Our own approach to governance is a state – centric approach. We believe that although governance relates to changing relationships between state and society and a growing reliance on less coercive policy instruments, the state is still the centre of considerable political power. Fruthermore, emerging forms of governance depart from a model of democratic government where the state was the undisputed locus of power and control, hence we cannot think of any better ‘benchmark’ than the image of the state as it is portrayed in liberal-democratic theory. For these reasons mainly we look at governance as processes in which the state plays a leading role, marking priorities and defining objectives.