A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community,generally a state.
Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups,or other forms of power relations among individuals,such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies politics and government is referred to as political science.
Accountability,in terms of ethics and governance,is equated with answerability,culpability,liability,and the expectation of account-giving.
Governance is the overall complex system or framework of processes,functions,structures,rules,laws and norms borne out of the relationships,interactions,power dynamics and communication within an organized group of individuals which not only sets the boundaries of acceptable conduct and practices of different actors of the group and controls their decision-making processes through the creation and enforcement of rules and guidelines,but also manages,allocates and mobilizes relevant resources and capacities of different members and sets the overall direction of the group in order to effectively address its specific collective needs,problems and challenges. The concept of governance can be applied to social,political or economic entities such as a state and its government,a governed territory,a society,a community,a social group,a formal or informal organization,a corporation,a non-governmental organization,a non-profit organization,a project team,a market,a network or even the global stage. Governance can also pertain to a specific sector of activities such as land,environment,health,internet,security,etc. The degree of formality in governance depends on the internal rules of a given entity and its external interactions with similar entities. As such,governance may take many forms,driven by many different motivations and with many different results.
Arend d'Angremond Lijphart is a Dutch-American political scientist specializing in comparative politics,elections and voting systems,democratic institutions,and ethnicity and politics. He is Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California,San Diego. He is influential for his work on consociational democracy and his contribution to the new Institutionalism in political science.
Comparative politics is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the comparative method or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively,this can include questions relating to political institutions,political behavior,conflict,and the causes and consequences of economic development. When applied to specific fields of study,comparative politics may be referred to by other names,such as comparative government.
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi is a Romanian political scientist,academic,journalist and writer. She currently holds the professorship of Comparative Public Policy at the Department of Political Science of LUISS Guido Carli in Rome. She also chairs the multi-site European Research Centre for Anticorruption and State-Building (ERCAS) and is Academic Coordinator of BridgeGap,an EU Horizon research project. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi also holds the honorary presidency of Romanian Academic Society. She also consults for various governments and international organizations and contributed work for the European Parliament as principal investigator on ‘clean trade’, the Swedish Government on effectiveness of good governance assistance programs,the EU Dutch Presidency on trust and public integrity in EU-28,for the European Commission DG Research on governance innovation,for the World Bank Development Report and the International Monetary Fund,among others.
Stein Rokkan was a Norwegian political scientist and sociologist. He was the first professor of sociology at the University of Bergen and a principal founder of the discipline of comparative politics. He founded the multidisciplinary Department of Sociology at the University of Bergen,which encompassed sociology,economics and political science and which had a key role in the postwar development of the social sciences in Norway.
Henning Meyer is a German social scientist,consultant and policy specialist. He is the first Fellow of the German Federal Ministry of Finance and honorary professor for Public Policy and Business at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. Furthermore,he is research associate at Cambridge University’s Centre for Business Research (CBR),Future World Fellow at the Centre for the Governance of Change at IE University and founder and editor-in-chief of Social Europe. Previously,he was John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University,senior visiting fellow and research associate at the London School of Economics and Political Science and visiting fellow at Cornell University.
Multi-level governance is a term used to describe the way power is spread vertically between levels of government and horizontally across multiple quasi-government and non-governmental organizations and actors. This situation develops because countries have multiple levels of government including local,regional,state,national or federal,and many other organisations with interests in policy decisions and outcomes. International governance operates based on multi-level governance principles. Multi-level governance can be distinguished from multi-level government which is when different levels of government share or transfer responsibility amongst each other. Whereas multi-level governance analyses the relationship of different state levels and interaction with different types of actors.'
Jean Blondel was a French political scientist specialising in comparative politics. He was Emeritus Professor at the European University Institute in Florence,and visiting professor at the University of Siena.
Vivien A. Schmidt is an American academic of political science and international relations. At Boston University,she is the Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration Professor of International Relations in the Pardee School of Global Studies,and Professor of Political Science. She is known for her work on political economy,policy analysis,democratic theory,and new institutionalism. She is a 2018 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been named a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor.
Gerardo L. Munck is a political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California.
John S. Dryzek is a Centenary Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra's Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis.
Roderick Arthur William Rhodes,usually cited as R. A. W. Rhodes,is a British professor of political science.
Philippe C. Schmitter is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is Emeritus Professor of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute.
Political finance covers all funds that are raised and spent for political purposes. Such purposes include all political contests for voting by citizens,especially the election campaigns for various public offices that are run by parties and candidates. Moreover,all modern democracies operate a variety of permanent party organizations,e.g. the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee in the United States or the Conservative Central Office and the Labour headquarters in the United Kingdom. The annual budgets of such organizations will have to be considered as costs of political competition as well. In Europe the allied term "party finance" is frequently used. It refers only to funds that are raised and spent in order to influence the outcome of some sort of party competition. Whether to include other political purposes,e.g. public relation campaigns by lobby groups,is still an unresolved issue. Even a limited range of political purposes indicates that the term "campaign funds" is too narrow to cover all funds that are deployed in the political process.
Joni Lovenduski,is Professor Emerita of Politics at Birkbeck,University of London.
Daniele Caramani is a comparative political scientist.
