Governance in der Wirtschaftspolitik.

Abstract

Governance has become a frequently used and multi-faceted concept. Many questions in economics and politics that are discussed as governance problems today were assessed as questions of the economic order in the past and later on have been analyzed with the instruments of institutional economics. Research on governance is not confined to economics; rather it is carried out in other social sciences, too. This paper identifies and analyzes seven concepts of governance. They are attributed to a hierarchy of governance that ranges from a micro to a macro level. The Governance of Transactions, Corporate Governance or Co-operative Governance are assigned to the micro level, while Good Governance, New Governance and Global Governance belong to the macro level. Economic Governance acts on both levels. All these concepts of governance bear economic policy implications. Basically, governance can be identified as an order consisting of institutions in the sense of institutional economics, but increasingly hybrid elements are added to this view on governance. Therefore, a new research program has to be set up focussing on the empirics of these hybrids.