded as a key feature of more ‘fluid’ contemporary governance arrangements(Bache, 1999).

In the spatial imaginary of network theory, instead of shifting up and down, power isposited to flow horizontally (Van Kersbergen and Van Waarden, 2004, p. 154). Accordingto William Walters (2004, p. 31),‘adopting the language of networks, ... helps to loosen thespell that the state – and its inside/outside, centre/periphery image – has cast on politicalstudies, enabling us to glimpse the new topographies of political authority’. Thus thespatial imaginary here is that these networks represent new topographies which disruptthe hierarchical nature of traditional government structures, and according to Rhodes



(1997) comprise ‘many centres of power’. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre (2001) argue thatpower in networks derives less from formal constitutional state authority and more fromthe capacity of both political actors and institutions to deploy resources interdependently.Thus here, as in MLG, authority is not located exclusively within nation states. As well asbeing performed by sub-regional and regional governments, steering is also accomplishedby a wide range of political actors from across the scale spectrum (Hay and Richards,2000). Often-cited examples of such proliferating governing arrangements include advi-sory policy networks, ad hoc committees and new participatory fora designed to providepolicy advice.These are likely to comprise both state and non-state actors, ranging fromprivate firms and civil society groups to scientists and managers from traditional publicinstitutions (Rhodes, 1997). Hence, for Bennington and Harvey (1994) these kinds ofdiverse actor arrangements equate to pluralism. Indeed, Rhodes’ seminal theory ofgovernance is, according to Marsh et al. (2003), fundamentally a pluralist one where, toconjure up another spatial imaginary, power is nebulous and diffused across and withinnetworks.

However, pluralism is not the only power relationship thought to be present innetworks. As Rhodes (1997) explains, organisations and actors within networks dependupon each other for informational and institutional resources. Hence, for him, thedistribution of either discursive or material resources in networks helps to characterisepower relations. Thus differing resource patterns are, for many network theorists, adeterminant in explaining differences between policy networks. So having located stocksof resources – informational, financial, material and so on – it should hypothetically bepossible to read off power relations from network arrangements. For critics, however,interpreting power thus, from network configurations, tends to disregard the richness ofrelationships that constitute them. For Colin Hay and David Richards (2000), simplymapping a network’s topography in order to read off power relationships from thattopography does not account for the powerful and not-so-powerful practices of agentswithin it. And rather than adhering to this spatial imaginary, David Marsh and MartinSmith (2000) maintain that power in networks should be considered more dialectically.They stress that governing actors command resources that are structurally determined(e.g. by state policy or secular economic conditions); and as particular interests areprivileged, power structures get reproduced in new configurations of resources innetworks.1 In this structural take on governance, the capacity to deploy power is notheld within agents’ actions or sited within political territories but, rather, power relationsare given by structures operating ‘beneath’ and interacting with governance arrange-ments. Hay and Richards (2000), Martin Jones (2001) and David Held and Anthony G.McGrew (2002) have all analysed governance arrangements using this structuralistapproach to uncover what they say are unequal power relations at work in ostensiblyequal governing partnerships or among networks of different actors in policy making.For example, private stakeholder groups or corporations might be able to dominateagendas or acquire privileged access to decision making, not simply because theymay have greater resources at their disposal, but because the decision-making systemmay be weighted towards them as the representatives of the interests of capital (Griffin,2007).

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Governmentality in GovernanceHowever, as post-structural theorists critical of this perspective point out, power is notsimply derived from material conditions. Another approach to examining power ingovernance comes from a growing body of governmentality-inspired research, drawing onthe legacy of Foucault (see, for example, Newman, 2001; Sending and Neumann, 2006).Governmentality looks for power beyond simple economic relationships, consideringinstead a range of powerful governing techniques from the self-policing of conduct to the‘biopolitical’ command of populations. Governmentality emphasises how power can beexercised in governance regimes intangibly; for instance, through the hegemony ofparticular discourses infusing all practices, relations and intentions in political arrange-ments. One might plausibly argue, for example, that a neo-liberal discourse of the‘minimal state’ pervades under the ‘turn towards governance,’ impalpably but powerfullyaltering and policing the behaviour of political agents.

Within neo-liberalism, or indeed any discourse, the conduct of agents is shaped bywhat they imagine to be the truth of their circumstances: discourses of ‘truth’ defineacceptable behaviour. For instance, stakeholders in networks may be impelled to behave‘responsibly’ by not dissenting from established policy wisdom (Griffin, 2007). Here thereare no apparent constraints or overt sanctions, but only indirect techniques of powerdeployment. In this spatial imaginary, power is not assimilated by economic structuraldetermination, nor is it distributed within agency, or experienced in the following of anorder; it is felt immanently and everywhere (Allen, 2004).

