From "Big Government" to "Big Governance"?

This article discusses the objective of this volume, which is to demonstrate that governance is increasingly becoming a broad concept that is central to the study of political, economic, spatial, and social order in general, and to the understanding of the dynamics of change of capitalist democracies in particular. The volume traces the scholarly origins and growth of governance, considering governance as a signifier of change, as structure, process, mechanism, and strategy. It also evaluates the role of governance in the search for theory of the state and explores relevant issues including the statelessness of Anglo-American political theory, the rise of neoliberalism, and the rise of the European Union as a new transnational order.