We investigate the kinds of work that gets done in the name of governance through an analysis of the ways that it is understood, deployed and redefined in practice. To do this we turn to the Pacific Plan as our case.
We find that governance, as it is defined and operationalized in the Plan, is pulled in a highly
technocratic direction such that a particularly narrow conceptualization of governance dominates.
Despite this disciplining process, however, the continued salience of governance as a framing device within struggles for racial and gender equality and the emergence of Pacific-based projects that act to remake governance in unexpected ways leads us to conclude that the term retains fields of meaning that allow for alternative political openings and possibilities.