Meaning & use
governance
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Meanings
noununcountable
The way an organization, state or group is run, including how decisions are made and who holds authority.
Grammar: Usually has no plural and no article: good governance is rare.
Patterns
- governance of something
- governance by someone
The charity's governance improved after it appointed an independent board.
Researchers compared the governance of several mid-sized cities.
Poor governance, rather than a lack of money, caused the project to fail.
noununcountableformal
The act or activity of ruling or controlling a country, institution or system.
Grammar: Often appears in a literary or legal style: the governance of the realm.
Patterns
- the governance of something
The treaty set out rules for the governance of the shared waterway.
Students took part in the governance of the school through an elected council.
Wise governance requires patience as well as power.
Common combinations
- corporate governance
- Investors demanded stronger corporate governance after the accounting scandal.
- good governance
- Good governance depends on open records and honest reporting.
- global governance
- Climate change is often cited as a problem of global governance.
- system of governance
- The village kept its traditional system of governance for centuries.
- governance structure
- The club's governance structure gives members one vote each.
Synonyms and how they differ
- administration
- Administration stresses the day-to-day running of tasks and offices, whereas governance is about the larger rules and authority behind them.
- management
- Management is about directing people and resources to get work done, while governance concerns who sets the rules and oversees the managers.
- rule
- Rule suggests power held over others, often by one person or group, and sounds less about process and structure than governance does.
- government
- Government usually names the body of people in power, while governance names the way power is exercised.
Opposites
Word family
- govern verb
- to control and direct a country, organization or situation
- government noun
- the group of people who rule a country or region
- governor noun
- a person who officially leads a region, institution or organization
- governmental adjective
- relating to a government
- ungovernable adjective
- impossible to control or rule
Commonly confused: governance or government?
governance vs government
Government is the group in charge (the government resigned), while governance is the process of ruling (the governance of the country is complex).
Practice
Which word best completes the sentence? Investors lost trust because the company's ___ was weak and nobody checked the executives' decisions.
Choose one answer.
Governance is the system of oversight and decision-making in an organization. Government names a ruling body and governor is a person, so neither fits as the abstract system.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “governance”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.