‘Governance’ as a bridge between disciplines: Cross‐disciplinary inspiration regarding shifts in governance and problems of governability, accountability and legitimacy

Abstract Modern societies have in recent decades seen a destabilization of the traditional governing mechanisms and the advancement of new arrangements of governance. Conspicuously, this has occurred in the private, semi‐private and public spheres, and has involved local, regional, national, transnational and global levels within these spheres. We have witnessed changes in the forms and mechanisms of governance by which institutional and organizational societal sectors and spheres are governed, as well as in the location of governance from where command, administration, management and control of societal institutions and spheres are conducted. We have also seen changes in governing capabilities (i.e., the extent to which societal institutions and spheres can, in fact, be steered), as well as in styles of governance (i.e., the processes of decision making and implementation, including the manner in which the organizations involved relate to each other). These shifts tend to have significant consequences for the governability, accountability, responsiveness and legitimacy of governance institutions. These developments have been generating a new and important research object for political science (including international relations). One of the crucial features of these developments is that they concern a diversity of sectors. In order to get a thorough understanding of ‘shifts in governance’, political science needs, and is also likely to adopt, a much stronger multidisciplinary orientation embracing politics, law, public administration, economics and business administration, as well as sociology, geography and history.