Understanding New Advances in Network Governance: A Systematic Literature Review

Network governance has received increasing attention from public administration scholars and practitioners. A systematic evaluation and synthesis of the network governance literature, however, is still lacking, which might lead to conceptual confusion and hinder theoretical building. This paper presents a systematic review of 163 articles in the network governance literature from 49 public administration– and public policy–related journals. This paper employs a two-dimensional analytic framework to classify the included literature, proposes a framework that explains how multiple factors drive network effectiveness, and summarizes the evolving trends in network governance from aspects of epistemology, methodology, and theoretical construction. This paper serves to better understand new advances by bridging different research themes in network governance.