Good Governance and Civil Society

Book excerpt: The concept of “governance” is a key issue for public sector work at all levels. In today’s environment of globalization and the growing significance of communication and participatory managing methods, public service provisions and dialogue with citizens have to be developed. Governance provides an answer to these challenges: it combines cooperative forms of governing, involving both the private sector and social partners, which can form networks to develop policies in different fields. “Good” governance is generally seen as an outcome of transparent and efficient governing methods, as well as multi-level governance utilising both state instruments and other institutions, such as supranational organisations and local and regional governments. This book is devoted to these questions and research problems. The contributors are predominantly young scientists, and examine a wide range of different examples, issues and case studies, in order to analyse various elements and aspects of the concept of “governance”. The book provides interdisciplinary and multidimensional research in order to analyse the numerous different facets of this broad term. As such, the contributors to this volume are drawn from the various fields of politics, the economy, society, and communication, in order to provide a well-rounded and in-depth analysis of “governance”.