Representative democracy has spread out across the world in the twentieth century and into the new millennium. Yet democracy remains highly contested as a concept, as a form of government and as a field of political practice. For example, how is the authenticity of democracy to be assessed? How can democracy be made more democratic?
Political democracy shapes, at least to some extent, systems of ‘governance'. Governance is a buzzword in recent scholarly and political discourse. It refers to the complex array of practices through which a degree of order and coordination is achieved across governmental and other organisations, at local, national or supra-national levels.
Democracy and democratisation of governance give rise to critical issues for conceptual and empirical research and for aspirations for more equitable local, national and global societies. The Governance and Democracy (GD) thematic group investigates problems in this field, including:

• challenges to democratic theory posed by processes of democratisation and vice versa;
• experiences of and prospects for democratisation in domains such as health, education, the media, and the economy;
• the deepening of political participation in non-Western democratic polities such as India, Indonesia and countries in West Asia and North Africa;
• the potential for democratisation in authoritarian polities such as China;
• the prospects for democratisation of regional, transnational and global governance.