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Embedding the Relationship between Law and Governance

Abstract by Prof. Dr. D. von der Pfordten

How can we understand the relationship between law and governance? In order to characterize this relationship it seems necessary to ask: Why is governance now such a big issue? Why had this form to lead a good life in community such a great uprising in the last decades? Is governance a new invention or an old form or mean to lead a good life? To start with the last question: In history we had all times governance structures that is forms of governance. So governance is a form of communal action to lead a good life in communities which had ever existed in the history of mankind. But why have governance and/or the concept of governance become in the last decades such an important instrument to analyze our way to lead a good life in the community? Governance has – this is my main theses – the purpose or function to break up the close – and by many now considered too close – relationship between law and politics. Or to formulate it a little more drastically: Governance has the purpose or function to free law from politics and perhaps also to a certain extent to free politics from law.

The working paper 'Embedding the Relationship between Law and Governance' can be found here.

Last modified:07 June 2019 10.34 a.m.