Acceso usuarios
Amadeu Solà
The English terms governance and governability have taken on a new meaning and their Catalan and Spanish translations are still being debated. The term governance comes from the French (14th century) and has been adopted by the other Romance languages. The controversy unleashed in Spanishspeaking countries and the confused translation of these concepts (normally the term gobernabilidad is used for both meanings) may be explained by the difficulty of precisely defining the two concepts and by the short history of both.
Governance appeared at the end of the 20th century, first in the term corporate governance, the structure and mechanisms that enable the direction and management of a company with a view towards increasing its value and guaranteeing its financial viability. In 1989, the term good governance was used for the first time. Good governance defines the ensemble of traditions and institutions that make it possible to exercise authority in a country, thereby ensuring proper management of public resources. Since 1989, the system of international aid has conditioned governance, and mention has been made of network governance, the global, neoliberal system in which the economy takes precedence over politics and where civil society must take on an active role. The quality of governance generates the conditions that make governability possible.
The advantage of the Spanish terms gobernanza and gobernabilidad is that they clearly define these two new political economic realities, avoid confusion and are the same words that are used in French, Italian and Portuguese.
