PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

While scholars have not yet reached an agreement about how processes of societal change occur, how malleable they are, or what key obstacles and exact outcomes are, we are frequently confronted with promotions of new tools and procedures of shaping such change, both in the policy world and in its scholarly scrutiny. This volume critically appraises such novelty claims through the lens of interdisciplinary regulation and governance studies. In search for a uniting essence of related debates in political sciences, sociology, history, and law, it re-focuses scholarly attention on public interventions' never ceasing intention - though hardly ever achieved without unintentional effects - of inducing change and rule-based sanctioning in contemporary society. Through empirical illustrations of risk-based regulation, publics and participation as widely celebrated examples of new modes of social change, the volume re-evaluates the extent to which these actually contribute to overcoming the duly critiqued issues with more conventional forms of governing through the state and its law-making and enforcement.