Is governance for everybody?

The term governance has come to be used commonly in both academic discourse and in ordinary discussions about how the public sector, and other institutions, manage themselves and their relationships with the broader society. The emphasis on governance in many ways reflects public concerns about the capacity of their political systems to act effectively and decisively to solve public problems. In this short paper I take a generic stance on the nature of governance. Rather than assuming that one set of actors or another is the appropriate source of governance, I will advance a conception of governance that focuses on the basic functions that must be performed in order to govern. Further, rather than forcing a choice between one set of actors or another, this more general conception of governance focuses on the possible mixtures of actors which can govern most effectively.