Much of the current governance literature is dismissive of hierarchy as a model of governance. Hierarchies, critics contend, were an appropriate institutional order in the days of highly standardized public services, a ‘Fordist’ economy domestically controlled markets and unrivalled state strength. With most of these factors profoundly altered, so must hierarchies fall, the argument goes. The emphasis now is instead on smaller scales, flexibility, diversification, informal exchange rather than formal control, and ‘sharing power’ between state and market (kettl,1993) rather than maintaining a strict division between the public and the private.