Governance in the 21st Century and Its Challenges

Political geography in the context of social relations deals with how “power and space” interact. Among the debatable topics are government, state, and governance. With the advent of the age of globalization and communication, a new pattern in the study of state-society relations was raised that by referring to the movements of state to high power (Transnational organizations) and downstream (Subordinate institutions) and outsiders (Nongovernmental and private organizations), rejected the role of upper, subordinate and regulators of the state, and introduced the corporatism and pluralistic-corporatism models. Increasing the “self-organization” of the society and promoting its role in the governance process, coupled with the fragmentation of government power, has paved the way for the ineffectiveness of the traditional, coercive government tools, and made persuasive tools based on negotiating community groups and organizations more noticeable. Governance is no longer doable, instead must give more attention to governance patterns and use them. The “arrogant government” should be replaced by a “humble government”. The transfer of “governance” from idea-to-action, along with the structural and functional changes of government, requires more than just a state, and other actors also have an impact on improving the quality of life and well-being of the various groups of stakeholders. In fact, the challenges facing its operation are very complicated. The present study, using a descriptive-analytical method, after addressing the concept and different angles of the governance model, has sought to address the challenges posed by it. The results indicate that obstacles such as government size, citizenchr('39')s access to political leaders, the transfer of collective goals to individual goals of politicians, and conflicts among stakeholders in the government are among the main challenges of implementing the governance model.