ABSTRACT
Governance has only recently entered the standard anglophone social science lexicon and become a ‘buzzword’ in various lay circles.
Even now its social scientific usages are often ‘pre-theoretical’ and eclectic; and lay usages are just as diverse and contrary. Nonetheless, in general terms, two closely related, but nested, meanings can be identified. First, governance can refer to any mode of co-ordination of interdependent activities. Among these modes, three are relevant here: the anarchy of exchange, organizational hierarchy, and self-organizing ‘heterarchy’. The second, more restricted mean-
ing, is heterarchy (or selforganization) and is the focus of this article. Its forms include self-organizing interpersonal networks, negotiated inter-organizational co-ordination, and decentred, context-mediated inter-systemic steering. The latter two cases involve selforganized steering of multiple agencies, institutions, and systems which are operationally autonomous from one another yet structurally coupled due to their mutual
interdependence. These two features are especially significant in encouraging reliance on heterarchy. For, whilst their respective operational autonomies exclude primary reliance on a single hierarchy as a mode of co-ordination, their interdependence makes them ill-suited to simple, blind co-evolution based on the ‘invisible hand’ of mutual, ex post adaptation. Such incrementalism is sub-optimal because it is based on short-run, localized, ad hoc responses and thus takes inadequate account of the com-
plex and continuing interdependence among these autonomous agencies, institutions, and systems.
