Governing the Embedded State integrates governance theory with organization theory and examines how states address social complexity and international embeddedness. Drawing upon extensive empirical research on the Swedish government system, this volume describes a strategy of governance based in a metagovernance model of steering by designing institutional structures. This strategy is supplemented by micro-steering of administrative structures within the path dependencies put in place through metagovernance. Both of these strategies of steering rely on subtle methods of providing political guidance to the public service where norms of loyalty to the government characterize the relationship between politicians and civil servants.

By drawing upon this research, the volume will explain how recent developments such as globalization, Europeanization, the expansion of managerial ideas, and the fragmentation of states, have influenced the state's capacity to govern.

The result is an account of contemporary governance which shows the societal constraints on government but also the significance of close interaction and cooperation between the political leadership and the senior civil servants in addressing those constraints.