doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2010.01838.x PERSUASION AS GOVERNANCE: A STATE-CENTRIC RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVE STEPHEN BELL, ANDREW HINDMOOR AND FRANK MOLS Debates about governance and the relationship between governance and government have focused upon markets, hierarchies and networks as principal modes of governance. In this paper we argue that persuasion constitutes a further and distinctive mode of governance, albeit one which interpenetrates other modes of governance. In order to assess the nature, limitations and scope of persuasion and the complex relationships between markets, hierarchies, networks on the one hand and persuasion on the other, we interpret persuasion through the prism of two theoretical perspectives on governance. We argue that the society-centred perspective usefully draws our attention to the role played by non-state actors in the exercise of governance through persuasion but that a state-centric relational account can help us to better understand important facets of persuasion as a mode of governance. INTRODUCTION One way in which governments can seek to achieve their policy objectives is by persuading people to change their behaviour. Examples are legion. Governments seek to persuade people to smoke less, eat more healthily, drink less alcohol, save water, recycle their rubbish, report suspected terrorists, engage in voluntary work, pay their taxes on time, use public transport, take regular exercise, cut their carbon emissions, undertake regular medical examinations, read to their children at night, gamble responsibly, eschew drugs, and save for their retirement. Efforts to govern through persuasion are long-standing. In the aftermath of the First World War the French government launched a national campaign to encourage its female citizens to give birth to more children. The Gold Medal of Honour of the French Family was subsequently awarded to any woman who raised eight or more children. The British government’s campaigns during the Second World War to persuade people that ‘careless talk costs lives’ and to ‘dig for victory’ subsequently achieved iconic status. Evidence of the growing use by governments of persuasion as a mode of gover- nance can be found in the literature on social marketing, documenting the growth of a ‘public relations state’ (Deacon and Golding 1994). In Australia, Ian Ward (2007) has noted that federal government marketing expenditure rose from around A$50m in 1992 to A$200m in 2006. Stanyer (2007, p. 42) has pointed to a ‘growing obses- sion with promotion’ at all levels of British government. Official figures show that in the UK central government expenditure on broadcasting and publishing rose from £0.1 billion in 1999 to £3.3 billion in 2006. In Canada, federal government expenditure of more than C$1 billion a year was made the subject of numerous public inquiries following revelations that a government-funded campaign to persuade Quebecois of the merits of federation had been corruptly used to reward firms with close political links to the incumbent Liberal Party (Greene and Shugaman 2008). At a time when the legitimacy of the state is in question and its resources under strain, persuasion is an attractive governance option because it may obviate the need for the exercise of a coercive Stephen Bell, Andrew Hindmoor and Frank Mols are in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. Public Administration Vol. 88, No. 3, 2010 (851–870)  2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.