Private Actors in Politics and Policy-Making: Case Studies into the Patterns of Proximity

[...]the novelty of private actors' implication in politics is of course all relative. Some of these new forms analysed in this issue include the hiring of former public officials by law firms (Avril); the opening of dedicated European affairs offices by corporations that remain more or less separate from the rest of the company's structure (Cloteau); consortia comprising government and industry representatives as well as academics, as in the field of energy transition (de Carvalho) or 'urban resilience' (Svitková); or fluid and open configurations of think-tanks, journalists, academics, and public officials from different ministries around 'hybrid threats' as a new problem, with non-state actors playing central roles of coordination and organisation (Daniel and Eberle). [...]it is also important to stress that private actors' growing involvement in politics and policy-making has had an important place in the ongoing debates about the changing modes of government itself. [...]they analyse them as identities enacted in the context of a particular 'assemblage', a 'temporary constellation of a variety of different actors' that is conceived of as both more fluid and open than a structure and as constitutive of the very possibilities of action of its members as opposed to understanding these constellations as phenomena of network governance.