In the modern world there is no shortage of people who know what is best for others. Self-appointed experts, consultants, and organizations try to convince states, corporations, and individuals that they would be better off if they only followed some specific rules about what to do. There are 'experts' in almost every field of human activity, from the management of companies to the management of our own health. Even organizations as powerful as states and large corporations follow rules provided by others on how to organize, which policies to pursue, what kinds of services to provide, or how...

This book explores how the Baltic States have adapted to, and been embedded in, a wider European environment and how they have become modern European states. It focuses on changes in the policies, politics and administrative practices that have taken place after 1991 in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and on the influence of rules and ideas in the European Union. The authors investigate the meeting between national traditions, rule-making and practices - on the one hand; and traditions, rule-making and practices connected to the European Union - on the other. Drawing on organization theory,...

Governing the Embedded State integrates governance theory with organization theory and examines how states address social complexity and international embeddedness. Drawing upon extensive empirical research on the Swedish government system, this volume describes a strategy of governance based in a metagovernance model of steering by designing institutional structures. This strategy is supplemented by micro-steering of administrative structures within the path dependencies put in place through metagovernance. Both of these strategies of steering rely on subtle methods of providing political...