Just as sociological institutionalism sometimes draws on systems theory, so historical institutionalism sometimes draws on Marxist state theory. The main approach to governance derived from Marxism is, however, regulation theory. Karl Marx argued that capitalism is unstable because it leads to capital overaccumulation and class struggle. Regulation theorists examine the ways in which different varieties of capitalism attempt to manage these instabilities. They study forms of governance in relation to changes in the way these instabilities are masked.

Typically, regulation theorists locate the new governance in relation to a broader socioeconomic shift from Fordism to post-Fordism. Fordism refers to a combination of “intensive accumulation” and “monopolistic regulation”—a combination associated with the mass production pioneered by Henry Ford in the 1920s. Intensive accumulation rested on processes of mass production such as mechanization, the intensification of work, the detailed division of tasks, and the use of semiskilled labour. Monopolistic regulation involved monopoly pricing, the recognition of trade unions, the indexing of wages to productivity, corporatist tendencies in government, and monetary policies to manage the demand for commodities. According to regulation theorists, intensive accumulation and monopolistic regulation temporarily created a virtuous circle: mass production created economies of scale, thereby leading to a rise in productivity; increased productivity led to increased wages and so greater consumer demand; the growth in demand meant greater profits because of the full utilization of capacity; and the increased profits were used to improve the technology of mass production, creating further economies of scale and so starting the whole circle going again.

Regulation theorists ascribe the end of Fordism to various causes. Productivity gains decreased because of the social and technical limits to Fordism. Globalization made the management of national economies increasingly difficult. Increased state expenditure produced inflation and state overload. Competition among capitalists shifted the norms of consumption away from the standardized commodities associated with mass production. All of these causes contributed to the end of not only Fordism but also the bureaucratic Keynesian welfare state associated with it. Although regulation theorists can be reluctant to engage in speculations about the future, they generally associate the new post-Fordist era with the globalization of capital, neoliberal politics, contracting out, public-private partnerships, and the regulatory state.

Interpretive theories

Interpretive approaches to governance often emphasize contingency. They reject the idea that patterns of rule can be properly understood in terms of a historical or social logic attached to capitalist development, functional differentiation, or even institutional settings. Instead, they emphasize the meaningful character of human actions and practices. In this view, because people act on beliefs, ideas, or meanings—whether conscious or not—their actions can be explained properly only if the relevant meanings are grasped. Some of the elder interpretive approaches suggest that beliefs, ideas, or meanings are more or less uniform across a culture or society. Hence, they inspire studies of the distinctive patterns of governance associated with various cultures. Other interpretive approaches place a greater emphasis on the contests and struggles over meaning that they take to constitute so much political activity. Hence, they inspire studies of the different traditions or discourses of governance that are found within any given society.

Although interpretive theorists analyze governance in terms of meanings, there is little agreement among them about the nature of such meanings. The meanings of interest to them are variously described, for example, as intentions and beliefs, conscious or tacit knowledge, subconscious or unconscious assumptions, systems of signs and languages, and discourses and ideologies. Interpretive theorists often explore many of these varied types of meanings both synchronically and diachronically. Synchronic studies analyze the relationships between a set of meanings abstracted from the flux of history. They reveal the internal coherence or pattern of a web of meanings; they make sense of a particular belief, concept, or sign by showing how it fits in such a web. Diachronic studies analyze the development of webs of meaning over time. They show how situated agents modify and even transform webs of meaning as they use them in particular settings.

The diverse interpretive studies of the synchronic and diachronic dimensions of meaning all have in common a reluctance to reduce meanings to allegedly objective facts about institutions, systems, or capitalism. In this view, patterns of rule arise because of the contingent triumph of a web of meanings. The new governance arose, for example, alongside neoliberalism, which inspired much of the new public management, and discourses in the social sciences, which inspired the turn to networks and public-private partnerships. Sometimes, interpretive studies relate the rise of neoliberalism and network theory to new relations of power, changes in the global economy, or problems confronted by states. Even when they do, however, they usually suggest that these social facts are also constructed in the context of webs of meaning.