Networks In Open Systems Of Governance

<title>Abstract</title> This article focuses on an abortive attempt to co-ordinate a local governance network in the domain of older persons' care in England. It locates a key source of failure in pressures in the policy context. Exogenous factors are analysed using a tiered (macro-/meso-/micro-) model linking context and agents. People occupy specific positions in the policy system and can respond differently to erratic contextual prompts. This putative autonomy imposes limits on the assumed trajectory and ontology of whole-networks in socially contested arenas and delimits the strategic space for network governance. Networks are thus as often effects as causes of social change.