Conclusions 245
frameworks indigenous to and outside of mainstream public administration can
be formulated to help explain and address the rapidly changing relationship be-
tween state and society.
Conclusions
Th e theories and concepts associated with the word “governance” are increasingly
important for public administration scholars. Yet even as governance becomes
a virtual synonym for public management and public administration, it is not
exactly clear what governance is. Certainly, governance is centered on the need
to account for the changing relationship between government and society. Th e
growth of the fragmented or hollow state has brought about a fundamental shift
in the process and nature of public administration, a change that has altered con-
ceptions of what government should do and how government should go about
doing it. Th ese changes have forced public administration scholars to account for
the new realities in their intellectual frameworks, and varied attempts to do this
are being carried out under the loose umbrella of governance.
Among these eff orts, it is possible to identify at least three distinct concep-
tions of governance. (1) “Governance” is simply a surrogate word for public
administration and policy implementation. Th us, governance theory is an in-
tellectual project attempting to unify the various intellectual threads running
through a multidisciplinary literature into a framework that covers this broad
area of government activity. Th is, essentially, is the position staked by Lynn et
al. (2000, 2001). (2) Governance equates to the managerialist, or NPM, move-
ment. Th is is particularly evident where NPM followed from serious attempts
to reform the public sector by defi ning and justifying what government should
and should not do, and to reshape public service provision by attacking the
pathologies of bureaucracy (Kettl 2000). (3) Governance is a body of theory
that comprehends lateral relations, interinstitutional relations, the decline of
sovereignty, the diminishing importance of jurisdictional borders, and a gen-
eral institutional fragmentation. Th is is the case with collaborative governance
theory (Emerson et al. 2012).
Of these three approaches, the fi rst is the most ambitious. Unifying a large
literature spread across several disciplines by distilling its central objectives and
methodologies into a well-defi ned research agenda is a project grand in scope
and of enormous complexity. If successful, the payoff is sure to be consider-
able. Th e all-encompassing objective, however, is also the largest weakness of
this approach to governance. Th e target is so large that trying to fi t everything
within its intellectual confi nes causes the framework to lose parsimony and
clarity. Th e defi nition of “governance” is so broad and inclusive that it runs the
risk of losing any specifi c meaning, a problem Lynn et al. implicitly acknowl-
edge. As one reviewer has pointed out (Lowery 2002), as they move from their
sweeping defi nition to grappling with the specifi cs of model building, Lynn et