It is very easy to say that all societies require governing. It is also easy to say that governance is about steering the economy and society. Those statements are largely truisms, and they beg any number of questions about how exactly that fundamental task required by society is to be accomplished. Governments have been in the business of governing for some centuries, but the hierarchical, linear conception of steering that is inherent in a traditional state-centric model of governance is far too simple for the social and political complexity that now confronts any would-be system for governance. Governments now confront a seemingly endless sequence of “wicked problems” that require some form of response, even if any enduring solutions may be impossible (Head, 2008), and they may be facing those problems with diminished legitimacy and resources (Fukuyama, 2014).

These complex problems pose distinct challenges to governments and to business as usual within the public sector. The complexity and indeterminacy that confronts would-be governors today also makes it improbable to assume that the autonomous social actors who have been advanced as an alternative to the conventional state-centric model can provide effective governance on their own. Contemporary governing requires linkages across institutions within the public sector and between the public sector and actors (market and nonmarket) who exist outside the public sector.

Given the complexity of the task of governing and the complex relationships between civil society and the formal institutions of the public sector, we will first need to build a general model of governance. Such a model will identify the functions required to govern, leaving aside which sets of actors will actually be performing those tasks. This governance model will also be sufficiently general to be able to include the range of variation that may exist for each of the elements of governance identified in the analysis and therefore can be used as a template for comparative political analysis. Governance generally has been discussed in rather absolute terms – it exists or it does not – but the extent and manner of governance does vary across societies, and we consider governance as a fundamental approach to political analysis.