Considering the Spatial Imaginaries of PowerAbove, I have explored how power has been addressed by key governance theories; I nowwant to examine more fully the spatial imaginaries of power incorporated into each one,while highlighting the potential pitfalls in each. Despite the multitude of perspectivesmaking significant contributions to understanding changes in governing practices, allappear to suffer some degree of tunnel vision as far as their treatment of power goes. Asoutlined above, orthodox governance theory imagines that power is vested in executiveauthorities and accorded to different levels of decision making. For example, talk of the‘hollow state’ has been the central language through which power is addressed in themajority of theoretical work on governance. Power is thus conceived of as a ‘heldcapacity’, ready to be deployed (Van Kersbergen and Van Waarden, 2004, pp. 157–8).

Indeed, for the vast majority of MLG theories, this implies that power – as resourcesor decision-making authority – is a property that is spatially ‘located’ within the capacityto make executive decisions at various policy levels. And if it is perceived to be missingat the nation state level, then this means it must have leached down to more local scales,or percolated upwards to another scale. But as geographer John Allen (2004) explains,according to this reading, power resides at specific scales, and it is exchanged, intact, betweenlevels of government. And as seen in many of these MLG conceptions of governance, thecorollary is that power in governance is imagined to be a zero-sum game. In reality ofcourse, power does not operate in this straightforward manner. In practice power galva-nised locally seldom equates to a simple loss in power at another level (Pierre and Peters,2000). Arguably, the UK Labour government’s regionalisation policies of the late 1990s



did not spell a diminution of state power. Despite the devolution of some decision-making authority to their own regional development agencies and assemblies, the Labouradministration was nonetheless branded as ‘centralist’.

Both Walters (2004, p. 32) and Allen (2003) contend that work on governance has fortoo long been under the influence of this geographically ‘centred view of power’. Thisspatial imaginary suggests that power is stockpiled at particular institutional sites orstructures, such as economic corporations or state institutions. While this is an evocativeimaginary, and much deployed to articulate the workings of power, it is, in my view,problematic to think about power residing in fixed locations. This is primarily becausesuch an interpretation tells us little about the eventual consequences or likely success ofthe presence of power. And such is, after all, the purpose of excavating power relations: itis by researching the effects of power that we can appreciate the success, or not, of actualgovernance arrangements.

As Allen argues (2003; 2004; 2009; 2011), the mere existence of a located concentrationof resources or decision-making authority – for example at the headquarters of amultinational corporation or the seat of government – does not guarantee that itsdeployment will be successful or go un-resisted. For instance, the US’ powerful militarymight deployed in Afghanistan in 2003 did not result in a simple victory over insurgentforces in the region: concentrations of power do not always spell success. So assumptionsabout power’s ‘effortless extension or its unproblematic distribution over a definedterritory – where distances are measured and proximities are defined locally – are less thanhelpful when it comes to understanding the scope and reach of power’ (Allen, 2004,p. 30). Resources and located decision-making authority represent latent rather than actualqualities of power: ‘there is no question as to how effective and extensive such capabilitiescan be and have been over time’ (Allen and Cochrane, 2007, p. 1171). And as Rhodes(2007, p. 1255), for example, argues,‘the centre has rubber levers; pulling the central policylever does not necessarily mean something happens at the bottom’.

This notion of located authority is also open to question because scaled territories orpolicy levels rarely contain power relationships (Allen, 2009). It is clear, for example, thatlocal associations of public and private policy actors can have influence well beyond theirterritorial boundaries. As Doreen Massey (2005) reminds us, the local can be a site ofpower in determining global processes. The power ‘located’ in London’s financial districtclearly reverberates across the world. So for Allen, taking stock of territorially embeddedassets and resources is of limited use when trying to understand the actual exercise andeffects of power.

