The Governance Analytical Framework

The present document presents the Governance Analytical Framework (GAF), a practical methodology which aims to demonstrate the potential of the concept of governance for the analysis of collective problems. Some of the basic postulates of the GAF are that governance processes can be found in any society and can be observed and analysed from a non-normative and non-prescriptive perspective. Unlike many approaches based on ex-ante solutions (where the solution precedes the research), our proposal is that governance may be converted into a methodology to analyse collective processes which determine how decisions are made and how social norms and institutions are created, with reference to public issues. The GAF proposes a system with five analytical principals. These analytical units constitute a coherent and logically structured methodology.