Governance

The word governance is ubiquitous. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund make loans conditional on good governance. Climate change and avian flu appear as issues of global governance. The European Union issues a White Paper on Governance. The U.S. Forest Service calls for collaborative governance. What accounts for the pervasive use of the term governance and to what does it refer? It has a bewildering set of answers. The word governance is used in a variety of contexts, but at a general level, it refers to all forms of social coordination and patterns of rule. In this Very Short Introduction, Mark Bevir considers not only the main theories of governance, but also their impact in a variety of areas including corporate, public, and global affairs.