ABSTRACT
Although used as far back as the 14th century, the word ‘governance’ has not been used frequently in social sciences until the late 1980s. During the last decades, however, ‘governance’ has grown into a commonly used concept within planning and policy sciences. While clarity regarding its detailed meaning has faded with its increased use in literature and debate, the use of ‘governance’ in planning and policy science is unprecedented. Spoken in general, governance is simply a synonym for ‘steering’, or what Pierre and Guy Peters (2000) call ‘the process of governing’. Nevertheless, many authors describe governance more narrowly as a distinct style of steering, hinting towards a relatively adaptive and flexible style that is based on a fluid sharing of responsibilities between mutual dependent actors both within and outside formal governments. In recent decades, it is exactly this more narrow description of governance that has gained in popularity in both theoretical debates and practice. Hence, the popularity of the word governance is a clear signifier of a process of institutional change, both in thinking about how societies should be governed and in how they are actually being governed.
