This article offers three kinds of perspectives – or research o
rientations – for governance networks: a systems perspective, a participant perspective and
a functional perspective.
Each perspective draws upon different kinds of assumptions (and units of analysis) for
analysis – system benefits, individual benefits, network performance - in regard to the assessment of governance networks. The paper illustrates each o
f the approaches and concludes that all three perspectives can contribute to underst
anding and improving governance network contributions.
