Governance: Exploring various conceptual dimensions
- Bihar Journal of Public Administration
- 16(1), Jan-Jun, 2019: p.56-68
Governance, traditionally associated with the exercise of power within the government, has come to describe the changes in the nature of state witnessed since 1980s. It acquired a broad new meaning referring to the processes, and actors outside the sphere of government. While conceptualising this phenomenal shift towards a greater use of markets and networks, one is confronted with an array of questions that include the role of non-state actors in public service delivery and their accountability; public interest in relation to the role of unelected actors and of lobbying successes of interest and advocacy groups associated with corporate houses in policy making. Governance indicates a new process of governing, a changed condition of ordered rule and a new method by which society is governed. In the area of administration and public policy, it has six different meanings: 1) as the minimal state, 2) as corporate governance, 3) as the new public management, 4) as ‘good government’, 5) as a socio-cybernetic system, and 6) as self-organising networks. – Reproduced