Do these insights indicate that we should focus our attention on pluralist-basednetwork governance theories then? For as an alternative to conceiving of power as alocatable property, theorists point to new, more diffuse sets of pluralistic relations appar-ently now operating under the turn to governance. Undeniably, the new discourse ofgovernance can appear to represent an idealised pluralism where governing is sharedamong a diversity of actors and within which there is a dispersal of power to the pointof its neutrality. However, as highlighted by Marsh et al. (2003), this sense of powerdiffused across governing space gives little regard to actually existing inequalities inarrangements. Governing is not conducted upon a ‘level playing field as the pluralists

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would have us believe. Rather, the field has slopes and gullies that systematically facilitatesome interests and constrain others’. To put it another way, while ‘politics may becharacterized by plurality’ it does not necessarily ‘reflect a pluralist power structure’(Marsh et al., 2003, p. 332).2

Indeed, those scholars investigating empirical examples of reform under the turn togovernance, or exploring policies designed to bring about good governance, have foundthat specific actors can retain privileged access to decision making – even in ostensiblyconsensual and participatory fora (Griffin, 2007). Hence the pluralist approach to theo-rising should have an additional, but related, caveat. Perhaps it is because governanceprocesses are perceived to be ‘power neutral’ that little is written about possible contes-tations and conflicts that may ensue when governing is exercised outside formal stateinstitutions. In apparently consensual and participatory arrangements, like deliberative foraor consensus conferences, exclusions, conflict and inequality can remain rife – yet this isa problem overlooked in most governance theory (Griffin, 2007).

As a way of countering this myopia, we have seen how structural theories of gover-nance bring inequalities to the fore, understanding them to be produced by underlyingmaterial disparities and political-economic structures. Because of such all-encompassingstructures, structural theorists argue, it is impossible to achieve ‘true pluralism’ anyway.Thestructural approach argues that governance reforms like devolution are always accompa-nied by changes in power relations. Here power is not bounded geographically, but is aproperty deriving from broader political-economic conditions operating ‘beneath’ gover-nance arrangements. The spatial imaginary here suggests that power is embedded withinthose structures that determine the distribution of resources in society; and that power’sparticular effects in governance arrangements are given dialectically by these materialconditions and their accompanying ideology. For instance, structuralists might argue thatunder neo-liberal regimes, those actors arguing for less ‘red tape’ and more voluntaristicgovernance mechanisms gain sway in decision making. However, as enlightening as thisposition is for critiquing governance reforms, the structural approach rarely questions theresultant changes in how actors, or agents, relate to one other, nor does it say much aboutthe wilful acts of resistance within regimes. And neither does it take account of the lessapparent or ‘quieter registers’ of power that might operate in governance arrangements(Allen, 2011). For example, structural accounts often neglect discursive power and givescant attention to the calculated actions of individual actors seeking to coerce, manipulateor deploy subtle forms of power like charismatic authority.

Network theories that do take account of the role of agents in governance arrange-ments might be useful in this regard.The spatial imaginary here does not view power innetworks as locatable in the same way that territorial authority is. In this explanation thereare no pre-formed stockpiles of power capable of extension across space. Instead, poweris created in the process of mobilising resources across networks (Allen, 2009,p. 203). In this imaginary, power is a fluid medium infusing actors and institutions as itflows across networks. However, as we have seen above, agents do not operate in avacuum: they themselves are constrained and empowered by the geographies and contextswithin which governing occurs. For instance, traditional network approaches to powerrarely capture how transnational actors like NGOs, with their limited resources, are



capable of exerting power well beyond their means (Allen, 2009).Thus the power withinNGO networks cannot merely be measured as, for example, military power might bemeasured.Their influence is ‘something brought into being by the activation of moral andpolitical energies and sustained by mutual action stretched around the globe’ (Allen, 2006,p. 1).The mobilisation of campaigns halfway across the world ‘gives NGOs a geographicalreach that often belies their otherwise limited resources’.And Allen (2006, p. 1) would notdoubt that resources within networks matter; ‘how you use them matters even more’.

It is also important to remember that while power in networks might be thought morefluid than in more hierarchical forms of MLG governance, networks may or may notdisrupt or replace hierarchies. Hence, it is imperative to observe empirically the natureand the context of policy networks before assuming that their growing presence inevi-tably signifies a change in socio-spatial power relationships under governance reform.Context matters in governance, and this more pragmatic perspective on power is givenlittle or no attention in networked theories of governance.

Academic scholarship on governance that does examine the contexts that constrain orempower actors includes work in governmentality. Here, power as manifest in discoursesis clearly different from pluralist power, power as resources or power as held capacity.Powerful discourses are not located in geographical space, but rather exist in structures ofknowledge or technologies and techniques for governing. But power as discourse is rarelyabsolute and it may meet with some degree of resistance. Here theorists should thusattend to conflict in new governance arrangements (Griffin, 2007). However, power andresistance to it are diffused and all-encompassing. Hence the imaginary here is that poweras discourse is not, as in the resources model of power, spatially separate from what it canachieve (Allen, 2004). Accordingly, as Allen (2003) points out, the discursive power ofgovernance is not spatially centralised in resources, but rather it is an immanent forceacting everywhere and from everywhere.

