Governance as communities
A fourth general model of governance which has generated a great deal of debate in the social sciences over the past decade or so departs from the socio-economic homogeneity and common interests which characterize small communities and raises the question of whether government is at all required to resolve common problems. The general idea is that communities can – and should – resolve their common problems with a minimum of state involvement. Care of children and the elderly, the argument goes, is better and more efficiently organized more or less spontaneously at the community level. In a broader perspective, communitarian governance builds on a consensual image of the community and the positive involvement of its members in collective matters. The state – or, for that matter, local government – is believed to be too big and too bureaucratic to deal with these issues. More importantly, communitarians argue that government which emerged as an instrument for the management of political conflict now breeds or encourages such conflict over matters which in and by themselves are not controversial. Thus for communitarians government generates at least as many problems as it resolves. The communitarian solution to this problem is to organize governance without government.