Séverine Bellina, Hervé Magro and Violaine de Villemeur (eds)

Governance has become one of those oft-brandished terms that are ubiquitous in the field of international relations and development co-operation.
It is in common use among academics, experts, members of civil society, international and bilateral organisations, politicians, etc. Used and abused by so many, the word has become hard to define. The end of the Cold War and the early nineties’ major development reforms saw a rise in its ‘good governance’ incarnation. Synonymous with managerial reforms, the concept has gone the way of those policies.

The French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs has sought to set
forth an original vision, prodding beyond the well-rehearsed language and
problems of development circles and international bodies. Recent years have
seen the proliferation of decidedly innovative ‘governance’ strategies. Thus, in
2006, France adopted its own specific strategy, as did most of its European
partners. The renewal of the debate relies on a powerful consensus for the
leaving behind of the managerial approach in favour of an integrated one
and the promotion of the political dimension and of diverse levels of governance (from the local to the global). Dialogue, pragmatism and capacity
development at local level have supplanted the promotion of a standardised
model.

Bringing together contributors hailing from vastly diverse backgrounds, from
both North and South, this book is a testament of this change: for it is of the
essence that the diversity of academic and cultural analyses be at the heart
of a debate so crucial to the world of development and to the international
community, offering, through the lens of this multi-actor, interdisciplinary and
intercultural discussion, a long view of the concept of governance.

So this book has no ‘ready-made’ answers, no new recipes to offer. It does
not claim to substitute one model for another but asserts that the efficiency of
development policies can only be achieved through a better understanding
of the exercise of legitimate power in a given society. Only then can ‘good
governance’ be conceived of as democratic governance, that is a means for
societies to develop their own modalities of governance.