This book explores philosophical, sociological, and democratic approaches to organization. Bevir offers a humanist and historicist perspective, arguing that people creatively make and remake organizations in particular contexts. By highlighting the meaningful and contingent nature of action, he reexamines the concepts of state, nation, network, and market, and he calls for democratic innovations.

Mark Bevir is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of a number of books, including Democratic Governance and Governance: A Very Short Introduction.

“Like John Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems , A. D. Lindsay’s The Modern Democratic State , or Dwight Waldo’s The Administrative State , Mark Bevir’s A Theory of Governance offers a comprehensive new way to think about how we think about governing. Provocative, profound, prophetic, this book advances an original general theory of “de-centered governance” drawn from post-foundational philosophy. It ambitiously challenges basic working assumptions, theories, even contemporary social science language in order to reframe fundamentally our conceptual understanding of this critical topic and, hence, deserves serious attention by scholars of public administration and policy.”—Richard Stillman, University of Colorado, former editor-in-chief, Public Administration Review