La governance: genesi, diffusione e disavventure di un lemma fortunato

The article focuses on the genesis and the diffusion of governance. Despite of its popularity in human-social sciences, the term has an ambiguous character, due to an inflated use. Aim of this contribute is to highlight governance genesis, starting from its first use in economic contexts, and the way in which it has moved from this perspective to a socio-political one. In fact, over the past two decades of the last century, governance has become a new and flexible style of governing. Finally, the article tries to point out some weak features of this category, especially in terms of legitimacy, concluding that the category, as it has been arisen over the past two decades of the last millennium, is now clearly in crisis.