- Title
- Conceptualising 'governance': discourse, theory and ontology
- Creator
- Jose, Jim
- Relation
- 2009 Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting (WPSA 2009). 2009 Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting: Papers (Vancouver, Canada 19-21 March, 2009)
- Relation
- http://convention3.allacademic.com/one/wpsa/wpsa09/index.php?cmd=wpsa09
- Publisher
- Western Political Science Association
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2009
- Description
- As a concept 'governance' brings together multiple and diverse connections between ideas, interests and institutions. Yet despite the voluminous literature generated by the term, little of it could be described as conceptual analysis. The dominant approach is one of surveying competing uses of the term, as if a term's meanings determined by its various uses amounts to adequate conceptual analysis. Despite aiming to explicate the meaning(s) of 'governance', a concept, these surveys rapidly become accounts of governance, a practice. An ambiguity emerges between concept and practice, between idea and reality, an ambiguity that raises questions about the ontological commitments of the concept. If concepts (and discourses and theories) carry within them a double claim, one about what is real and the other about how we should interpret that reality, then it needs to be asked what kinds of reality and understanding does governance bring to a theory in which it is positioned as a key explanatory term? In particular, what sort of reality lurks within the conceptual baggage of 'governance'? These questions frame the central problematic of the paper, namely the ontological status of the concept 'governance'. The paper engages with these questions and in so doing aims to provide a first step towards a more adequate theoretical analysis of the term 'governance'.
- Subject
- concept; discourse; governance; ontology; ontological commitments; theory
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/919912
- Identifier
- uon:9019
- Language
- eng
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