It is easy to see how discursive approaches are useful for explaining evolving gover-nance relations. But just as it is simplistic merely to pinpoint power as resources, it is asproblematic to view power as an immanent force. For one thing, we cannot translate theeffects of governing regimes simply by analysing dominant discourses. A dominantneo-liberal discourse operating within a neo-liberal participatory forum may or may notequate to the success of private firms at the expense of state actors. Second, such a viewdoes not properly allow us to take into account the effects of actual resource inequalitieson the ground. And finally, it offers little scope for understanding the individual agencyof governance actors, who, from this perspective, cannot act outside discourses, but onlyreact to them.

Despite the recent upturn in work on governmentality, the most widely recognised wayof conceiving of power in governance theory is as the locatable ability to influence andcontrol decision making within a given territory. But as I have discussed, it is doubtful thatpower is ever such an absolute phenomenon.We must also attend to its effects if we areto understand why some governance regimes fail. Theories that articulate power ascentralised (or indeed diffuse) not only provide simplistic geographies of power; they arealso unhelpful for appreciating the many important and diverse dimensions of power thatget transformed as actual governing processes get reformed.

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The Power of Geography in GovernanceConsidering the above, I suggest that by deploying Allen’s topological approach to power,we can achieve a more relational and spatially contingent account of how power worksin practice under the turn to governance. I argue that this should give us greater insightinto governance arrangements and their limitations and might help in augmenting theunidimensional imaginaries of power discussed above. For Allen, power in practice is arelational effect of political interaction, not a bloc of pre-formed decision-making powersor a distributed capability. According to the relational perspective, ‘power is not so muchexercised over space or transmitted across it, as composed through the interactions of thedifferent actors involved’ (Allen, 2009, p. 207). Allen calls this the ‘topological approach’.

A topological appreciation of the workings of power concerns how actors make theirleverage and presence felt through certain practices of proximity and reach (Allen, 2011).It recommends that we should not simply think about power as either ‘up there’ or ‘overhere’ as some theories of governance appear to do. Instead, topological thinking suggeststhat the apparent reach of power from a fixed territory is less of an extension outwardsand more of an interplay between different interests and institutions in practice. Power ingovernance, for instance, might make its presence felt when diverse governing actors aredrawn closer through technologies like video conferencing or social networking, therebyallowing distant actors to communicate in real time. Similarly, state authorities mightremain powerful in multi-level governance arrangements not simply because they possessa reserve of authority but because they are able to ‘reach into the politics of local areas’in an attempt to secure outcomes, and to steer and constrain agendas through theproduction of targets (Allen, 2009, p. 209; Painter, 2006). This might occur via thecirculation of policy documents and officials who ‘hook up’ local authorities to centralagendas (Allen, 2011, p. 19). Government authority can thus be made proximate andthereby felt powerfully even though the bureaucrats may be distant in space and time(Allen, 2011, p. 17). Power in these examples is not embedded in territory but comes intobeing through mediated relationships: ‘it is the actual workings of power, how differentactors act upon and respond to the contingency of what confronts them, which best sumsup the practised nature of power’ (Allen, 2011, p. 17).

Hence, contrary to some of the spatial imaginaries of governance described above,one cannot simply read off the effects of power from any specific political arrangementwhen examining it using the topological approach. This is because power’s effects arealways provisional and there are no guarantees that authority at the centre will prevail(Allen, 2011, p. 19). For in this topological landscape, what works for ‘central govern-ment in terms of its hierarchical powers of reach also has the, perhaps unintended,consequence of opening up that authority to negotiation and displacement’ (Allen,2009, p. 209). For example, we might see in practice how local stakeholders manipulatethe centre’s targets so that the latter’s authority is thwarted. Additionally, local bodies cansometimes shape governance agendas beyond their immediate locality (Allen, 2009;Massey, 2005). And political claims and power unrealised at one geographical scale canbe expanded to another if, for example, weak local NGOs overcome their disadvanta-geous position at the national level by ‘jumping scales’ to command political attentionsuccessfully at the EU level (Griffin, forthcoming). Thus resources and decision-making



capacities may be concentrated in particular locations but this does not mean to saythat power is necessarily centralised (Allen, 2011, p. 17). All this emphasises how thepowers of governing institutions are not simply bounded by territorial containers asin MLG imaginaries. How actors use resources and capacities and negotiate politicalspace is perhaps what matters most when contemplating power in governance. Crucially,topology focuses on power relationships in practice and it understands how these rela-tionships actually work to produce the spaces of governance. Spaces of power arenot pre-fixed then – they are created in practice, not determined by already formedimaginaries.

