The conceptualization of governance
The conceptualization of governance has spurred varied discourses, both in context and concept. Giving a contextual definition of governance had been termed as ‘notoriously slippery’ owing to its ‘umbrella concept to define an approach to comparative politics.'” Governance is a rather old term that was used in French (gouvernance) in the fourteenth century to refer to royal officers rather than to the process of governing or steering (Katsamunska,2016). Judging by this, it is inevitable that the ‘government’ as an ideology only came to be after ‘governance.’ However, the intrinsic nature between the two makes it harder to determine which resulted first; the government or governance? Notwithstanding this dilemma, scholars have construed the idea of ‘governance’ to meet their social construct, be it democratic, financial, economic, or corporate institutions.
In most cases, governance is closely identified with the government when, in fact, they differ. As attested in the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) 1997 policy paper, it defined governance as “the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. It comprises the mechanisms, processes, and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations, and mediate their differences”. On the other hand, ‘government’ is a rigid entity that facilitates these various institutions of governance. I believe that the institutions of governance here refer to the models in which the concerned stakeholders (economic, political, and administrative) function, whether it is state-centric or society-centred.
I want to ascertain that governance is a rational idea that there should be someone to make decisions, uphold the legitimate power, perform in the process, and that the actions are constitutionalized and accountable. Similarly, governance is a network of hierarchy that shares trust in the legitimized power, whether the power shared is oblique or not. In governance, multi-stakeholders play a pivotal role in decision making. These decisions further drive and stir the way each actor coordinate and perform themselves, each time challenging a new approach towards their targeted goals.