Social-Political Governance

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Abstract
The concept of ‘governance’ is in use in many different sub-disciplines of the social sciences. Although there are many differences in the way it is defined and applied, common elements are the emphasis on rules and qualities of systems, co-operation to enhance legitimacy and effectiveness and the attention for new processes and public-private arrangements. The apparent success of the concept seems to be that it reflects the societal need for new initiatives based upon the realization of growing societal interdependencies. The article surveys different uses. One form of governance is what may be called interactive or social-political governance. This perspective on governance takes different forms of social-political interactions as its central theme in which different kinds of distinctions are made, such as between self, ‘co’ and hierarchical governance and between orders of governance such as first-order governance, which means problem-solving and opportunity-creation, second-order governance, which looks at the institutional conditions and meta-governance which deals with the principles which ‘govern’ governance itself. In the article several governance issues are raised and some empirical examples given for the concepts used and the associated theoretical notions.

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