What is governance

Governance has become a popular and widely used concept amongst scholars and practitioners from different disciplines, such as public administration, economy, political sciences, management, law, and sociology. The concept alone is quite ubiquitous and has been embedded in almost every international organization and democratic government to refer to the way in which interdependent and highly complex issues are managed. Governance implies different things depending on who is using the concept and under which context. Taking this into account, the intention of this chapter is to present and discuss a specific concept of governance and its application in the field of addictions, devoting special attention to its implications for final policies. The chapter is based on a large comparative research conducted by Ysa et al. (2014) which analyzes the governance structures and processes in the field of addiction. By looking at how addictions are governed in 28 European countries, the study presents four different typologies of governance of addictions in the Europe.