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From government to governance is a grand story line about the changing role of the state, which has had a great impact upon researchers and practitioners. This article is an empirical assessment of this story line. Three critical dimensions are elaborated into indicators of government and governance: governing styles and instruments, public–private relationships, and policy levels. These indicators are used to assess the role of the state in environmental governing using Swedish forestry and transport as examples. The results show that the story line is too simple; the role of the state is not changing in a unidirectional way. Instead, the comparison shows that environmental governing within the two policy areas is characterized by both government and governance modes of governing, thus questioning the usefulness of the story line as a guideline when framing empirical studies or political decisions.
Erik Hysing (Wed,) studied this question.