There is no word such as “governance” or an equivalent to it in German everyday language. However, since the late 1980s “governance” is used as a technical term in political and social sciences for conceptualising phenomena which have been called “regieren” (to govern) or “steuern” (to steer) before (see Benz 2004, pp. 15). Just as the concept of New Public Management which emerged at the same time, the Governance Perspective reflects “the rise of a profound scepticism about the possibilities of hierarchical control of complex social systems” (de Boer, Enders & Schimank 2007, p. 137). However, New Public Management is “a normative program for practical policy-making”, while the Governance Perspective aspires to remain “analytically open” (ibid.) and to offer an analytic tool for analysing states of governance and their transformation.