governance

noun

gov·​er·​nance ˈgə-vər-nən(t)s 

plural governances

: the act or process of governing or overseeing the control and direction of something (such as a country or an organization) : government

a centralized system of governance

the challenges of national governance

… the governance of amateur sport in America …

—P. S. Wood

… three years before he died, [Lionel] Trilling pressed the point that the way a nation thinks determines in the end the quality of its governance.

—Benjamin DeMott

Enron, and the corporate disasters that followed, forced many companies to get serious about governance.

—Louis Lavelle

Theirs was the perennial problem of quick-witted subjects under the governance of dull-witted administrators.

—Declan Kiberd

Michael Dukakis, at the 1988 Democratic convention, said governance was about competence, not ideology. He got it half right: Competence is important to governance, but ideology is critical …

—U.S. News & World Report

Synonyms

• administration
• authority
• government
• jurisdiction
• regime
• régime
• regimen
• rule

Examples of governance in a Sentence

They have very different approaches to the governance of the city.

after World War II, the four Allied nations shared the governance of the territory of postwar Germany under the Allied Control Council

Recent Examples on the Web

Especially in the complex world of family governance, where the hardest decisions often don’t come down to spreadsheets. —Francois Botha, Forbes.com, 4 May 2025

Other experts also agreed that these court clashes could force Congress to revisit its broad delegation of powers to the executive branch and reshape the fundamental architecture of governance. —Kaelan Deese, The Washington Examiner, 3 May 2025

The administration and its allies in Congress are working feverishly to tilt the scale away from natural resource protection and toward extraction, threatening a pillar of the nation’s identity and tradition of democratic governance. —Chris D'angelo, Vox, 2 May 2025

What the law isn’t, or shouldn’t be, is the determination of one person or one party, in ways that cannot be predicted, cannot be challenged, and cannot be reconciled with the Constitution or our underlying principles of liberal and representative governance. —New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 1 May 2025

Word History

Etymology

see govern

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing governance

• self-governance

Kids Definition

governance

noun

gov·​er·​nance ˈgəv-ər-nən(t)s 

: the exercise of control : government