From Government to Governance: A Symbolic Mutation and Its Repercussions for Democracy

Matthias Lievens

Political Studies, 2015, vol. 63, 2-17

Abstract: type="main">

This article develops an assessment of the shift from government to governance from the perspective of the concept of democratic representation developed by the French political theorist Claude Lefort. It is argued that this shift does not primarily entail a change of actors, norms or decision-making processes, but that it should rather be understood more fundamentally as a symbolic mutation. In governance regimes, a novel representation of power and society comes into being which transforms the basic symbolic configuration of society. Focusing especially on forms of global governance, the article investigates how this mutation provides society with a new image of itself, and how it affects the democratic nature of current society.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1467-9248.12171 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:polstu:v:63:y:2015:i::p:2-17

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0032-3217

Access Statistics for this article

Political Studies is currently edited by Matthew Festenstein and Martin Smith

More articles in Political Studies from Political Studies Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().