Governance, conflict and dispute resolution : introduction

Governance, Conflict and Dispute Resolution: Introduction. The last decade has been, for scholars and policy makers working on development, a decade of governance. The institutionalist wave that swept across the social sciences, as well as the attention in policy circles for the institutional determinants of growth and development, has produced a focus on governance, defined as ‘the formation and stewardship of the formal and informal rules that regulate the public realm, the arena in which state as well as economic and societal actors interact to make decisions’ [1]. The articles in this Supplement analyse their particular cases in relation to this broad definition, which does not privilege an understanding of narrow-defined political arenas and political behaviour, but rather opts for a broader conceptualisation of ways in which the public realm is influenced by socio-economic interests, material conditions, and ideologies. ...