The Governance System for the Europe 2020 Strategy

Governance has been widely discussed by scholars since the nineties in the different but related fields of politics, public administration and European studies. Research and theorizing of governance has resulted in a complex, diverse and at times bewildering array of writing. Governance has been written about as a new approach by the modern state (Kickert et al. 1997). In contrast, it has also been analysed as governance without government (Peters and Pierre 1998). It has been studied in relation to regimes, law, rules, judicial decisions and administrative practices (Lynn et al. 2001). Then again, it has been studied in relation to non-state actors and policy entrepreneurs building networks (Klijn 2005; Kooiman 2005). One influential view suggested that there are a number of approaches to the concept of governance in the study of public administration, including the study of: (1) inter-jurisdictional governance, (2) extending state function by exporting it to third parties (profit or non-profit), and finally (3) non-state governance in accounting for NGO activities (Frederickson 2005).