In today’s highly dynamic world, development challenges involve addressing complex interactions between people and their social processes, and rapidly changing technologies and ecologies.

Which directions or pathways such systems move through over time – and how far these are sustainable, resilient, poverty-reducing or socially just, for instance – is strongly shaped by political processes and institutions, or governance, in its broadest terms. If we are to understand patterns of change, as well as to attempt to influence them through policy or practice, then governance is central.

This briefing accompanies the paper Understanding Governance: pathways to sustainability.