ABSTRACT
This chapter represents a rather significant modification of the original framework elaborated in Schouenborg (2011). Recall that I here operated with five functional categories: 1) principles of legitimacy and membership; 2) regulating conflicts; 3) trade; 4) authoritative communication; and 5) international organisation. After much thought and engagement with the empirical case material, I came to the conclusion that the final two categories should be merged into one, ‘governance’, the subject of this chapter. If my first functional category (principles of legitimacy and membership) is about what Mayall (1990: 16) terms the oldest question in politics (by what right do you rule?), then the category of governance is concerned with the question: how do you rule? Governance captures those offices and status roles that channel and execute legitimate authority. Let me briefly revisit the reasons set out in the introduction for this reconceptualisation.
