Tracing the Trends of Governance in <i>Governance</i> From 1988 to 2023: Achievements and Future Prospects

ABSTRACT This study employs both quantitative topic modeling using BERTopic and qualitative thematic analysis to investigate how themes in Governance evolved between 1990 and 2023. During that time Governance has become a leading journal in public administration and public governance, and understanding how those fields of scholarship appear in the journal can say a good deal about the development of those fields. Governance has both reflected and influenced changes in public administration by theoretically and empirically exploring executive politics along with administrative reforms and regulatory governance as well as democratic mechanisms. The analysis reveals four main conceptual dimensions, which are Structure, Mechanisms, Process, and Democracy, as each dimension represents separate yet interconnected academic discourses. These developments together demonstrate a larger intellectual movement in public administration which moves away from structural determinism to embrace detailed analyses of governance procedures and democratic practices while responding to global issues like populism and democratic decline. This research delivers a historical and intellectual evaluation of governance studies as it appears in a major journal, while delineating trajectories that will guide future research agendas in governance, public administration and policy.