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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216756437 Governance: Exploring four approaches and their relevance to research Chapter · January 2011 CITATIONS 19 READS 483 1 author: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Governance in health View project Governance View project Marc Hufty Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies 51 PUBLICATIONS 333 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Marc Hufty on 11 December 2014. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. 165 8 Governance: Exploring Four Approaches and Their Relevance to Research Marc Hufty1 Abstract Although governance is widely used in policy debates, it has remained a fuzzy concept, referring sometimes to theoretical approaches and some- times to ideological stances. From the point of view of many developing countries it connotes a set of ‘recipes’ and constraints imposed by Western institutions. This article explores how, based on existing approaches, the concept of governance could be developed into an analytical tool for the social and development sciences that does not fall prey to ideological con- notations. For this purpose, the article presents what I consider to be the four most popular approaches to the concept of governance: corporate gov- ernance, global governance, good governance, and modern governance. These approaches are compared and analysed in terms of both their gaps and their potential contributions to the analytical tool envisioned. The crite- ria developed for this tool are that it should be suitable for analysing social dynamics at various levels, in different societies, and at different times, and that there should be no limitation to the actors incorporated into the analysis. Accordingly, governance is delineated in the first instance as the decision-making processes that take place whenever collective stakes lead to competition and cooperation. Keywords: Governance; corporate governance; global governance; good governance; modern governance. Research for Sustainable Development: Foundations, Experiences, and Perspectives 166 North-South perspectives 8.1 Introduction Governance has become one of the most widely used words in policy debates. It has been everywhere for some time already: in the publications of international and bilateral development aid organisations, in the discourse of decision-makers, and many other places. Yet it is also one of the most fuzzy concepts currently in use. It occurs in very general discourses as well as in specialised domains, referring sometimes to theoretical approaches and sometimes to ideological stances. For most people, this is confusing. The term may have a rather precise meaning in neo-institutional econom- ics, but from the point of view of developing countries, especially in Africa, Asia, and South America, it clearly connotes a set of ‘recipes’ concerning structural adjustment and constraints imposed by Western institutions, and is thus heavily laden with values. The main question to be answered here is whether or not the concept of gov- ernance has a place in the social sciences toolbox and, if so, how to avoid any ideological connotations. In the context of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) North-South, a group of researchers at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies (IUED)2 came to agree that the answer was ‘yes’, that it was worth a try: the concept was still in a ‘pre- theoretical stage’ (Jessop 1998), but it could be elaborated and converted into a useful tool for the social and development sciences. Our main goal has therefore been to develop an approach to the concept and a method for using it that would be as rigorous, or non-normative, as possible, at least by specifying in what research conditions it can increase our understanding of some categories of social facts. Two phases logically followed: the first one was exploratory and reflexive, and the second one involved the develop- ment of a theoretical and methodological framework. This second phase was motivated by a concrete demand from partner institutions for a method to analyse specific cases where governance was considered a key factor for understanding problematic situations.3 The present paper is a result of the exploratory phase.4 It reviews the most common modern approaches to governance with the objective of identify- ing their gaps as well as conceptual advancements and tools that can serve as a basis for further conceptual development. The backbone of this review is a set of criteria or questions used to compare the selected approaches: Is the object of the approach clearly defined so as to distinguish what governance is and what it is not? Does the approach propose a specific methodology, 167 Governance: Four Approaches and Their Relevance to Research suitable for empirical and operational research? Can it be used for a variety of cases, at different levels, and in different contexts? Is the methodology analytical or normative? Does it qualify as being appropriately rigorous? 8.2 The origin of the term “governance” The concept of ‘governance’ has a long history. In ancient Greek, kubernân referred to the steering of a ship or cart, but Plato already used it in a meta- phorical way to refer to the steering of human beings (De Oliveira Barata 2002). The Latin verb gubernare has the same meaning as the Greek word. In medieval French, it was used as a synonym of ‘government’, and later referred to a territorial subdivision. In the 17th century, a gouverneur was a legal representative of the French King, assigned, in the context of a gen- eral endeavour on the part of the central state to establish its control over feudal lords, to different bailliages or provinces of Northern France, for- mally named gouvernances: Arras, Lille, Douai, Artois, Flandre, and others (Guyot 1784). The French word entered the Spanish and Portuguese languages in the 14th century. Governança was the equivalent of the modern term “government”. As was the case in French, it became obsolete but lent its root to some close- ly related terms such as gobierno, gobernación, and others (Hufty 2010). When the concept re-emerged in the 1980s, there was no equivalent in Span- ish. Different terms have been used, generating much confusion (Hufty et al 2006). In Spain, gobernanza is used in the context of the European Union (whereas in some Latin American countries this term designates a floor maid in a hotel). Although it sounds old-fashioned to certain ears (Solá 2000), it is slowly becoming the dominant equivalent for the English ‘governance’. In Latin America, many influential organisations (e.g. the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme or the Swiss Agency for Develop- ment and Cooperation) use the term gobernabilidad, causing major confu- sion with the concept of governability, which has a very different meaning (see section 8.6 below). The confusion is not resolved by the Real Academ- ia Española de la Lengua, which recommends the use of gobernanza, but accepts gobernabilidad as a synonym. Moreover, the term gobernancia is also commonly found. The French word gouvernance also entered the English language in the 14th century, with the general meaning of steering, or the ‘art of governing’. But Research for Sustainable Development: Foundations, Experiences, and Perspectives 168 North-South perspectives while it slowly became obsolete in the Latin-based languages, it remained in use in English. A selection of titles gleaned from the Library of Congress catalogue (Washington, D.C.) illustrates the continuity of its use: in his Gov- ernance of England (undated), Sir John Fortescue (1394–1476) compared the absolutist and limited monarchies. In 1554, Sir Thomas Elyot published The Image of Governance, compiled of the actes and sentences notable, of the moste noble Emperour Alexander Severus, late translated out of Greke into Englyshe. In 1566, Thomas Becon published The Governaunce of Ver- tue: teaching all faythful Christians, how they oughte daily to leade their life, & fruitfully to spend their tyme unto the glorye of God & the health of their owne soules. According to the JSTOR database, an archive which cov- ers mostly English-language scientific journals, there were over 2500 occur- rences of the term “governance” between 1826 and 1969, with over 114 before 1900. The term was used in all domains, from history, constitutional law, and health care to politics. Around 1970, one of the domains in which the concept was used most frequently was the reform of educational sys- tems and especially of universities. Thus, the concept evolved from being synonymous with government or the act of governing, into a broader, more complex, and more confused term – a confusion which persists to this day. 8.3 Corporate governance and the sociology of organisations 8.3.1 The rediscovery of institutions and organisations Governance was given a new lease of life in the USA under the influence of the discipline of organisation studies, especially in the analysis of two types of organisation: private firms and universities. This renewal built on the works of institutional economics and the concept of transactions (Com- mons 1934), taken up by Coase (1937) in his analysis of firms, as an effi- cient means for reducing transaction costs, in contrast with price mecha- nisms (for example, long-term contracts stabilise rational expectations and reduce costs when compared with successive uploads/Philosophie/ 8-hufty 1 .pdf