Governance

[k_a_nitz]

The latest post by New Zealand political commentator Chris Trotter has an interesting footnote:

The use of the word governance – as opposed to "government" – by liberal democrats is deliberate. It denotes not decisive power, but rational administrative process. Governance is what happens when the possibility of radical – i.e. system-threatening – change has been taken off the table.

This is perhaps the best explanation of the use of the word 'governance' that I have seen yet.

Comments

[jprussell]

That is a very sharp observation, and not a specific one I'd encountered, despite reading a lot of similar critiques of modern liberal democracies and their emphasis on managerial expertise over traditional political ways of settling things.

If you haven't read N.S. Lyons's "The China Convergence," it's a very good (though very long) discussion of managerialism and how it tends to converge on similar approaches, even in ostensibly opposed political systems: https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-china-convergence

Cheers,
Jeff

Hmm

[degringolade]

I tend to think that it is a "phraseology" that is used as a defense of actions taken by the PMC in order to perpetuate their worldview.

"The" Government is thought of as the elected officials. Governance is the actions performed by the worker bees of the bureaucracy that is created to do the day-to-work of executing the governments decisions.

I think that after a while, the "governance" becomes bigger than the government. Happens in all sorts of ideological systems and is similar to barnacles on a ship.