Chapter 3: Trust and Transparency in Network Governance: The Implications of Taiwan’s Anti-Corruption Activities

Peters and Pierre (1998: 223–224) demonstrates that the traditional conception of governing has come under two major strains. The first one is that the increased diminished capacity of those governments to insulate their societies from the global pressure arouses the doubt whether national governments are still the major actors in public policy. Another strain is from the changing relationship between the public sector and the private sector. Government is no longer capable of steering as it had in the past. After the antibureaucratic or antigovernment era, new concept has to be developed and to replace the old metaphor such as “science” or “art” in order to fix the gap between theory and reality. Frederickson (1997: 78) even argues that in contemporary public administration, the concept of choice is governance. Moreover, scholars saw the term of governance entering academic discussion from the 1990s, and at the same time, researchers have witnessed the fulfillment of tasks in which actors are required to transact with other organizations, exchange resources, and reach agreement (Bogason and Musso, 2006: 4). The paradigm shift from NPM to governance represents the coming of a new era of academic research and debates. But, what is actually “governance”? Why is it vital to identify “network” as the center of governance? How does government manage in the fluid-like network situation? What are the most important elements which will have profound impacts on the success or failure of network governance? These questions have to be examined carefully in order to meet challenges in the network society. Trust and transparency will determine the success or failure of network governance. This chapter applies network concepts to explore the operation of Taiwan’s anti-corruption network. Three research questions are presented as follows: