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Acknowledgements

Writing this book was triggered by my participation in 2016–19 as a part-time research fellow in the Economic and Social Research Council’s Civil Society programme hosted by the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD) (Grant Number: ES/L009099/1). I was based at Lancaster University and occasionally visited Cardiff, Llandridnod Wells, Aberystwyth, Bangor and Swansea to participate in WISERD-funded events to learn from colleagues and deliver lectures on my account of civil society. I chose to interpret civil society as a shifting horizon of action rather than a fixed reality with a definite substance and became convinced, following the example of Michel Foucault, that it should be studied as a pluralistic ensemble of governance or governmental arrangements with diverse agents. Thus, the book examines civil society from a governance theoretical viewpoint, which gives it a more abstract theoretical quality than many readers might expect. It does not take civil society as its primary theoretical object but introduces governance, governance failure, metagovernance and metagovernance failure before turning to the two phases of the WISERD Civil Society programme and my own examples. In this sense, it draws on my long-established pre-WISERD studies as well as my involvement with the WISERD programme.

In writing this book I have benefited from the support of Martin Jones, David Beel, Paul Chaney, Esther Muddiman, Ian Rees Jones and Victoria Macfarlane in the WISERD project, and from Ngai-Ling Sum and Andrew Sayer at Lancaster University. I alone am responsible for errors, omissions and theoretical inconsistencies. Laura Vickers-Rendall at Policy Press was helpful in bringing the book to completion and Millie Prekop assisted with publicity. Dawn Rushen was a superlative copyeditor.

I dedicate this book to my younger brother, Richard John Jessop, who was born on 17 September 1947 and died on 28 December 2017.