Another important reason for paying attention to how power is practised rather thansimply reading it off from spatial imaginaries in models is that ‘power is brought to bearin more ways than one and space and spatiality, again, make a difference to the way thatit works itself out’ (Allen, 2011, p. 17). There are many apparent and less discerniblegeographies of power in governance arrangements. For instance, market and voluntarymechanisms are increasingly relied upon as techniques for regulation, and in conjunctionwith this trend, and the proliferation of networks, there is a growing presence of forms ofstrategic and informal power such as ‘seduction’, ‘manipulation’ and ‘charisma’.All of theseappear to have gained a significant foothold in the new spaces of governance processes.For instance, in increasingly marketised governance arrangements, seduction techniquesbecome important for the promotion of policy priorities. Additionally, the complexity ofsome new governance arrangements has led to a search for charismatic leaders who cansimplify political realities and resolve complex problems (Grande, 2000). Charismaticauthority can confer power in less palpable ways. While it is not a located capacity, it isa mode of power that thrives in the new spaces of governance reform that facilitate moreface-to face contact with diverse actors working in networks and partnerships (Allen,2003). Hence, the small-scale participatory fora that have proliferated under governancereforms are ripe for propagating charismatic power, and charismatic individuals withinthem undoubtedly play a powerful role in steering and orientating policy debates. It islikely that these less palpable modes of power pose a challenge to the more formal formsof authority usually emphasised in governance theory. These important but ‘quieterregisters’ of power in governance are often overlooked when the ‘spatial geometry set outonly admits two locations: the dominant and the subordinate positions of the powerfuland the powerless, respectively’ (Allen, 2011, p. 17).

ConclusionsUsing the device of the spatial imaginary it is possible to become more aware of howpower is seen to operate in governance theory and thereby analyse the ramifications ofthese ways of thinking. Here we have seen how power is either considered to be ‘in theether’ as discourses, located in ‘bounded spaces’ of authority or ‘diffused’ to the point ofneutrality in networks. As discussed, all offer useful insights into the workings of powerin governance; so it is important to emphasise that these imaginaries are not in and ofthemselves incorrect or unhelpful for understanding the operation of power. Instead, Iwant to stress that by focusing upon only one (fixed) imaginary of power over allothers, we cannot fully appreciate the effects of power and thus how it might work in

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actual governance arrangements. And this, as explained, is problematic when seeking tocomprehend the reasons why governance arrangements might fail or prove to beundemocratic.

Power is regularly evoked in governance theory, but it is rarely considered as a spatiallycontingent, relational or multifarious property.We should acknowledge the importance ofmultiple varieties of power operating differently across space in practice, and recognisehow power can be deployed in diverse and sometimes subtle ways in governancearrangements. Additionally, thinking topologically about power allows us to escape someof the theoretical blind alleys above and to grasp the ways in which power in governancemay undermine policy outcomes, or damage the democratic credentials of regimes. Itseems that work on governance is perhaps moving in this relational direction. In an essayreflecting upon his contribution to governance theory, Rhodes (2007, p. 1247) acknowl-edges that a relational view of power in governance might be more appropriate for itsunderstanding, but he does not elaborate on how relational power pertains in actualgovernance spaces. Similarly, Walters (2004, p. 33) asks us to foreground how governingoperates in practice in order to ‘nudge political science and political economy towards amore relational and associational understanding of power – a view which has for sometime been more common in disciplines like sociology and human geography’. I agree, andbelieve that this relational view can help to address some of the shortcomings, as far aspower goes, in conventional theories of governance. It might be that questions of powerin governance can only be fully addressed empirically.

(Accepted: 15 November 2011)

About the AuthorLiza Griffin is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Westminster in London. She is interested intheoretical debates about power and space in relation to the governance of complex problems. Liza Griffin,Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster, 32–38 Wells Street, LondonW1T 3UW, UK; email: [email protected]

Notes1 In this process, some actors can become empowered to overcome institutional imperatives and thereby challenge structures.2 But in response to Marsh et al. (2003), Rhodes (2007) explains in his reflective essay on ten years of governance theory that his

work is misconstrued. Instead of being simply a pluralist analysis of governance, Rhodes maintains that he is neo-pluralist.Neo-pluralism takes account of interest group power plays and dismisses the notion that there can ever be a simple diffusion ofpower.

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where is power in governance? why geography matters in the theory of governance

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