Self-organization and the role of government: how and why does self-organization evolves in the shadow of hierarchy?

The public sector in general and the role of government in particular has been recently subject of a fundamental discussion. This discussion is fueled by four developments.
1) We observe that in many European countries, the government is forced to follow a regime of austerity which leads to major cutbacks.
2) As a result the idea is embraced that communities and networks would be an interesting alternative, to fill in these gasps.
3) Important in the creation and functioning of these communities is that new governance arrangements are being pursued that are based on the idea of self-organization, which turn existing playing rules upside down, thereby by establishing new positions, relations and playing rules.
4) At the same time our empirical understanding about how self-organization take place in the public sector is relatively scarce.
However, when looking at the concept of self-organization it is interesting to see what self-organization processes implies for the position of government organizations and other actors that are involved, as well as the relationships that are been established between them in this process of self-organization. This issue is even more interesting in policy areas in which government organizations have traditionally played an important role, like welfare services. Compared to, for instance other actors like citizens, interest groups, companies or even professional organizations (like welfare organizations), government organizations are not an ordinary actor, given the knowledge and expertise that they have, the legal competences that they often possess as well as the funds that they have at their disposal. That is why we want to understand under which conditions processes of self-organization take place in especially the welfare sector, and how this process of self-organization affects the position of governmental organizations. In doing so we want to understand how self-organization processes shape the relationship between government and especially citizens that are engaged in processes of collective action. This is important because self-organization may not always imply that the role of government will become obsolete. Some years ago and in relation to the discussion about the emergence of the so-called ‘hollow state’, some scholars talked about ‘networks in the shadow of hierarchies’ (Scharp, 1994; Milward & Provan , 2000). However , perhaps we are witnessing another development that turns this idea upside down: how do the state organizations or hierarchies evolve in the shadow of self-organizing networks? This leads to the following research question: How do processes of self-organization influence the role and position of government organizations in the community-based production of locale welfare services and how can this role be explained? In order to explore this research question we first address the concept of self-organization and the conditions that favor self-organization. Furthermore, we also address how self-organizations affect the role of government vis à vis other actors, thereby also looking at theories that explore the notion of meta-governance as well as notions that try to explain what relationships are between networks and hierarchies. Based on this theoretical exploration, we will develop a research strategy that helps us to investigate our research question. We will conduct a comparative and nested case study. The case study is focused on the establishment and functioning of so-called community enterprises that emerged in the Netherlands during the last years. These enterprises are based on the idea of self-organization in order to produce welfare services in neighborhoods that replace services that were formally produced by professional welfare organizations, which were funded by local governments. Two neighborhood enterprises in two municipalities are studied (Amsterdam and Amersfoort). Based on this comparative case studies some results will be presented. The first results indicate that, although self-organization is primarily defined as a process that occurs without external forms of control and government intervention, it seems – paradoxically – that the process of self-organizations was positively influenced by a strong involvement of government.