The Limits to Governance. The Challenge of Policy-making for the New Life Sciences Catherine Lyall, Theo Papaioannou and James Smith (eds.) Ashgate, 20091

The Limits to Governance is an edited volume that questions “conventional notions of governance in response to calls for more critical debate and guidance on its application in specific policy areas such as the life sciences”. The volume is the output of the interdisciplinary research programme of the ESRC Innogen Centre at the University of Edinburgh, building on an earlier volume published by the Innogen, New Modes of Governance. The starting point – as stated in the preface – was the “recognition that the multifaceted policy and regulatory situation that applies to the life sciences presents a paradox: at the core of the problems lies the fact that the life sciences do still require a considerable degree of government-led regulation which runs counter to the prevailing shift towards decentralized governance.” Hence, the government-governance relationship and top-down or/and bottom-up approaches towards governance through and of the life sciences (particularly genomics) lie at the heart of the volume.