Governance

This entry positions governance as a critique of and response to power centralized in the postwar high modern state. Focusing on the anglophone world it is argued that governance promises more legitimate, more effective and more accountable mechanisms for managing public services. It involves a deep entanglement of ethical principle and institutional design. The entry reviews the main tenets of the governance literature, situating it in the context of the neoliberal critique of the high modern state. It then focuses on accountability as governance’s ‘cultural keyword,’ distinguishing it from Adam Smith’s sense of accountability by arguing that in governance ethics cannot be disentangled from institutional design.